Whale oil

“ The best of the meat we have cut off, two long strips down the back, perhaps thirty pounds each, and into vinegar and water they go, enough fresh meat for all hands for several days, and the oil of the spec or blubber will probably amount to a gallon—one gallon clear profit for our shareholder—one little drop of the vast ocean of whale oil we hope to collect some day for the furtherance of British industries, and the manufacture of margarine and olive oil in Paris, and the hundred and one other purposes for which whale oil is used. ”

“ In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal-gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous substances, such as lard, palm-oil, and petroleum for right-whale oil and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single circumstance. ”

“ While ordinary whale oil is too dark and odorous to ever come into extensive use as a paint oil, it is probable that the refined oil will be utilized in the manufacture of certain technical paints. Whale oil is boiled from chopped whale blubber, the first trying being the lightest in color, while the later tryings, as well as the product made from bones, are of darker color and of very bad odor. ”

“ This discovery, brilliant as it is acknowledged to be, which in its first application bore such a threatening aspect against the usual consumption of oil, may be the means of bringing the oil of the whale into more extensive use than it has at any former period been. Whale-oil, in the most inferior qualities, is found to afford a gas which, in point of brilliancy, freeness of smell, and ease of manufacture, is greatly superior to that produced from coal. In places where coal is not very cheap, gas, it seems, can be produced from oil at about the same expense as coal-gas ”

“ It has certainly acquired a smell, but is not more unpleasant than that of old Florence oil. Hence, were whale-oil extracted in Greenland before the putrefying process commences, or were any method devised of freeing it from the impurities which combine with it in consequence of this process, it would become not only more valuable for common purposes, but would be applicable to almost every use to which spermaceti oil is adapted. ”

“ The staves of whale-oil casks become quite brittle, whilst those of beef, pork, and tallow barrels remain tough and sound. Ships constantly in the Greenland trade have their timbers and planks [108] preserved so far as they have become impregnated with whale oil.
Experiments with fish oil prove that of itself, unless exposed to sun and air, it may be injurious; that it loosens the cohesion of timber; but that animal fat, combined with saline matter, is preservative.
Fish oil used alone is ineligible, because capable of running into the putrefactive process, unless as a thin outside varnish. ”

“ Take whale oil. Take the funny old buildings on Front Street, out of paintings, I declare, by Howard Pyle, where the large merchants in whale oil are. Take salt fish. Do you know the oldest salt-fish house in America, down by Coenties Slip? Ah! you should. The ghost of old Long John Silver, I suspect, smokes an occasional pipe in that old place. And many are the times I've seen the slim shade of young Jim Hawkins come running out. Take Labrador cod for export to the Mediterranean lands or to Porto Rico via New York. ”

“ The oils most proper to be used are linseed, rapeseed, or almost any of the vegetable fixed oils. Oak wood, rendered entirely free from moisture, and then immersed in linseed oil, is said to be thus prevented from splitting: the time of immersion depending on the size, &c. Palm oil is preferable to whale oil, because impregnation with the latter, although in many instances eligible, causes [107] wood to become brittle. It is, however, probable that whale oil, when combined with other substances, such as litharge, coal pitch, or charcoal, may lose much of that effect. ”

“ After the mixture, the gases must be screened from the light, otherwise the common carburetted hydrogen would also combine with the chlorine, while water and carbonic acid would make their appearance.
The oil employed for affording gas is the crudest and cheapest that can be bought; even the blubber and sediment of whale oil are employed with advantage. After all, however, coal is so much cheaper, and the gas produced from it is now so well purified, that oil and rosin are very little used in gas apparatus. ”

“ Men will move out of the subgroup producing the crude oil, as nature forces them to do so, but their movement cannot be referred merely to improvement in the mode of extracting the oil or transporting and refining it. The fact which illustrates the rule we have stated is that while mineral oil drove whale oil out of the field as an illuminant, this did not reduce the number of men in the general group which produces illuminating oil. More men were set working in the oil fields than ceased working on the whaling ships. ”

“ The total produce of these eight vessels was 28 Whales, 609 Walruses, 16 Narwhals, 3036 Seals, 128 Bears, and 68 Musk Oxen; the oil yielded was 385 tons, and the bone 350 cwt.—a very mixed cargo; but, except for the Hudson Bay section of the fleet, apparently a fairly successful voyage commercially. There has been no very recent sale of whalebone, but I am informed that the last sale effected produced £1400 per ton; more is being asked for it now. Whale oil is producing from £18 to £19, and Seal oil from £18 to £21 per ton. Walrus hides, if heavy, bring as high as ₤40 each. ”

“ The chief products of the fishery are sperm and whale oil, whalebone, and ambergris. Spermaceti, meaning a foot of “sperm oil,” was the most valuable and was found only in the sperm whale. This oil was formerly used chiefly in the manufacture of sperm candles, and at one time there were eight factories for the manufacture of these candles in New England, Nantucket alone turning out three hundred and eighty tons annually before the war. In the olden times this oil was considered a sure cure for almost any kind of disease and was worth its weight in silver. ”

“ Whale-oil is principally used in oiling wools for combing, in batching flax and other vegetable fibres, in currying and chamois leather-making, and as a lubricant for machinery. Sperm-oil is obtained from the cavity in the head of the sperm-whale, and from several smaller receptacles throughout the body of the animal During the life of the whale the contents of these cavities are in a fluid condition, but no sooner is the "head matter" removed than the solid wax spermaceti separates in white crystalline flakes, leaving the oil a clear yellow fluid having a fishy odour. ”

