SCIENCE AND STEAM 329 



beef, and though the grain is rather coarser than that of beef, 

 the meat is not tough. Probably the various parts of one 

 whale yield meat of different grades, though as to this, reports 

 differ. In any case there are tons of good steaks to be had, and 

 the heart, liver, tongue, and intestines are all edible. The 

 Japanese prefer it raw, chopped fine and mixed with vegetables, 

 the whole mess dressed with their brown sauce, shoyu. I have 

 never eaten whale meat, cooked or raw, but I may venture the 

 rather extraneous remark that with that same brown shoyu 

 almost anything would be food for the Olympians. They do 

 cook it, too, and of course it must be cooked for canning; and, 

 since it comes in such enormous quantities, much of it is cooked 

 and canned at once for shipment inland ; that is true both of 

 Japan and of our own Western coast. There are now several 

 canneries on the Pacific coast, principally in Seattle, and the 

 canned product is said — and not by the canners only — to be dis- 

 tinctly superior to much of the canned beef and other canned 

 meat that is daily sold in American markets. 



A further development in modern whaling methods was the 

 ''floating factory." With all the advantages of the small ves- 

 sels built for short trips, there was the grave disadvantage of 

 being tied down to their base, the little shore station to which 

 they must constantly return. The floating factory, although 

 to-day she serves a somewhat different use, originated as the 

 obvious solution of this difficulty. In 1923 Captain C. A. Larsen, 

 pioneer of all sub-Antarctic whaling, took a twelve-thousand- 

 ton wrought-iron vessel to the Ross Sea, within the Antarctic 

 Circle. He had six catchers and intended to operate off the 

 Great Ice Barrier. In the season of 1914-15 there were twenty 

 or more floating factories in South Georgia, the South Shet- 

 lands, Graham Land, and the South Orkneys, with about three 

 times as many catchers. 



When the floating factory comes from her port of discharge 

 she is well ballasted with coal; so well ballasted, indeed, that 

 the best Tyne coal is exceedingly cheap at Antarctic whaling 

 stations. Of course she carries provisions, machinery, and 

 various supplies for any stations which the owners plan to erect 



