Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [17]
By the mid-eighteenth century, as city streets and homes grew brighter and the demand for oil (and whalebone) continued to grow, the number of ships pursuing and capturing whales increased. During the years just before the American Revolution, more than 360 whaling vessels sailed from New England and New York alone, and the industry had not yet reached its height. But after centuries of persistent slaughter, the right whale had grown scarce in its known grounds, and of necessity whalers undertook even l onger trips to farther, deeper waters in pursuit of any kind of whale that might prove to be profitable. The English and Dutch headed north in search of the polar whale—or whalebone whale, as the seamen called it—known now as the bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus, also a filter feeder. The New England fleet sailed to grounds off Newfoundland, along the coast of Labrador, to the west of Greenland, and farther, seeking not only the right whale but also the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus —also known as the cachalot. This whale travels the world's oceans, heading north in summer and into tropical waters in winter in pursuit of squid. The fleet followed it to the Arctic and as far as the South Pacific.
Although the sperm whale isn't a filler feeder, and thus has no baleen, and one whale might yield only twenty-five to forty-five barrels of oil (far less than a right whale), the quality of the harvest made it worth the chase. At its best, the oil from a sperm whale burned clear and clean and was almost odorless. But even more valuable was the spermaceti, a waxy substance found in the head which could be made into candles of the highest quality. These candles had a high melting point and gave off twice the light of candles molded from tallow. And the flame did not smell foul—a quality dearly valued in an age of sputtering, stinking tallow candles and dim, finicky grease lamps, which also stank. Spermaceti candles were probably first molded around the mid-eighteenth century; it's likely that Benjamin Franklin was referring to them when he wrote of "a new kind of Candles very convenient to read by.... They afford a clear white Light; may be held in the Hand, even in hot Weather, without softening.... They last much longer, and need little or no Snuffing."
The sperm whale can grow to more than sixty feet, weigh more than sixty tons, and possess a blanket of blubber almost a foot thick. But its greatest feature is its massive, scarred, and battered head, flecked with the sucker marks of squid. According to Herman Melville,
In the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.
That head houses a brain of about eighteen pounds—the largest on earth—and contains two large cavities, known to whalers as the "case" and the "junk." The case, at the top of the head, is full of a mixture of oil and spermaceti—also called "head matter"—an almost-clear amber or rose-tinted waxy liquid that whalers hauled out of the carcass with buckets. Once out of the whale and exposed to cold air, the head matter crystallized and hardened to a pure white mass, which was stored in barrels for the rest of the voyage. There could be up to five hundred gallons of it in an average sperm whale, nine hundred in a large