Whale oil: Encyclopedia - Whale oil

Whale oil

Whale oil is the oil obtained from the blubber of various species of whales of the genus Balaena, as B. mysticetus, Greenland or right whale (northern whale-oil), B. australis (southern whale-oil), Balaenoptera longimana, Balaenoptera borealis (Finback oil, Finner whale-oil, Humpback oil). The orca or killer whale, and the beluga or white whale, also yield whale-oils. Train-oil proper is the northernwhale-oil, but this term has been applied to all blubber oils, and in Germany, to all marine animal oils: fish-oils, liver oils, and blubber oils. The most important whale-oil is sperm or spermaceti oil, yielded by the sperm whales.

Whale-oil 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. At best it has a rank fishy odour, and the darker the color the more disagreeable the smell. With lowering of the temperature, stearin, accompanied with a small proportion of spermaceti, separates from the oil, and a little under the freezing point nearly the whole of these constituents may be crystallized out. When separated and pressed, this deposit is known as whale tallow, and the oil from which it is removed is distinguished as pressed whale-oil; this, owing to its limpidity, is sometimes passed as sperm-oil.

The first principal use of whale oil was as an illuminant in lamps and as candle wax. Whale-oil later came to be used in oiling wools for combing and other uses. It was the first of all oils — animal or mineral — to achieve commercial viability.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Whale oil", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki