January 31, 2005

Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert

Posted by Ted

Since Crooked Timber’s first publication in 1953, “Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert” has consistently been one of its most popular features. We are pleased to bring you the novelist Kenneth Gardner, author of Rich Man’s Coffin.

I’m baffled at the economics of nineteenth-century whaling. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville says that a whaling expedition would be a success if a crew of 40 men captured the oil from 40 whales in 48 months. Each whale produced about 40-50 barrels of oil. Presumably this oil had to be cover the approximate costs of four years’ labor, plus the costs of operating the ship, plus a sizeable profit for the investors in these risky ventures.

How could whale-oil have been so valuable? I understand that it was scarce, that illumination is highly desirable, and apparently it smelled nice. But there were substitutes, weren’t there?

Ted B., Houston, TX

Kenneth Gardner writes:

At that time you had the same resistance to technology transition as we have in boom markets today which may not be as efficient as their more technologically savvy counterparts, but are still ‘cheaper’ in the eyes of their producers in terms of the amount of time and energy required to make the transition. Best example of course, is the abundance of crude oil and our resistance to move to alternative and more efficient natural sources. The same was true in the 19th century whaling industry.

Ironically, my example of crude oil also answers your question about the possibility of alternatives to whale oil in the 19th century. Yes, crude had been discovered. Did efficient or effective means of drilling and refining exist then? Hell no. Was there much pressure on society to develop this technology in the face of abundant whale oil? No again.

Also, you underestimate the value and amount of whale oil being harvested by overlooking a commonly overlooked fact about old whaling: The whole whale value. They sold the bones to dress makers, and ambergris, the basis of 19th century perfume, was worth more at that time per ounce than gold is today, relatively. One Sperm Whale could yield an 800 pound lump of ambergris, a glandular secretion. Most importantly, whale oil was almost in a pure form with the only refining being the boiling down and straining of the fat. There was a lot of money made on those 4-year voyages!

Lastly, the whaling that Melville wrote about in Moby-Dick was ‘open-ocean’ whaling which was tedious and dangerous, with Sperm Whale numbers dwindling by the mid-1800s. But bear in mind, that archaic yet lucrative practice was tied into the colonization of the world and the development of other lucrative trades like sneaking up on millions of easy harbor seals on foreign, exotic shores and bringing home coat furs that were worth their weight in gold. Moreover, whalers were discovering ‘shore-whaling,’ where they would go and find the calving shores of the whales and lay claim to an entire coastline and set up towns and just start reaping in the biggest female Black Whales, which were twice as big and yielded twice as much profit as the nearly extinct Sperm Whales. It was easy pickings, and that industry started roaring just as the kind of whaling the Melville did was dying. So don’t wonder if those investors were getting their monies worth by sending out a bunch of hacks to sail the world for a few years and bring back what they could. They were bringing back tremendous wealth.

In case my framing was too cute, Kenneth Gardner is a real guy, who has written a real historical novel called Rich Man’s Coffin about an escaped slave who joins a whaling expedition. He was kind enough to write this response for me.

Posted on January 31, 2005 03:47 PM UTC
Comments

So he’s saying that we should move to a nuclear/solar/wind powered hydrogen economy starting this year?

But if it became cheaper to move to crude every year they prolonged using whale oil (technology kept moving forward), how do you calculate the optimum year to incur the costs of changing from the more expensive whale oil to crude? We’ll put the savings from using crude at 150 years before a new cost of new fuel transfer must be born. :P

Posted by jet · January 31, 2005 04:07 PM

Can’t I post another installation of “Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert” without it turning to politics? Man, it used to be about the whaling.

Eh, not really. Carry on.

