Matt Lakeman

Everything You Might Want to Know about Whaling

2021-06-01 · 00:00 UTC ·John Doe ·141 min read

Brief

This exhaustive historical analysis challenges conventional narratives about whaling's environmental impact while providing fascinating economic and social details. The author argues that 19th century American whaling, despite being one of the world's most important industries (5th largest in America), probably didn't significantly damage whale populations. Using modern population dynamics research, he shows that sperm whales numbered 1.8-2.4 million globally, and even peak hunting years killed less than 0.5% of the population. The apparent decline in whaling success was likely due to whales behaviorally adapting - moving away from hunting grounds and sharing information about threats, with harpoon success rates dropping 58% within years.

The book reveals the brutal realities of whaling life: crews lived with rats and cockroaches, ate rotting meat and hardtack, and faced a 50% desertion rate. The lay system created perverse incentives where companies sometimes wanted crew to desert to avoid payouts. Officers could earn well ($1,178 annually for captains vs $156 for Union soldiers), but ordinary sailors averaged under $100 annually for multi-year voyages with significant death risk.

The real environmental catastrophe came in the 20th century when industrial whaling killed 7-10 times more whales than the entire 19th century, driving blues, rights, and bowheads near extinction. Modern whaling persists through scientific research loopholes, with Norway and Japan spending millions in subsidies to maintain culturally/politically motivated industries that few citizens actually support - only 5% of Norwegians and 95% of Japanese never eat whale meat.

Why it matters

A comprehensive 31,000-word analysis of whaling history from 6,000 BC to present:

Key details

  • [economics] Whale oil was the dominant lighting fuel for ~50 years until petroleum displaced it in 1859
  • [surprising finding] Golden Age whaling (1815-1861) likely didn't significantly impact whale populations - whales adapted behaviorally
  • [scale] 20th century industrial whaling killed 2.7-3 million whales vs ~400,000 in the entire 19th century
  • [labor] American whalers had 50% desertion rates and 6% of voyages never returned home
  • [modern] Only Norway, Japan, Iceland exploit scientific research loopholes to continue commercial whaling
Cleaned source text

title: Everything You Might Want to Know about Whaling

author: John Doe

content_type: article

publication: Matt Lakeman

published: 2021-06-01T00:00:00

source_url: https://mattlakeman.org/2021/06/01/everything-you-might-want-to-know-about-whaling/

word_count: 31836

I think whaling is really cool. I can’t help it. It’s one of those things like guns and war and space colonization which hits the adventurous id. The idea that people used to go out in tiny boats into the middle of oceans and try to kill the biggest animals to ever exist on planet earth with glorified spears to extract organic material for fuel is awesome. It’s like something out of a fantasy novel.

So I embarked on this project to understand everything I could about whaling. I wanted to know why burning whale fat in lamps was the best way to light cities for about 50 years. I wanted to know how profitable whaling was, what the hunters were paid, and how many whaleships were lost at sea. I wanted to know why the classical image of whaling was associated with America and what other countries have whaling legacies. I wanted to know if the whaling industry wiped out the whales and if they can recover.

This essay is the result. It is over 30,000 words long, a new record for my blogging. It’s broken into seven parts linked here:

Part I – Economic Value of a Whale

Breakdown of the parts of a whale which have been harvested and commercially traded throughout history

Description and valuations of whale oil, meat, baleen, and other resources

Attempts at estimating quantities of resources extracted from a single whale

Breakdown of the whale hunting methods throughout history

Shore hunting, ocean hunting, and technological evolutions in hunting

The many ways whale hunting can go wrong

Part III – Early Whaling History (6,000 BC-1700 AD)

Overview of the origins of whaling

Estimated value of a beached whale

The commercial success of Basque whaling

Part IV – The Anglo Whaling War (1700-1815)

Explanation of why American whaling triumphed

Part V – The Golden Age of Whaling (1815-1861)

Examination of the high point of global whaling, when whaling was one of the most important industries on earth

Most in depth description of the economics and experience of whaling – 50% labor desertion rate, highly inconsistent payout matrix, 6% of voyages never returned, etc.

Golden Age whaling

did not*have a significant impact on global whaling populations

Part VI – The Industrial Age (1865-1986)

Fall of US dominance, rise of Norway and then European competition

Overview of early attempts to restrict whaling for environmental purposes, and why they failed

Collapse of whaling population, estimated species populations before and after industrial whaling

Part VII – Modern Whaling (1987-Present)

Present state of whaling legality and population impacts

Norway and Japan continue to hunt whales for opaque cultural reasons

Commercial whaling can return, but I’m not sure if it should

As with my deep dive into K-pop, I advise that if you are interested in whaling, but not *that* interested, you should skip some sections and focus on others. Parts I and II are short and get into the fun nitty-gritty details of the practice of whaling. Parts III and IV are more about the history of the industry and how it interacted with politics, trade policy, etc, and are the most easily skipped sections. Part V is the longest and (IMO) most interesting section; it’s both an overview of American whaling and a deep dive into the economics of the industry, including crew payouts, profitability, venture earnings, and the impact of whaling on the global whale population. Part VI and VII bridge the gap between the high point of whaling and its near death in the modern age.

