Whale oil
Oil obtained from the blubber of whales
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Chemistry
Whale oil has low viscosity (lower than olive oil), is clear, and varies in color from a bright honey yellow to a dark brown, according to the condition of the blubber from which it has been extracted and the refinement through which it went. It has a strong fishy odor. When hydrogenated, it turns solid and white and its taste and odor change. Its composition varies with the species from which it was sourced and the method by which it was harvested and processed. It is composed mainly of triglycerides (molecules of fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule). Oil sourced from toothed whales, especially the oil of sperm whales, contains a substantial amount of wax esters. Most of the fatty acids are unsaturated. The most common fatty acids are oleic acid and its isomers (18:1 carbon chains). Whale oil is exceptionally stable.
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Applications
The main use of whale oil was for illumination and machine lubrication.
Illumination
Emerging industrial societies used whale oil in oil lamps. In the eighteenth-century Vauxhall Gardens was lit with whale oil lamps and huge quantities were needed. Whale oil was used for lamps because it burned with less smoke and brighter than the alternatives although a major disadvantage was the fishy smell. Whale oil was a valuable commodity and frequently stolen by the staff either for their own use or to sell outside the gardens. In the 1740s, five thousand street lamps which burned whale oil were located in London.
Cheaper alternatives to whale oil existed, but were inferior in performance and cleanliness of burn. As a result, whale oil dominated the world for both uses. This in turn further fueled the Industrial Revolution, in the United States, in Britain, and continental Europe.
In the United States, as demand for whale oil increased at the end of the 18th century, the whaling industry expanded until its peak around the 1860s, when piped coal-gas networks began to provide an alternative lighting fuel in urban areas. Due to dwindling whale populations causing higher voyage costs, as well as taxation, the market changed rapidly in the 1860s after the discovery of mineral oils and expansion of chemical refineries to produce kerosene and lubricants. By 1870, kerosene became the dominant illumination fuel and the US whaling industry was in decline.
Whale oil was used as a cheap illuminant, though it gave off a strong odor when burnt and was not very popular. It was replaced in the late 19th century by cheaper, more efficient, and longer-lasting kerosene. Burning fluid and camphine were the dominant replacements for whale oil until the arrival of kerosene.
Lubrication
In the United Kingdom, whale oil was used in toolmaking machinery as a high-quality lubricant. Sperm whale oil was particularly valued, and was used to lubricate some components of the Apollo lunar modules, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was also used in automobile transmission fluid for its rust-resistant qualities. General Motors in 1975 reported problems with corrosion in thousands of transmissions and radiators, and blamed it on switching in 1973 to a new transmission oil formula without whale oil.
Other uses
- After the invention of hydrogenation in the early 20th century, whale oil was used to make margarine, a practice that has since been discontinued. Whale oil in margarine has been replaced by vegetable oil.
- Whale oil was used to make soap. Until the invention of hydrogenation, it was used only in industrial-grade cleansers, because its foul smell and tendency to discolor made it unsuitable for cosmetic soap.
- Whale oil was widely used in the First World War as a preventive measure against trench foot. An infantry battalion of the British Army during World War I on the Western Front could be expected to use 10 imp gal (45 L; 12 US gal) of whale oil a day. The oil was rubbed directly onto bare feet in order to protect them from the effects of immersion.
In literature and art
The pursuit and use of whale oil, along with many other aspects of whaling, are discussed in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. The novel's narrator is sometimes misquoted as saying that whale oil is "as rare as the milk of queens". The quote is:
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens.
According to the rest of the paragraph, sailors onboard the merchantman had to sleep, dress, and maneuver below decks in the dark as opposed to the whalers who used the oil for light.
John R. Jewitt, an Englishman who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), an Indigenous Pacific Northwest people on the British Columbia Coast, from 1802 to 1805, claimed whale oil was a condiment with every dish, even strawberries.
In Robert Browning's Pied Piper (§ VII), the Piper's piping leads the rats to imagine the sound of "breaking the hoops of train-oil flasks".
Friedrich Ratzel in The History of Mankind (1896), when discussing food materials in Oceania, quoted Captain James Cook's comment in relation to the Māori people: "No Greenlander was ever so sharp set upon train-oil as our friends here, they greedily swallowed the stinking droppings when we were boiling down the fat of dog-fish."
In the video games Dishonored and Dishonored 2, whale oil is used as an important source of electricity.