Posted by Ted Barlow · January 31, 2005 04:15 PM

Dear Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert:
My boyfriend is always pressuring me to “go all the way,” but I’m not sure I’m ready. I don’t want to disappoint him, but this seems like a big step. What should I do? - Perplexed in Phoenix

Dear Perplexed,
Call me Kenneth. Well I remember those terrible days of yore, when mighty seafaring men bestrode the waves on massive vessels of oak and iron. Lo, then did the fearsome whale-beast breach and carve asunder the frothing surf, straining in vain to escape the wrath of the harpoon. Mark my words - the harpoon-thrower is your boyfriend, and fear him you must. As those steel-eyed whale-hunters were after but a single prize, so does this young fellow want only one thing. Sound and dive, young lady, sound and dive.

Posted by The Navigator · January 31, 2005 04:29 PM

Re: alternatives to whale oil… Kerosene hit the market in the late 1850s, and the whaling industry declined rapidly in the years that followed. Much of the capital in whaling was shifted to textiles, and towns like New Bedford, Mass., which had been major whaling centers, quickly transformed into mill towns.

Posted by chris · January 31, 2005 04:54 PM

Re: alternatives to whale oil… Kerosene hit the market in the late 1850s, and the whaling industry declined rapidly in the years that followed. Much of the capital in whaling was shifted to textiles, and towns like New Bedford, Mass., which had been major whaling centers, quickly transformed into mill towns.

Posted by chris · January 31, 2005 04:56 PM

My latest column at “Whale Central Station” is up, exposing the leftist myth of finite whale supplies.

1. Whales breed. Therefore, the potential supply of whales is unlimited.

2. As whaling technology improves, our ability to exploit this limited supply of whales becomes ever-greater. A few years ago, 40 whales in a four year trip was regarded as good going. Modern Norwegian whalers capture and process 40 whales a month. All of the estimates of the “sustainability” of the whale-based economy were put together before such inventions as exploding harpoons. And remember that the supply of whales is self-replenishing. Leftists seem not to understand that whales have sex.

3. Reducing whaling would cost vast amounts of money and destroy our economy; credible estimates would suggest that without whale-oil lamps we would all sit around in the dark until we die. This money would better be spent on providing aid to the Inuit.

4. We can’t give the Inuit property rights over their whales to help them manage the speed of whaling, because that’s just politically impractical.

5. Arrrrr!

Posted by dsquared · January 31, 2005 05:01 PM

I agree with the gentlemen who said “Arrrrr!”

Posted by Ted Barlow · January 31, 2005 05:05 PM

Dear Nineteenth Century Whaling Expert:—

I’m troubled by Herman Melville’s argument that a whale is a fish. Where shall I turn?

Posted by peter ramus · January 31, 2005 05:32 PM

Dsquared,
is it true that your new book “Right Whales 36,000”, about the inevitable explosion in the whale population once the Bush Administration has removed the dead hand of gov’t regulation, with a forward by Donald Luskin, will soon be out in paperback from Regnery Publishing?

Posted by the Navigator · January 31, 2005 05:32 PM

Best.
Thread.
Ever.

Posted by JRoth · January 31, 2005 05:41 PM

I know i’m probably confessing some embarassing economic illiteracy here, but is there a fancy name for the “why doesn’t the market provide a more optimal solution?/Because the market can only provide the solutions that are found good enough by its actors” figure?

I’d like to name that beast and be over with it.

Posted by yabonn · January 31, 2005 05:44 PM

yabonn-

Satisficing.

The late Herb Simon, of then-Carnegie Tech, my alma mater.

He said with no slight pride (my dad had him for a prof, and my mom worked for him).

Posted by JRoth · January 31, 2005 05:48 PM

This thread is a good excuse to use a line I love from an old Harvard Lampoon book:

“We now believe that the so-called ‘mermaids’ reported by sailors were actually manatees. A manatee is a sea mammal with the tail of a fish, and the forequarters of a beautiful naked woman.”

Posted by Ted Barlow · January 31, 2005 05:58 PM

Whaleonomics 101:

Well we struck that whale and the line played out
But she gave a flunder with her tail
And the boat capsized and four men were drowned
And we never caught that whale,
We never caught that whale.

