Time of a Whale

The first whaling ships sailed from the Port of Hull on the East Yorkshire Coast in 1598 during the reign of Elizabeth the First. 

By the late 1700's Hull was a major whaling port and by the 1800's the city on the Humber Estuary accounted for nearly half of the British whaling fleet bringing much prosperity. The primary product was of course whale oil used in soap and margarine for example and involving the boiling down of the blubber to extract it. The best oil was to be found in the head of a whale, spermaceti, of which up to 500 gallons could be held in a natural reservoir.

This dominance of Hull is acknowledged with more than one reference in Herman Melville's great novel of Moby Dick. The following is an extract from the novel illustrating what a Sperm Whale carcass could produce but at a high price in terms of fatalities and life changing injuries amongst the brave souls in the inhospitable hunting grounds where whales were once plentiful. 

"First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.

There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing.

Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.

Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.

Ambergris is found deep in the bowels of older, mature whales.On first impression it is a waxy, limpish and to all accounts useless waste product but yet its yellowy-ash substance has a spicy smell and aphrodisiac quality so sought after by the perfumiers of Paris.
Whale teeth and bones were harvested for carving into scrimshander and in some Pacific cultures items held an almost sacred place in ceremonies.
Baleen, or the fine mesh of feeding filters was also used in various products. Not much was wasted in the relentless bid to extract as much of value out of the carcass of a whale.

Melville describes graphically the scene on a whaling ship as the hunting crews, having successfully harpooned one of the giants of the oceans, turn to butchers. The decks become awash with blood and fluids all in a choking black smoke from fierce fires underneath cauldrons and vats to boil down the blubber. This carries on day and night regardless of the pitch and violent movement of the ship and at yet more risk to those on board. The sea around the vessel would often be infested with sharks scavenging on anything falling overboard-be it beast or man.

But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They generally go in pairs,—a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.