At 1.30 P. M., all hands were called to flense the whale alongside. By means of tackle made fast to the lower jaw, called the nose tackle, the mouth could be opened and the tongue and the bone removed. The right whale (Balaena Mysticetus), of which this was a specimen, supplies practically all the whalebone. It grows from the sides of the upper jaw, three hundred blades hanging down on each side. They are ten and twelve inches wide where inserted into the gum, and narrow as they descend. The inner edge is frayed and the outer unbroken. These frayed inner edges form a sort of sieve through which the water passes when the whale shuts its mouth, but through which the whale food cannot pass.
The bone from each side is brought on board generally in one piece, sufficient gum being taken with it to hold the lamellae together. This is divided with a wedge into smaller pieces of about a dozen lamellae each, and subsequently each lamella is slit off with the wedge and freed from gum and oil. The longest blades are those in the centre on each side and they vary in length according to the size of the animal—twelve feet being large. The size of a whale is estimated by the length of the longest blade, "a twelve-foot fish" being one in which this measures twelve feet. The bone is about a quarter of an inch thick and tears easily into long pieces. It is an albuminous substance, containing calcium phosphate, and can be moulded when heated by steam, retaining its shape if cooled under pressure.
The busy part of a whaler during flensing is the deck between the main mast and foremast. Between these masts is the blubber guy, a stout wire rope to which blocks are strapped, and through these are rove the tackles which haul the long strips of blubber on board as they are pulled off the whale.
The specksioneer and all the harpooners except the mate get on to the whale or into the mollie boats in attendance; they have spikes on their boots to keep them from slipping; and they remove the blubber and bone with their knives and spades. The mate of a ship is a busy man, but the mate of our whaler flensing was, I think, the busiest person I ever saw. Acting under the captain's directions and from his own initiative, he was everywhere, giving orders and seeing them carried out.
In removing the blubber the first thing done is to start cutting a ribbon of it around the neck, called the kant. This piece, probably two feet wide, when pulled upon, turns the carcass, and from it, running towards the tail, the long strips are cut and hauled on board. First the piece around the neck is well started. Then with spades a strip is started. As this is hauled on by the capstan the men with spades cut along each side and it is simply peeled off. When the piece raised up is several hundred pounds, it is cut off, hoisted on board, and the tackle refastened. When the exposed part has been flensed, the neck piece or kant is again pulled on by the windlass, which turns the whale over a little, and so on. When all the blubber has been removed, the head tackle is cut out and the carcass, or kreng as it is called, sinks as soon as the tail is cut off. The tail is taken on board and used afterwards for chopping blubber on. The blubber as it comes on board is cut into smaller pieces by the boat-steerers and thrown into the 'tween-decks by the line managers, from which it is taken a day or two later, cut small and put into tanks. Flensing a fish is a very cheerful occupation and the ship is certainly oily, but there is no unpleasant smell. As soon as a whale is killed, the fulmar petrels (P. Glacialis) come in swarms, and they gorge themselves with fat until they cannot sit up; then they become dreadfully ill and begin all over again. There was always a current where we flensed and this current would carry away a stream of overgorged birds, too full to do anything but drift. I sat in a boat one day and amused myself catching the birds as they paddled past until I had numbers in the boat. I found it better, however, to leave them in the water, or to let them stagger about among the men's feet at work. This was a ten-foot fish and would probably yield thirteen tons of oil. The following is a copy of the scale used long ago by whalers:—