Oh, to lose that whale, my captain cried,
It grieves my heart full sore
But to lose four of my gallant men
It grieves me ten times more, brave boys,
It grieves me ten times more!

Four men equal ten whales, so a man is worth (at least in units of “heart-grief”, if not in oil capacity) 2.5 whales.

Of course, if whale fishing were to be unionised along the lines bleeding-heart leftists demand then 2.5 whales would be a starting-point for liability negociations and the industry would be bankrupted, according to the back of a very credible envelope in front of me, in approximately no time flat.

And then where’d we be, eh?

Posted by des von bladet · January 31, 2005 06:02 PM

What, not even greek sounding?

Arrrrrrrrrr!!

Thanks, jroth.

Posted by yabonn · January 31, 2005 06:07 PM

Well, when the Moon whaling takes off everything will be solved!

We’re whalers on the moon
We carry big harpoons
But there ain’t no whales
So we spin tall tales
We’re whalers on the moon

http://www.geocities.com/theneutralplanet/transcripts/season1/1ACV02.html

Posted by Rob · January 31, 2005 06:21 PM

It strikes me that the list of increasingly productive means of producing whale oil, as Gardner does, offers no explanation for the continuation of open-ocean whaling. Rather, it amplifies the question – how could whale-oil have been so valuable? Lower cost alternatives should have pushed down the return to open-ocean whaling.

Just saying - “So don’t wonder if those investors were getting their monies worth by sending out a bunch of hacks to sail the world for a few years and bring back what they could. They were bringing back tremendous wealth” – doesn’t mean Gardner has actually clarified the economics of open-ocean whaling. If anything, he has argued that open-ocean whaling should have become increasingly uneconomic.

Oh, and that’s “money’s worth”.

Posted by kharris · January 31, 2005 06:44 PM

It still seems puzzling, how about giving a breakdown of the typical costs and revenue of a whaling expedition ? What’s the breakdown of
wages/food/repairs, capital cost of a ship, value of 2000 barrels of oil,
value of ambergris, value of whalebone ? How many voyages would the average ship make before being lost or damaged beyond repair ? Were ships built with borrowed money, and if so, what was the interest rate at that time ?
How did whale-oil lamps compare with candles ?

Also IIRC the “whalebone” used in corsets is only the baleen, the soup-strainer structure in the mouth used to filter food - not, as you might think, the bones of the whole whale. Once the blubber was stripped off, the meat and skeleton was left behind and served no good purpose, other than providing a few meals for the crew and some scrimshaw.

Posted by Richard Cownie · January 31, 2005 07:06 PM

The Kipper Family explain the whaling industry thus:

The Losing of the Whale
(D. Nudds and C. Sugden)

In eighteen hundred and forty-six
On March the fourteenth day,
I bought myself a calendar
For we were bound away.

We sailed from Tacky Guano
And followed the seabird’s flight,
For we were hunting whales, me boys,
At least we thought we might.

We sailed for three long days and nights
But saw no whales at all.
The mate went up the mast to look
While our captain went up the wall.

We sailed for four more days and nights
And still we had no luck;
Till a whale come up for air, me boys
And the mate cried, “Thar she suck!”

The whale she lashed her tail, me boys,
One man on deck took a glancing blow;
But not so bad as our captain
For he was wounded down below.

Now the first to throw his harpoon out
Was Valparaiso Luke.
He hit her in the tail, me boys,
But they said that was a fluke.

Now we went in with our blubber hooks
And the whale sunk down below;
We caused her for to vomit, boys,
And the mate cried,”Thar she throw!”

Now we hauled that whale on deck, me boys,
Amid many hearty cries;
But that fish it was so huge, me boys,
That our vessel did capsize.

And our captain with remorse was filled
Likewise with water too;
“I’ll no more hunt the whale,” he cried,
“If that’s the last thing I don’t do!”

“I’ll never more hunt that whale,” he cried,
And what’s more, he was right.
For the heavy seas bore down on him
And carried him from our sight.

