Repetition makes Habit: September 2012

Nantucket and Whaling For more than a century, between 1750 and 1850, the headquarters of the global oil business was a small island named Nantucket, twenty-four miles off the coast of Southern New England. The Nantucket whalers were the acknowledged world leaders, the masters of the hunt for the spermaceti whale. Many whaleboats were struck by Sperm whales resulting in the deaths of hundreds of whalers. Most other ports at the time refused to hunt the Spermaceti whale, as it was too dangerous, but the perils of whaling had given the men from Nantucket a high tolerance for danger and suffering.

In July of 1819, the Essex was one of a fleet of more than seventy Nantucket whaleships in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. With whale oil prices steadily climbing and the rest of the world's economy sunk in depression, the village of Nantucket was on its way to becoming one of the richest towns in America.

The Nantucket Whaling Museum is housed in one of the 35 candle factories that used to thrive on the spermaceti industry in the 17 and 1800's. The candles derived from Sperm whales were said to have burned longer and brighter than any in the world. Today the whaling museum has one of the world's greatest collections of whaling equipment, scrimshaw and artifacts. Perhaps the most impressive display residing in the hallowed halls of the museum is the 18 foot jaw bone taken from a bull estimated to have been nearly 80 feet long, slightly smaller than the whale that sunk the Essex. It was Herman Melville who made the most enduring use of the Essex story. However, at the time Moby Dick proved to be a critical and financial disappointment. Melville traveled to Nantucket to visit Captain Pollard who by now had captained and lost a second whaleship and was a lowly night watchman.

Melville stayed at the Ocean House on the corner of Centre and Broad streets diagonally across from the home of George Pollard.
Melville wrote of the Essex's Captain,

"To the islanders he was a nobody - to me, the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming even humble that I ever encountered."

Spermaceti

Spermaceti (from Greek sperma, seed, and Latin cetus, whale) is a wax present in the head cavities of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Originally mistaken for the whales' sperm (hence the name), spermaceti is created in the spermaceti organ inside the whale's head and connected to its nasal passage. Its biological function is to control buoyancy. The sperm whale is capable of heating the spermaceti so that it melts to form a liquid which allows the whale to float. In order for the whale to sink down again it must take water into its blowhole which cools the spermaceti into a more dense solid allowing the whale to sink.

Spermaceti is extracted from sperm oil by crystallisation at 6 °C (43 °F), when treated by pressure and a chemical solution of caustic alkali. Spermaceti forms brilliant white crystals that are hard but oily to the touch, and are devoid of taste or smell, making it very useful as an ingredient in cosmetics, leatherworking, and lubricants. The substance was also used in making candles of a standard photometric value, in the dressing of fabrics, and as a pharmaceutical excipient, especially in cerates and ointments. The candlepower was a photometric unit defined in the English Metropolitan Gas Act 1860 and adopted at the International Electrotechnical Conference of 1883. It depended upon a standardised pure spermaceti candle.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride, late 1800s

An angry whale might tow a whaleboat for miles before it tired. Exciting but dangerous, these “Nantucket sleigh rides” were named for the birthplace of the New England whaling industry. A whale sometimes smashed or overturned a boat during the chase, and few crewmen knew how to swim. The whale pictured here cannot go much farther. Blood in its air spout indicates a mortal wound in the lungs.