l68 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



tail cut off, so that it would not revolve and snap the towline by 

 twisting, would present them with no problem at all. Then, their 

 skill in shipbuilding and the hauling up of heavy boats on their shal- 

 low coasts had given them much experience with slipways, tackle, 

 and heavy shore winches. Hauling a ship of three hundred tons 

 burthen over a mudbank presents infinitely greater problems than 

 pulling a whale of only seventy tons dead weight up a gentle, greased 

 incline. This procedure, moreover, reduced the risk of losses of all 

 kinds compared to the task of cutting-in and trying-out a whale 

 on the open North Atlantic, a body of water that is hardly ever still. 

 This aspect weighed very heavily with the Hollanders. 



Although the Hollanders clung to these sensible and efficient 

 methods whenever possible, they were often forced by circum- 

 stances to get along without them after they took to going to the 

 Ice-front for the bowhead. Land was often too far off, or the nearest 

 coast was too icebound or rocky. The curious fact is, however, that 

 nobody else seems to have adopted the idea until the Norwegians 

 in the latter half of the nineteenth century found methods of killing 

 the rorquals and keeping them afloat by pumping air into them. 

 Even the New Englanders in the later stages of their offshore whaling 

 persisted in cutting-in at sea and freighting the blubber to port. 



An even greater augmentation of the profits of whaling, how- 

 ever, was brought about by the Hollanders through better methods 

 of refining the oil and the partial use of flesh and other parts of the 

 whale as well as the blubber. The latter was a foreshadowing of the 

 great, modern industry, where the whole beast is pressure cooked 

 and comes out as half a dozen grades of oil and a predictable number 

 of sacks of chicken feed and high-grade fertilizer. It was the Hol- 

 landers also who apparently first introduced the practice of double 

 boiling and grading the oil at the station, or as soon as possible on 

 arrival ashore, and then marketing the various grades at different and 

 sometimes enhanced prices. When, moreover, there was a lack of 

 blubber to keep the try-works going, they experimented with the 

 rendering of those other parts of the whale that seemed to contain 

 most oil, notably the intestines with their contained matter, the 

 tongues, and scraps. Then, there is evidence — though admittedly 

 not as precise as we would like — that it was the Hollanders who also 

 discovered the high glycerin content in the skins of whales and 