And soon likewise we all were drown’d
None lived to tell the tale;
Not one of us survived to tell
Of how we lost that whale.

Copyright Dambuster Music
RG

Posted by Richard Cownie · January 31, 2005 07:10 PM

My latest column at “JunkWhaling.com” is up, with a flashy counter to keep track of the millions of lives lost because of the leftist-inspired ban on whaling.

1. Bleeding-heart chicken-little doomsayers persist in their unfounded accusation that whaling leads to whale deaths. I have never seen an actual whaler, and I doubt that you have, either.

2. Millions of people in developing countries are threatened daily by whale predation, yet the unjustifiable ban on whaling was forced on us by “greenies” and their pointy-headed supporters at the “universities.” As a result, babies are pulled off beaches and devoured whole by whales at night.

3. According to a statement given to the US Senate by eminent fisheries expert Arnold Dingfelder Horshak, the conventional wisdom that whale populations were larger in the past is a complete fabrication. In fact, whales just came into existence a few years ago, and will fill the seas completely by the end of the decade if they are not stopped.

4. Arrrrr!

(thanks, dsquared!)

Posted by jre · January 31, 2005 07:32 PM

Having just re-read Chapter X of Moby Dick, I have discovered the following encounter between Ishmael and Queequeg:

“I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.”

And that’s before they even got on the boat!

Those of us in the Department of Education are not stupid, you know. We’re on to your beloved SpongeBob and Buster. Do you really think we’re going to fund studies of a bunch of men sleeping together for years at a time?

Posted by Margaret Spellings · January 31, 2005 08:33 PM

Having just re-read Chapter X of Moby Dick, I have discovered the following encounter between Ishmael and Queequeg:

“I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.”

And that’s before they even got on the boat!

Those of us in the Department of Education are not stupid, you know. We’re on to your beloved SpongeBob and Buster. Do you really think we’re going to fund studies of a bunch of men sleeping together for years at a time?

Posted by Margaret Spellings · January 31, 2005 08:35 PM

wow, quite interesting. Three comments/questions.

1) What the hell is a black whale? And whatever it is, it was unlikely to be twice as big as a sperm whale.

2) Sperm whales don’t have baleen, so they wouldn’t have figured into the dress making profit

3) Cripes, that perfume stuff sounds like it would finance the entire enterprise handily

Posted by rufus · January 31, 2005 08:36 PM

Having just re-read Chapter X of Moby Dick, I have discovered the following encounter between Ishmael and Queequeg:

“I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.”

And that’s before they even got on the boat!

Those of us in the Department of Education are not stupid, you know. We’re on to your beloved SpongeBob and Buster. Do you really think we’re going to fund studies of a bunch of men sleeping together for years at a time?

Posted by Margaret Spellings · January 31, 2005 08:37 PM

Look there! The multipost! She’s blowing!

Posted by yabonn · January 31, 2005 09:10 PM

What the hell is a black whale?

A pilot whale, I think.

Posted by Kieran Healy · January 31, 2005 09:11 PM

What the hell is a black whale? And whatever it is, it was unlikely to be twice as big as a sperm whale.

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Posted by HP · January 31, 2005 09:16 PM

Kerosene hit the market in the late 1850s, and the whaling industry declined rapidly in the years that followed. Much of the capital in whaling was shifted to textiles, and towns like New Bedford, Mass., which had been major whaling centers, quickly transformed into mill towns.

Something similar happened in the 1960s, when, in response to international bans on their traditional livelihood, the whalers shifted en masse to the production of reggae music. Or something like that.

Posted by Dan Simon · January 31, 2005 09:36 PM

Cripes, that perfume stuff sounds like it would finance the entire enterprise handily

And still does. Although ambergris is now harvested from the sea, rather than from the whales that excrete it.