My two main sources are *In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906* by Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karin Gleiter, and *Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America* by Eric Jay Dolin. The former is more for statistics, detailed industry breakdowns, and whale population figures. The latter is more for color commentary, and since I listened to it on audiobook, my citations for it don’t include page numbers. Yes, apparently *leviathan* is such a good symbol/metaphor for whales that both books used it in the title.

As with all my research posts, I’m open to comments, suggestions, and corrections regarding anything I’ve written here. I tried to stay close to the texts and numbers, with my speculations usually noted as such. I’m coming at whaling and maritime history as an outsider, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve made mistakes, and I’d appreciate having them pointed out.

NOTE – There are lots of pictures and paintings of dead and dying whales throughout this post.

You have a dead whale in front of you. What can you get from it? What’s it worth?

Whale Oil

Throughout history, whale oil was *usually* the most valuable part of the whale and the primary objective of whalers.

Whales are mammals that almost exclusively live in cold oceans (no whales live near the equator), so they need ample insulation to keep their bodies warm. Hence all whales have *blubber*, an extremely dense layer of fat ranging in thickness from two inches to over one foot.[[1]](#_edn1) Just as your skin contains oil, so does whale blubber, though vastly larger quantities of it. This whale oil can be extracted through a process called *flensing* that consists of slicing the blubber into pieces and boiling it. Modern whalers use machines for this process, but back in the day they did it largely by hand. Cutting up the fattiest fat you’ve ever seen and boiling it over open flames is about as much fun as it sounds, especially since the whale was usually rotting during the process.

Due to the fattiness, quantity, and other chemical properties I don’t understand, whale oil was a uniquely effective oil for pretty much everything oil can do. Its primary historical use was as a fuel source for lamp lights since it emitted a fairly bright yellow glow at the expense of an unpleasant though not overwhelming odor.

Whale oil’s second major historical use was as a lubricant, particularly for heavy industrial machinery. Demand for lubrication rose in tandem with lighting during the early industrial revolution, and it was apparently more effective than animal fat or vegetable oil for the task.

Whale oil’s third major historical usage was as a key ingredient in margarine. Starting in the 1920s, margarine emerged in Europe as a viable butter alternative, especially after the destruction of World War I, and whale oil initially served as one of many fat bases, until in 1929, the margarine manufacturing process was refined so that whale oil alone could serve as the fat basis for the product. By the 1930s, 30% of British margarine and over 50% of German margarine was whale oil-based.[[2]](#_edn2)

Lesser historical uses of whale oil include the manufacture of soap, explosives, condiments, and medicine (especially to treat trench foot during WWI).

The quality of whale oil varies considerably by species, which impacted the brightness and smell of its light when burned and its viability for other uses. The faster a whale is flensed before it rots, the higher the quality of oil. Sperm whales produced the highest quality whale oil, followed by right whales and bowheads.

Spermaceti Oil

In the head of the sperm whale (which takes up about 40% of its body) the whale oil is so pure that it takes on a different chemical form and becomes a *wax*. It doesn’t even need to be flensed from the whale’s blubber, it can simply be scooped out from the decapitated sperm whale’s head. This substance is *spermaceti oil*, the highest quality oil to be found in any whales. It typically sold at 2-3X the price of high-quality whale oil.[[9]](#_edn9)

(Note – Spermaceti* oil* is technically a misnomer since it wasn’t an oil, but that’s what everyone called it.)

Spermaceti oil was most commonly used for lighting, either as candles or refined to a more oily form for lamps. It was considered the highest quality light of its day, emitting a bright white flame with no smell, and it was uniquely resistant to freezing in extremely low temperatures. Due to its price, spermaceti oil was almost exclusively purchased by wealthy people for personal use and governments for lighthouses. Benjamin Franklin wrote of his love of spermaceti candles as a nighttime reading light.[[10]](#_edn10)

Spermaceti oil could not be used in soap or margarine due to its chemical nature, though it had cosmetic uses in makeup. It was more often used as a lubricant and anti-rust substance for delicate, fine-tuned machinery (while standard whale oil was better-suited for heavy machines). In the mid-20th century, a small-but-steady sperm whaling industry persisted on demand from the aerospace industry where spermaceti oil’s extremely low freezing point proved valuable. Weirdest of all, spermaceti oil was used as car transmission fluid in the United States and Europe. When such use was banned in 1973, the number of transmission failures in American cars rose from 1 million in 1972 to 8 million in 1975.[[11]](#_edn11)

Ambergris

Ambergris is a waste byproduct formed in sperm whales. Sperms eat squid and cuttlefish which have beaks and other inedible components; these materials gather in the whale’s digestive tract, form a solid ball, and eventually get coughed up. So ambergris is essentially a combination of vomit and kidney stones.