“ Strips of fat from a seal and the blood of the animal are put into a kettle and heated. The oily liquid is eaten with the greatest relish. Seal oil is used for food in about the same manner as we use syrups. Years of almost daily intercourse with these people have failed to show the ability of any person to drink seal or whale oil without illness resulting. They never drink pure oil under any circumstances, except as a laxative. The statement often made that these people drink oil as food is simply preposterous. ”

“ The reason these articles are so eagerly sought for in this port, is that no whalers are fitted out or belong here; neither is there any market for the sale of whale oil—the inhabitants universally burning the oil expressed from the cocoa-nut; and as the cocoa tree is indigenous to the island, and grows in great profusion, it is readily obtainable at a low rate. ”

“ Cocoa-nut oil is now manufactured in different parts of the South Seas, and forms no small part of the traffic carried on with trading vessels. A considerable quantity is annually exported from the Society Islands to Sydney. It is used in lamps and for machinery, being much cheaper than the sperm, and, for both purposes, better than the right-whale oil. They bottle it up in large bamboos, six or eight feet long; and these form part of the circulating medium of Tahiti.
To return to the ship. The wind dying away, evening came on before we drew near the island. ”

“ In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff! ”

“ The other is an odd fact, namely, that so far back as the last century the rationale of the cod-liver oil fashion was foreshadowed at the “Smalls.” As in the wool-combing districts of Yorkshire, where the wool is dressed with oil, consumption and strumous affections of the like character are rare, so it is said that people going out to the “Smalls” as keepers, thin, hectic and emaciated, have returned plump, jocund, and robust, on account of living in an unctuous atmosphere, where every breath was laden with whale oil, and every meal might be enriched with fish. ”

“ Machinery pulls the whale up the ramp and onto the deck. There men with knives that look like big hockey sticks cut up the blubber and throw it into vats where the whale oil is boiled out.{49}
Hour after hour the killer boats bring in whales, sometimes forty or fifty a day—or even more! Everybody works day and night, with very little time to eat and sleep. The oil tanks in the factory ship begin to fill up. Now an ordinary tanker comes alongside. The whale oil is pumped from the factory ship to the tanker which delivers it at some big port thousands of miles away. ”

“ When blubber is boiled in Greenland, the oil produced from it is much brighter, paler, more limpid, and more inflammable than that extracted in Britain. It is also totally free from any unpleasant flavour, and burns without smell. Hence it is evident, that whatever is disagreeable in the effluvia of whale-oil arises from an admixture of putrescent substances. These consist of blood and animal fibre. This latter is the reticulated and cellular fibres of the blubber, wherein the oil is confined, which produces the fenks when boiled. ”

“ Blackfish oil is of medium quality, but I learned that, according to the rule of "roguery in all trades," it was the custom to mix quantities such as we had just obtained with better class whale oil, and thus get a much higher price than it was really worth. ”

“ These whales yield no bone, but give about a ton each of an oil equal in lubricating power to the southern sperm-whale oil. Since they began to be hunted, more than two hundred have sometimes been killed in a season by a single ship ”

“ In the early part of the century, whales were so plentiful, especially along the New England coast, that whale, or sperm, oil was used for lighting purposes, and many of the old whale-oil lamps are still in existence. The light they gave was dim and smoky, but it was far better than no light at all. As the years passed, whales became more and more scarce, until sperm oil was selling at over two dollars a gallon. Only the richest people could afford to pay that, and the poor passed their evenings in darkness. ”

“ All along the shore from the Carolinas to eastern Maine are ‘factories’ where these loads of menhaden are sold. Their bodies yield oil of a superior sort, useful for every purpose to which any fish or whale oil may be applied. ”

“ The oil was poured by means of a funnel and long canvas hose into the casks stowed in the ground tier at the bottom of the ship, and the gear, all carefully cleaned and neatly “stopped up,” stowed snugly away below again.
This long and elaborate process is quite different from that followed on board the Arctic whale ships, whose voyages are of short duration, and who content themselves with merely cutting the blubber up small and bringing it home to have the oil expressed. ”

“ Theirs is the only market to which we carry that oil, because it is the only one where its properties are known. It is luminous, resists coagulation by cold, to the forty-first degree of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, and fourth of Reaumur’s, and yields no smell at all: it is used, therefore, within doors, to lighten shops, and even in the richest houses, for antichambers, stairs, galleries, &c. It sells at the London market for treble the price of common whale-oil. This enables the adventurer to pay the duty of eighteen pounds five shillings sterling the ton, and still to have a living profit. ”

“ The only fuel which the Esquimaux of the present day have either to warm their huts or light them during the long nights of their gloomy climate, is the oil of the whale and seal, which, burnt in a lamp with a short wick, serves both to cook their food and also to warm and illumine their huts. ”

“ In the second place, the rapid development of the kerosene industry has so cheapened the product that people cannot afford to light their houses with whale oil, especially as they find the kerosene not only cheaper, but more convenient and satisfactory. ”

“ Meantime the pots are again filled up, and the scraps from the preceding pot are used in heating the works—these scraps forming an excellent and remarkably economical fuel; for if the whale did not furnish material for rendering its own oil, the fuel which would have to be substituted would be a costly item. From the embers, united with fresh water, an excellent lye is made, which is useful in extracting grease from clothes, washing the paint work and so forth. ”