94 A History of the American Whale Fishery. 
fleet, though for the last decade or two there have 
still been some vessels cruising in the North Pacific in 
addition to a small fleet from New Bedford, Province- 
town and an occasional other port, sperm whaling on the 
old grounds in the Atlantic. 
The chief products of the whale fishery are, as is well 
known, sperm and whale oil and whalebone, with the 
occasional product ambergris. Up to about 1860 sperm 
oil was the most valuable and most important of the 
whale products. It comes solely from the sperm whale, 
a large whale yielding as much as too barrels of oil, 
about one third of the total coming from the head. 
Much of the annual importation of sperm oil was formerly 
consumed in the manufacture of sperm candles. At 
present its chief use is in making refined oils for lubricat- 
ing. Whale oil includes the oil from all other varieties 
of whales, as well as oil from the blackfish, the porpoise 
and even the walrus. It was formerly much used as an 
illuminant in the old-fashioned vile-smelling, “whale oil” 
lamp, but it is now chiefly used in the tanning of leather, 
in the preparation of coarse woolen cloths, in the manu- 
factures of soft soaps, and of coarse paints and varnishes 
where it gives a strength of “body” more resistent to 
weather than do vegetable oils; with tar it is used in ship 
work, making cordage and other industrial processes ; but 
perhaps its most important use is in making heavy lubri- 
cating oils. It is worth about two-thirds as much as 
sperm oil. Since the opening of the Arctic fishery a large 
part of the whale oil has come from the right whale— 
some of which yield as much as 230 barrels of oil.*° The 
refuse of whales has also at times been used in making 
glue and in fertilizers under the name of guano. 
*Fish. Comm. Rep., 1891, p. clxxiii. ‘‘Whalemen’s Shipping List,”’ 
Annual Reviews, 1880-1906. 
® Macy, p. 221. 
Macy ,,,'D..223. 
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