Ambergris
Ambergris is a biliary concretion generally found in the alimentary canal of a feeble or diseased sperm whale. Sometimes it is found exteriorly near the vent. It is also found floating or drifted ashore. It is of great value, and is principally used as the basis or vehicle for perfumes.
Some years ago Norwegians found four hundred and twenty kilos in a sperm on the Australian coast; this was valued at £27,000. This is much the largest piece I have heard of.
It is a solid, fatty substance of a marbled grey-and-black appearance, and generally contains the beaks of cuttle-fish, which form the principal food of the cachalot or sperm whale. When fresh it has an intolerable smell, but after exposure this goes, and leaves what some people call a “peculiar sweet earthy odour.” It burns with a pale blue flame and melts somewhat like sealing-wax.
The Whaling Industry
The St Abb’s Whaling Limited, of which the writer was appointed chairman, found whales at the Seychelles in great numbers in 1913, and we got permission from the Government there to start an up-to-date whaling station with licences for two whaling steamers, which we chartered and had sent out to us from Norway.
Our capital was about £20,000, and our station and factory was nearly completed, and we were catching numbers of sperm and some “finner” whales, when war broke out. Our supply of coals was cut off; barrels could not be obtained for oil; sacks could not be got for the whale guano (which is made from bones and whale meat); and freight completely failed us owing to the congestion caused by war material on the various lines. We could neither get supplies nor send away our products to Durban and other ports, except in some small consignments on our Diesel motor tank whaler, the St Ebba, which finally we were obliged to run on sperm oil at about £28 per ton!
We could not “stop down” owing to contracts; and the difficulty of raising more capital under war conditions finally forced us to voluntary liquidation.
This promising industry, therefore, had to be stopped in the meantime, and it occurs to us that as one of the “Empire’s resources” the Government could very easily put it into working order again, with great profit and for the benefit of the Islands, Africa and the Old Country. For we found immense numbers of sperm and finner whales round the Seychelles, and even before getting into our stride we had secured one hundred and forty whales and shipped home two thousand three hundred barrels of oil, besides what was lost before the station factory was completed and what we were obliged to use locally for our Diesel motor in place of common solar oil. Six barrels of whale oil go to the ton.