The winner (and whaling)

[Nicolas Ward]

On 10/9/06, fictioneric at cluemail.com <fictioneric at cluemail.com> wrote:
> Fictioneers --
>
> I must report the grisly truth, that indeed there was a technology
> for removing blubber in a continuous roll (although no portion of
> that technology was called a "guiver").
>
> At least for mid-19th-century sperm whaling from the Massachusetts
> coast, as described in the recent work of whaling history, _In the
> Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon_ (by
> Joan Druett, http://members.authorsguild.net/druettjo/work5.htm .)
>
> It seems you would suspend the whale in chain loops beside the ship,
> while two men with very sharp blades on long handles stood on a plank
> or two (also suspended) beside the carcass.  They would make the
> initial cuts, and keep jabbing away to separate the blubber from the
> muscle, while a hook, inserted through the skin and blubber, and
> linked to a chain and windlass, pulled the blubber in a continuous
> roll aboard the ship.  There it was cut into large chunks and thrown
> belowdecks, where it was cut into more manageable chunks, which were
> then tossed back on deck for rendering in kettles.
>
> Yum.
>
> Oh, also, the greasy flesh and skin that remained after rendering the
> blubber were used as fuel for rendering later blubber.  You could see
> the smoke and smell one of these ships a long way off.
>
> Ahoy,

I'm trying to decide if this is better or worse on the gross scale
than the whaling factory ships in use now.

--Nick

-- 
Nicolas Ward
617.230.9279

ultranurd at gmail.com
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nward/

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo."
-- Enoch Root, The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson