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Greasy luck

Chapter 31: WHALES
By Gordon Grant
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About This Book

A richly illustrated sketchbook that documents the techniques, equipment, and daily life of traditional whaling through detailed plates and diagrams. Sequential images and captions depict fitting out, sail handling, whaleboats, harpooning and lancing, the struggle of the chase, cutting-in and rendering blubber, shipboard trades and tools, and shore activities such as gams and recruiting. A foreword frames the material by contrasting the romantic image of sail whaling with mechanized modern whaling, while the artwork emphasizes technical accuracy, danger, and the labor and culture of the whalemen.

WHALES

4—FINBACK WHALE. This and the Sulphurbottom are much longer than the Sperm, Right, and Bowhead—but were ignored because of the fact that they sank when killed, and because of their rapidity of movement, claimed by some to be as much as fifty miles an hour.

Modern whalers have met these difficulties by employing fast motor boats and by inflating the dead whale with compressed air.

5—SULPHURBOTTOM—or BLUE WHALE. The longest of the whale family. Some specimens have been taken exceeding one hundred feet in length.

6—HUMPBACK WHALE. This whale is one of the “bone” species, but its baleen was too short to be of commercial value.

It sank when killed, but as it was almost always found in shoal water gases due to decomposition brought it to the surface in a short time.