A CELEBRATION OF THE HISTORY, CULTURE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF RECHERCHE BAY
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Auditorium Hobart, Tasmania
26–28 February 2007

Whaling in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: The technology of how they did it, and why
Professor Ian Rae, FTSE

Ian Rae is an Honorary professorial fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. During a career in teaching, research and university administration, his scholarly interests moved from the research laboratory to the study of the history of his subject and related areas of technology. His published work in these latter fields has dealt with explosives, arsenic in mining and the environment, and the formation of government policy on chemical pollution and related environmental matters. He serves as an adviser to governments in Australia and also to the United Nations Environment Programme. For the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, Professor Rae has written a monthly column on chemical matters for over twenty years and in 2006-2008 he is the Institute's National President.

Shore-based whalers were able to make use of three whale products – oil, bone (strictly: baleen) and meat. For long-range hunters at sea, however, before the advent of refrigerated transport in the late nineteenth century, only the first two could be taken back to the Northern hemisphere as articles of commerce. Whale oil had properties that made it useful as a lubricant for demanding applications such as the chronometer and for tool sharpening. It was also used as a lamp fuel. Substitution in both markets by petroleum-derived products was rapid from the late nineteenth century. Similarly, the properties that made whalebone specially suited for clothing such as the corset and the crinoline, and for umbrellas, were duplicated first by metals and then by plastics.

Coastal populations were occasionally rewarded with beached whales, but they could also keep an eye out for migrating pods and take to the sea in small boats in pursuit of them. Long-range hunters also resorted to small boats to attack whales; there are many classic descriptions of the chase, but Herman Melville's Moby Dick is undoubtedly the most graphic. Hand-held harpoons and lances gave way in the 1870s to the harpoon cannon with an explosive warhead borrowed from military technology. The oil could be released from the blubber by boiling – on shore or aboard – or by allowing the blubber to rot, when the oil was slowly released.