the.com/whaler
A profession that powered the Industrial Revolution with oil squeezed from the planet's largest brains.
means A person, ship, or company engaged in hunting whales, typically for their oil, blubber, and baleen.
from From "whale" plus the agent suffix "-er." "Whale" descends from Old English "hwæl," with cousins across the Germanic languages — Old Norse "hvalr," German "Wal" — all reaching back to a Proto-Germanic root for the great sea-beast. The "-er" ending simply marks the doer, as in baker or sailor, turning the animal into the trade built around chasing it.
- lamp fuel
- Whale oil lit cities before kerosene existed
- voyage length
- Single trips often lasted three to four years
- sperm prize
- Spermaceti from head cavities made the finest candles
- moby dick
- Melville's whale was based on a real ship-sinker
- teen crews
- Many harpooners were boys barely past childhood
for instance
essex — whaling ship rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, inspiring moby-dick
petunia whale — humpback whale freed from fishing net by divers near san francisco in 2015