Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Down to the Sea in Ships (Whales Were Slaughtered For Their Oil) movie clip
Throughout the mid-1700s/1800s and even into the earlier part of the 1900s, whale oil was used to light the lamps of America and Europe...pre-kerosene era.
Whales were slaughtered in large numbers, almost to the point of extinction, to obtain a sufficient amount of oil to keep those lamps operating nightly. (The oil was also used in the making of a type of soap, lubricants, margarine and several other products as well)
The favoured whale breeds of the renowned New England commercial whaling industry (as well as elsewhere in the world) not only produced top quality oil but were also slow in moving making them easier to harpoon, and as they happened to float in death, their blubber (fat) could be cut from them while they were secured against the side of the resting ship. The blubber was then rendered down to produce the oil, right on-board ship.
Although the whale oil price fluctuated from decade to decade, it was not cheap for any of its time periods. As an example, in around the mid-1800s a barrel of whale oil was in the 65 dollar range, and many hundreds of ships were plying the seas in search of whales. A typical adult whale could provide anywhere from 75 to 100 barrels of oil. 500,000 barrels of oil produced in some years, meant in excess of 5,000 whales killed. It's been reported that nearly 250,000 sperm whales were slaughtered in the 1800s alone. Just as unsettling is the fact that other than the whale's blubber, the remaining parts of those magnificent creature became nothing more than discarded waste.
Fortunately, Canadian inventor/geologist Abraham Gesner experimented enough to be able to extract kerosene from coal...which in the long run eventually lead to replacing the whale oil lamps with kerosene filled types...and thereby prevented the utter extinction of the whale species.
*Note* The scenes are from the 1949 20th Century Fox Henry Hathaway directed movie Down to the Sea in Ships that starred Richard Widmark and Lionel Barrymore depicting the entire whaling process from the initial chase, harpooning, killing, butchering, and the rendering down of the blubber to oil by using on-ship furnaces. It was written by John Lee Mahin and Sy Bartlett.
Down to the Sea in Ships (Whales Were Slaughtered For Their Oil) movie clip
Throughout the mid-1700s/1800s and even into the earlier part of the 1900s, whale oil was used to light the lamps of America and Europe...pre-kerosene era.
Whales were slaughtered in large numbers, almost to the point of extinction, to obtain a sufficient amount of oil to keep those lamps operating nightly. (The oil was also used in the making of a type of soap, lubricants, margarine and several other products as well)
The favoured whale breeds of the renowned New England commercial whaling industry (as well as elsewhere in the world) not only produced top quality oil but were also slow in moving making them easier to harpoon, and as they happened to float in death, their blubber (fat) could be cut from them while they were secured against the side of the resting ship. The blubber was then rendered down to produce the oil, right on-board ship.
Although the whale oil price fluctuated from decade to decade, it was not cheap for any of its time periods. As an example, in around the mid-1800s a barrel of whale oil was in the 65 dollar range, and many hundreds of ships were plying the seas in search of whales. A typical adult whale could provide anywhere from 75 to 100 barrels of oil. 500,000 barrels of oil produced in some years, meant in excess of 5,000 whales killed. It's been reported that nearly 250,000 sperm whales were slaughtered in the 1800s alone. Just as unsettling is the fact that other than the whale's blubber, the remaining parts of those magnificent creature became nothing more than discarded waste.
Fortunately, Canadian inventor/geologist Abraham Gesner experimented enough to be able to extract kerosene from coal...which in the long run eventually lead to replacing the whale oil lamps with kerosene filled types...and thereby prevented the utter extinction of the whale species.
*Note* The scenes are from the 1949 20th Century Fox Henry Hathaway directed movie Down to the Sea in Ships that starred Richard Widmark and Lionel Barrymore depicting the entire whaling process from the initial chase, harpooning, killing, butchering, and the rendering down of the blubber to oil by using on-ship furnaces. It was written by John Lee Mahin and Sy Bartlett.
