RIGHT WHALES 20Q, 



calculated that at least £100,000 a year was paid to the Dutch 

 for whalebone between 1715 and 1721, when the price was £400. 

 One of the principal uses of whalebone seems to have been 

 in the construction of ladies' corsets, but it was also used 

 in the manufacture of umbrellas and parasols, in the con- 

 struction of chairs and sofas, in the making of portmanteaux 

 and travelling trunks, and of such articles as ramrods, fishing 

 rods, springs for carriages and similar articles where it was 

 necessary to have strength combined with a considerable 

 degree of elasticity. 



The oil extracted from the whale was used in a variety of 

 ways. In Scoresby's time, for instance, it was largely used 

 in lighting streets and dwelling houses, and was employed in 

 the manufacture of soft soap, in the preparation of leather and 

 in the construction of coarse woollen cloth. Other uses were 

 in connection with the mixing of paint, as a lubricant and in 

 the manufacture of rope. Just when Scoresby was writing 

 his ' Account of the Arctic Regions ', the consumption of 

 whale oil was being considerably diminished by the intro- 

 duction of coal gas as an iliuminant. He devotes several 

 pages of his work to the advocacy of oil gas, meaning of course 

 whale oil, as opposed to coal gas. " Whale oil of the most 

 inferior qualities is found to afford a gas which in point of 

 brilliancy, freeness from smell, ease of manufacture, etc., is 

 found to be greatly superior to that produced from coal." 

 Whether by improvement in the quality of coal gas or because 

 of the inadequacy of the supply of whale oil to meet an ever- 

 increasing demand for the newer method of lighting, Scoresby's 

 plea for the use of oil in this way was not fruitful, and although 

 at the present 'time new methods of exploiting the supply have 

 been evolved, its utilization as an iliuminant is not one of 

 them. 



In his ' History of Whaling ' Sir Sidney Harmer divides 

 the Greenland Whale fishery into three phases, separated 

 from one another both as regards time and area of opera- 

 tion. The first of these, commencing about 161 1, involved 

 Spitzbergen, Jan Meyen and the east coast of Greenland ; the 

 next, from 1719, was in Baffin's Bay and neighbouring waters ; 

 and the last, from 1843, in the Bering Strait and Okhotsk 

 Sea. 