Posted by nick · January 31, 2005 10:20 PM

dsquared—you’ve also neglected the fact that in the extraordinarily unlikely event that our supply of whales should run out, we can just colonize all the whales in the galaxy two galaxies over!

Posted by Scott Lemieux · January 31, 2005 10:44 PM

Seems appropriate here: http://www.maakies.com/frames/index.html

Posted by George · January 31, 2005 11:02 PM

The problem here is you’re basing your assumptions about whale supply on that throughly discredited study published in The Harpoon.

It’s just bad science whether you treat Newfoundland as an outlier or not.

Posted by Nabakov · February 1, 2005 12:17 AM

After you’ve been at sea for 18 months, almost EVERYTHING (if you’re at all inclined that way) looks like a beautiful naked woman.

Manatees more so than, for example, mackerel. (There’s a classic inappropriate joke here, but I won’t tell it).

Posted by John Emerson · February 1, 2005 02:53 AM

I love you guys.

Posted by fafnir · February 1, 2005 03:52 AM

All the whale blogs I follow have been conspicuously silent about the glorious success of elections in Iraq. If the whales can’t stand up in support of democracy, I say screw em! Kill them all, let Poseidon sort them out.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds · February 1, 2005 05:02 AM

Haha Navigator!

You took my nothing day and suddenly made it seem worthwhile.

Posted by monkyboy · February 1, 2005 05:19 AM

Suggested reading: “Hawaii”, by James Michener.

If you like historical fiction and want a story that has a bit about the rise and fall of whaling.

Posted by Buckaroo · February 1, 2005 05:29 AM

Heh. Update on Whale Central Station

Reader “Nnelg” writes:

“Don’t forget that the effects of Sweden’s whaling inactivity versus Norway could yet be the proof that their standard of living is lower than Mississippi. I suspect the European Union, or at least the two main powers, France and Germany, are keeping the Swedes down via their proxies the whales.”

Indeed.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds · February 1, 2005 05:34 AM

I suppose too you’re also gonna dispute the validity of recent studies that show carrying concealed whales does reduce piracy.

Posted by Nabakov · February 1, 2005 07:08 AM

This was the best exchange:

Dear Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert:

My boyfriend is always pressuring me to “go all the way,” but I’m not sure I’m ready. I don’t want to disappoint him, but this seems like a big step. What should I do? - Perplexed in Phoenix

Dear Perplexed,
Call me Kenneth. Well I remember those terrible days of yore, when mighty seafaring men bestrode the waves on massive vessels of oak and iron. Lo, then did the fearsome whale-beast breach and carve asunder the frothing surf, straining in vain to escape the wrath of the harpoon. Mark my words - the harpoon-thrower is your boyfriend, and fear him you must. As those steel-eyed whale-hunters were after but a single prize, so does this young fellow want only one thing. Sound and dive, young lady, sound and dive.

Posted by The Navigator · January 31, 2005 04:29 PM

Posted by Movie Guy · February 1, 2005 07:29 AM

Ablast! Crude oil from Saudi Arabia saved the baby whales?! Should Greenpeace encourage drilling Alaska now?

Posted by PondWhaler · February 1, 2005 11:12 AM

I noticed a bit about property rights in whale hunting in dsquared’s “Arrr!” comment. Amusingly, there are libertarian types who do seriously suggest this.

The problem with it, of course, is that whales reproduce at a rate such that you can only get something like 3% “interest” off your existing stock of whales. You’d always be financially better off to kill all the whales, get cash, and invest the cash in higher-interest bonds.

Posted by Rich Puchalsky · February 1, 2005 02:18 PM

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Completely OT, but too good a story not to tell. Mel Brooks once said that there was a final line in that scene. As it faded to black, Bart (Cleavon Little) says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but you’re sucking on my arm.”

Brooks said in an interview that he cut that line because at a preview audiences laughed so loudly at it that they missed the rest of the movie.

Dunno if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a funny line.