But ambergris always has been and always will be the most valuable whaling product on a per-weight basis. This is largely owing to the sweet smell of aged ambergris which serves as an ingredient in high-end musky perfume. The substance is also alleged quite tasty, with eggs and ambergris being the favorite food of English King Charles II (who restored the monarchy after Oliver Cromwell and ushered in a notorious era of lax hedonism at court).

A single chunk of ambergris ranges in size from half an ounce to 110 pounds.[[12]](#_edn12) In mid-1800s America, a pound of ambergris sold for $200-600;[[13]](#_edn13) for comparison, the average 1850 American farmhand made $7.88-$13.55 per month with room and board.[[14]](#_edn14) However, from 1836 to 1880, the entire American whaling fleet produced less than a ton of ambergris, so it was never a major factor in whaling, just a random massive bonus for occasional lucky whalers.[[15]](#_edn15)

There’s a fun section in *Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America* where the author describes how ambergris was a scientific mystery throughout the world for centuries. The substance sporadically washes up on beaches pretty much everywhere there are whales, and so people from England to China were familiar with this extremely rare and valuable substance, but no one knew where it came from. There were lots of theories about monstrous fish, dragons, and the earth itself spitting up *ocean gold*, and it wasn’t until whalers started cutting open lots of sperm whales in the 1800s that the question was settled.

If the prospect of gathering ambergris intrigues you, you’re in luck! Ambergris is the only whale product that is still legal to harvest in most coastal countries.[[16]](#_edn16)

Whale Meat

Surprisingly, whale meat was not a historically important resource in whaling until the 1940s. While early whalers would consume the meat, the oil was always the main prize, and by the time commercial whaling got going in the 1600s, whale meat was often tossed overboard to make room for more oil. The meat that was harvested was typically used as animal feed. I couldn’t find any explanations for why such a potent form of calories, fat, and protein was neglected, but my best guess is that it simply wasn’t as valuable on a per-weight/volume basis as other whale resources.

The exceptions to this rule were and are various indigenous groups throughout the world which hunt whale as a basic food source, the Norwegians who took a liking to it in the mid-20th century, and most infamously, the Japanese. Whale meat is still currently consumed by these indigenous groups, Norway, Japan, Iceland, and South Korea, with average prices of about $9.00 per pound ($20 per kilogram), and top-tier whale meat selling for $27 per pound.[[17]](#_edn17)[[18]](#_edn18) The current value of a single whale solely for its meat is estimated to range between $10,800 at the low end for minke whales, to $85,000 for large whales.[[19]](#_edn19)

I can’t find good official data on how much edible whale meat can be extracted from a single whale. The modern whaling countries don’t publish much on their activity; I tried extrapolating from Japanese aggregated data, but they catch a variety of whales and allegedly don’t report accurately anyway.

So, doing my best to guestimate:

Whales have a bone mass of between 8% (dolphins) and 20% (blue whales) of their total weight.

[[20]](#_edn20) - Whales have a blood mass of 7% (dolphins) to 20.1% (sperm whales)

[[21]](#_edn21)- Let’s assume that if a whale was harvested for meat, all the blood would be drained. I know that’s not realistic, so take this as a low-bounded estimate.

Let’s assume the rest of the whale is edible meat. This assumes:

That the whale oil is left in the whale meat (it is edible, so that’s realistic)

That all whale meat is edible (muscle, blubber, organs, etc.) – this is true, though probably disgusting, and even whalers who consumed whale meat definitely didn’t eat all the organs

That all parts of the whale which aren’t bone or blood are of negligible weight.

So, guestimating on a right whale:

Average full-grown right whale weight = 140,000 pounds

[[22]](#_edn22) - Since right whales are famously fat and slow, I’m estimating them to be on the higher end of the bone and blood levels, so let’s say 18% for both.

140,000*0.64 =

89,600 pounds of edible meat from a single right whale

Fun Fact 1 – Right whale testicles make up 1% of their weight,[[23]](#_edn23) so each testicle weighs around 700 pounds. The average American eats 222 pounds of meat per year (not counting fish),[[24]](#_edn24) so a single right whale testicle should cover a family of four for almost a year.

Fun Fact 2 – Whales ingest so much mercury that a single serving of whale liver could kill a full-grown man. There is 1,970 micrograms of mercury/gram of whale liver, which is 5,000X the Japanese government’s limit for mercury concentration in commercial food.[[25]](#_edn25)

Baleen