330 WHALING 



on the land. The catchers are little steamers of from one 

 hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty tons gross tonnage, 

 a speed of from twelve to fifteen knots, and a crew of at most 

 eleven men: gunner, mate, cook, first and second engineers, 

 and two firemen. (Sometimes there are only eight in the 

 crew: gunner, mate, steward, one engineer, one fireman, and 

 three seamen.) They cruise about for perhaps ten days and 

 then, with two, three, or maybe even four, whales on each side, 

 back they come to the floating factory, where the blubber is, 

 in the British phrase, ''flensed off,'' the meat removed from the 

 bones, and the bones sawn up. The blubber and fneat are 

 chopped fine and treated in digesters separately. The bones 

 are ground up and also treated separately: in all cases the 

 treatment consists of steaming in large closed tanks and boiling 

 out the oil. 



There is as complete a contrast between old and new methods 

 of trying out whale oil as between the old-fashioned stagecoach 

 and to-day's express train. The ''cooker-tanks" of the floating 

 factory are still amidships where the try-pots used to be, but 

 the old three-legged kettles have grown to sheet-iron tanks 

 some ten feet high and seven feet wide. If the floating factory 

 is accompanied by two catchers, she carries no less than nine 

 such pressure boilers. If three catchers are used she must have 

 twelve boilers. Through a manhole in the top, a man goes down 

 into the boiler, and curved iron plates, fastening together by a 

 central stem, are sent down to him, a layer at a time. After 

 each layer comes blubber enough to fill the plates, and he packs 

 it accordingly. When the boiler is full, the man steps out, the 

 manhole is closed and steam is turned on, some forty pounds 

 pressure, for from eight to ten hours. The lower the pressure 

 the longer it must be maintained, but with low pressure the oil 

 rendered is of a light colour, and the lightest coloured oil is 

 "Number 1" oil, the most valuable. On the other hand, the 

 very pale oil produced by undercooking will be rancid when it 

 is unpacked for sale at home, and its value, of course, will be 

 much lowered thereby. Hence the cook is a personage of real 

 importance. 