Posted by Tom Beck · February 1, 2005 07:17 PM

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Completely OT, but too good a story not to tell. Mel Brooks once said that there was a final line in that scene. As it faded to black, Bart (Cleavon Little) says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but you’re sucking on my arm.”

Brooks said in an interview that he cut that line because at a preview audiences laughed so loudly at it that they missed the rest of the movie.

Dunno if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a funny line.

Posted by Tom Beck · February 1, 2005 07:25 PM

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Completely OT, but too good a story not to tell. Mel Brooks once said that there was a final line in that scene. As it faded to black, Bart (Cleavon Little) says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but you’re sucking on my arm.”

Brooks said in an interview that he cut that line because at a preview audiences laughed so loudly at it that they missed the rest of the movie.

Dunno if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a funny line.

Posted by Tom Beck · February 1, 2005 07:44 PM

1. Baleen (a sort of whale teeth) was used for corsets, not whale bones, although it was commonly called “whalebome”
2. Ambergris was a form of bile, and fairly rare. Spermaceti oil is a high-grade whale fat that comes in 800 pound units.

Posted by Chris · February 1, 2005 07:45 PM

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Completely OT, but too good a story not to tell. Mel Brooks once said that there was a final line in that scene. As it faded to black, Bart (Cleavon Little) says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but you’re sucking on my arm.”

Brooks said in an interview that he cut that line because at a preview audiences laughed so loudly at it that they missed the rest of the movie.

Dunno if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a funny line.

Posted by Tom Beck · February 1, 2005 07:52 PM

>The problem with it, of course, is that whales reproduce at a rate such
>that you can only get something like 3% “interest” off your existing stock
>of whales. You’d always be financially better off to kill all
>the whales, get cash, and invest the cash in higher-interest bonds.

If we only get 3% interest out of libertarians, does the same argument apply ?

Posted by Richard Cownie · February 1, 2005 08:42 PM

“Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue!” —Lili von Shtupp

Completely OT, but too good a story not to tell. Mel Brooks once said that there was a final line in that scene. As it faded to black, Bart (Cleavon Little) says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but you’re sucking on my arm.”

Brooks said in an interview that he cut that line because at a preview audiences laughed so loudly at it that they missed the rest of the movie.

Dunno if it’s true or not, but it’s a hell of a funny line.

Posted by Tom Beck · February 1, 2005 08:47 PM

This question about the economics of whale oil is easy to explain. It’s because there is so damn little oil in a seal.

Antti

Posted by Antti Nannimus · February 1, 2005 09:45 PM

Does anybody know any good kerosene shanties?

Oh, we headed out for Texas in a big ol’ truck
Sing hey, me hearties, yo-ho!

I can’t seem to think of a rhyme for the next bit.

Posted by Jonquil · February 1, 2005 11:32 PM

Star Trek had it right. Whales are recognized as the dominant species in the universe. And messing with them ultimately results in ruin.

Follow the clues. Just look at Japan (they’re not running anything now - punishment), the artic circle meltdown, and the high probability that California will simply slide off into the Pacific if we screw with them again.

Perhaps we should leave ‘em alone!!

Posted by Movie Guy · February 2, 2005 01:49 AM

To jonquil:
Re: Kerosene Chanties

Chanties no, but there is this traditional American ballad
———-

Listen to the story/of a man named Jed
Poor mountaineer/barely kept his family fed
Then one day he was shootin’ at some food/And up through the ground came a-bubblin’ crude

Oil — that is, black gold, Texas Tea

As fine an example of the Scots-Irish musical tradition in America as you’re ever likely to see.

Posted by stari_momak · February 2, 2005 07:30 AM

John Bockstoce, classmate and fellow Bonesman to John Kerry, Massachusetts Yankees each, wrote both “Steam Whaling in the Western Arctic” and “Whales, Ice and Men: The history of whaling in the ARctic”.
The black fish was the North Atlantic Right Whale, which was right because it floated after it was dead, like Rush Limbaugh. Those got used up pretty fast, so the Pacific became the new internet boom, and that got used up, until a brave soul passed through the Aleutians in 1842 to the chagrin of the Russian owners and ransacked the walrus (hide used for belts ot run machinery) and Bowhead whales (baleen and fat and they float). See Charles D. Brower, “50 years below zero.” It all crashed until oil exploration and the cold war made it cool to be in the arctic again.

