FISHERIES OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
85 
might destroy hundreds of dollars' worth of bone, or, possibly, cause the loss of the 
whole head. A chain is carefully drawn through a hole cut between the scalp bone 
and the tough blubber about the spout hole. The backbone is chopped nearly through 
near where the blanket piece was started, then by a jerk of the tackle the weight 
breaks the remainder and t he head is hauled on deck. There was once a whaling cap- 
tain who disjointed the head instead of chopping it off. My whale's head contained 
about 2,500 pounds of whalebone, and as the price of bone was .$3.50 a x>bund at that 
time, it can readily be seen how anxious a whaleman must be when cutting in until 
he gets the head on deck. Heads contain over six hundred slabs of bone, and in a 
large whale like this the pieces range in length from 12 feet, or a little over, down to 
a few inches. For convenience in working each ship has a “ cutting stage '' of planks 
that hangs over the water in front of the gangway so that the men can stand nearly 
over the whale. It is from this that the work is done, and it was here that I stood 
to see the whole operation. 
With the head cut off, the rest of the cutting in is easy and simple. The blanket 
piece is peeled off in strips about 15 feet long, until a point near the flukes is reached. 
There the backbone is disjointed. The final haul brings on deck the flukes with 
the blanket piece. The carcass either floats off or sinks. These blanket pieces 
of blubber are cut and torn off the whale in the same manner that the peel is cut 
and torn off an orange when paring it. Frequently the natives are aboard, and work 
is done slowly in order that they may have an opportunity to cut off as much as pos- 
sible of the lean meat. The cutting in was a novelty to me, but the work of the 
natives was more entertaining. They had six canoes crowded in near the whale, 
and the instant there was a lull in the procedings, a man from each would clamber 
onto the carcass, splash about in the blood and water, and slash away at the meat 
with villainous-looking knives. They worked like heroes and yelled like fiends. 
Some worked with their hands under water, and most of them were knee-deep in it 
all the time. One fellow lay almost flat on his stomach and burrowed in under the 
blubber in advance of the cutters. His feet were flying about dangerously near 
keen-edged knives, but he did not get cut. 
Whalemen still observe the old sperm-whaling custom of lustily shouting “ Hur- 
rah for five and forty more ! " when the head or last piece of blubber is landed on 
deck. But this shout is not because the work is all done. Early the next morning 
the try-pots were set to working. First, the blubber was cut into “ horse pieces” 
about a foot square and 2 feet long, then “ minced,” that is, cut into thin slices to 
facilitate the trying out of the oil. The blubber then go6s in the pots, and after the 
oil is boiled the remaius of the blubber have become hard and brittle, but are pressed 
to get the last dregs of oil ; then these “ scraps " are used for fuel, and they make a 
hot fire. This night the sun barely dipped below the horizon at midnight, but when 
darkness does interfere with a trving-out, a lot of scraps are put into a wire basket 
and lighted, making a “bug light,” which is equal to a pitch-pine torch. The oil is 
slowly baled from the try-pots into a cooler, aud after running through two or three 
is pumped into casks and stowed down into the hold. This whale made 120 barrels 
of oil. (“ Arctic Alaska and Siberia,” by Herbert L. Aldrich.) 
1 
While the method of trying-out described above is the orthodox one, 
and the old-timed “try-pot” and scrap fires are still in most common 
use, an improved plan of trying out the blubber by means of steam 
digesters has been adopted on some of the steam whalers. 
When boiling the men usually have watch and watch, each watch 
working 6 hours and resting 6 hours. Ordinarily the Arctic whale- 
men arrange so that one watch has 8 hours on deck one night and 4 
hours during the next day, while the other watch gets the S hours “ be- 
low” at night. The change or alteration of watches that occurs every 