Posted by bigfoot · February 2, 2005 09:09 AM

Amazingly, no one has plugged in this important fact that would have compromised the profit margin of any whaling enterprise: the fact that much of that whale oil was used to fuel the massive engines that enabled their propulsion. Then again, they probably saved a lot of energy whilst on-site by using the more-economical electric trolling motors, right?
PS to Chris: you’ve confused terms on your post. Spermaceti was the name of that beat poet back in the 60’s!

Posted by pontoon annie · February 2, 2005 04:23 PM

I happen to know that the MSM have intentionally concealed the fact that John Kerry never served on a whaler.

Posted by Whaling Ship veterans for Truth · February 2, 2005 08:14 PM

I happen to know that the MSM have intentionally concealed the fact that John Kerry never served on a whaler.

Posted by Whaling Ship veterans for Truth · February 2, 2005 08:20 PM

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light.
He slept with a mermaid one fine night.
And out of that union there came three:
A porpoise, a porgie, and t’other was me.

Melville was a size queen. Great white, my ass!

Posted by Xboy · February 3, 2005 05:27 AM

Of course whales can breed but if they are killed in greater numbers than are produced every year, the population will inexorably go down. Basic maths, people.

Posted by Sel · February 7, 2005 02:50 PM

Of course whales can breed but if they are killed in greater numbers than are produced every year, the population will inexorably go down. Basic maths, people.

Posted by Sel · February 7, 2005 02:52 PM

Of course whales can breed but if they are killed in greater numbers than are produced every year, the population will inexorably go down. Basic maths, people.

Posted by Sel · February 7, 2005 02:52 PM

What the hell is a black whale?

A pilot whale, I think.

Well, they claim to be pilots - but they seem strangely uninterested in training on how to land…

Posted by Anony-mouse · February 8, 2005 05:04 AM
Followups

→ Best. Comment. Ever..
Excerpt: In response to this delightful post over at Crooked Timber, we get the best comment response ever, from dsquared: My latest column at “Whale Central Station” is up, exposing the leftist myth of finite whale supplies. 1. Whales breed. Therefore,...Read more at A Partially Examined Life, A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community
→ Catching my eye: morning A through Z (UPDATED).
Excerpt: Here's what's caught my eye this morning: Lileks and Power and Control comment-fisking DU. Brad DeLong gives the highlights of a Social Security reform plan I'm completely in favor of (not surprising since I've been saying nearly all of these...Read more at The Glittering Eye
→ On the Inexhaustibility of Whale Resources.
Excerpt:

A Partially Examined Life, A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community: Best.... Ever.: In response to this delightful post over at Crooked Timber, we get the best comment response ever, from dsquared: My latest column at “Whale Central Statio...

Read more at Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog
→ Sound and dive, young lady, sound and dive..
Excerpt: Crooked TimberRead more at BlogBites
→ Avast there.
Excerpt: Economics of 19th century whaling [:( MeFi]
Space artist interview [:(]
Link spammer interview [:(]
Paint and microwaves could boost solar sail [:o]
Key: [MeFi] = Stolen from Metafilter [/.] = Stolen from Slashdot [M] = Stolen from...Read more at R Mutt from Hulver's site
→ Call me Ishmablogger.
Excerpt: I never would have thought that the economics of 19th century whaling could be that interesting. Good thing Ted thought...Read more at Off the Kuff
→ Thar she blows!.
Excerpt: It helps to understand this if you've read Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea," but it's not required. Ask a 19th Century Whaling Expert. Easily the best anachronism I've read this year. Don't miss the comments, particularly the...Read more at Linkmeister

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.