Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 417 Whaling ([-])

After happily receiving the whale meat from the crew of the "Hunter 1" whaling ship, the residents of Baleen Whale Harbor went back to cook it, and were immediately disappointed.The taste is just that, not necessarily better than the mutton they usually eat, just trying to be fresh, so they quickly lost interest in these white whale meat.

While these residents were cooking the whale meat, they were in the processing workshop on the lower deck of the "Hunter 1" whaling ship moored in the pier. A group of sailors were still cooking in a small space full of weird smells. .This time it wasn't blubber, but whalebone.According to the data issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, the bone weight of a whale accounts for more than 10% of its body weight.Zhang Yun thinks this number is not reliable. According to their rough weighing, the whalebone of the sperm whale captured this time weighs about 10 tons, accounting for about 16% of its body weight.

Whale bones are also good things that cannot be discarded at will!The sailors saw the whalebone into small pieces with a saw, and then put it into the steamer, and also put hot steam into it for high-temperature cooking, which can also squeeze out a lot of whale oil!The sailors passed the time boredly while ventilating the steam.

"The whale oil will be of great use after being pulled back." Ricardo the boatswain sat in the corner of the processing workshop, chewing some shredded tobacco, and began to brag to everyone.In fact, he didn't know much about it, and many things were just hearsay, but these sailors were even less knowledgeable, so there was no pressure at all to brag with them.

"It can be used to make lubricating oil, to light lamps, to eat, to make soap, and even to make cream. How about it, is it very useful?" Ricardo said with a smile, "This time, this sperm whale is so big, what's the matter?" We have made a lot of money. Look, whale oil, whale meat, whale bones, whale skin, whale tail fins, whale liver and other internal organs, um... unfortunately there is no whalebone, so many things can be used. Think about those in the past The Dutch, British, French, Norwegians, and Germans who hunted whales in the waters near Svalbard generally only cut off the blubber at sea when they killed a whale, and then almost abandoned the rest in the sea. What a waste!"

"Boss, we caught such a big whale this time, how much bonus will we get back?" A sailor asked the question that everyone was most concerned about.

"No less than 60 yuan!" Captain Ricardo reported a figure without hesitation, and then said after thinking for a while, "It may even be more, because this sperm whale is really too big. But the money has to be shared by 36 of us on board, and the gunners may get less. The remaining 3000 of us may have a bonus of more than [-] yuan. Cheers, gentlemen! This is a huge fortune! "

The dozen or so sailors present whistled loudly, and everyone's faces were beaming. Anyone who heard that he was going to get a lot of silver coins would be very happy.

"Next time I'm going to catch a fin whale!" Ricardo was a little excited at this moment, and he said frothingly: "I heard an official from the Ministry of Agriculture tell me when he was drunk, that many noble wives Bras, skirts, or corsets made of baleen are intriguing, and they're willing to pay top dollar for them—ah, all for beautiful ladies, as lovely as yellow gold coins."

"Hahaha." The sailors present laughed more enthusiastically. It seemed that when talking about ladies, the men were always extra excited.

Everyone chatted and laughed for a while, and then Sergeant Ricardo calculated the time and felt that it was about the same.Then began to tell the sailors to open the small pipe under the steamer, so that the whale oil boiled in the steamer would flow into the wooden barrel below.The amount of whale oil squeezed out of the whalebone is not a lot, but it is definitely not a small number when it is accumulated. This shows the extent of the prodigals of the European whalers.

After extracting the whale oil, the bone slag is also taken out, and after cooling, it is crushed into powder to make whale bone meal, which is a good phosphate fertilizer.Moreover, the whale bone will also fix part of the nitrogen during the high-temperature cooking process, so it is really a very good fertilizer, and the amount is quite large, accounting for about 6-7% of the whale's weight.The sperm whale is estimated to weigh close to 60 tons, so it will get about four tons of fertilizer.With the rapid development of domestic agriculture, the demand for various fertilizers is very high. The phosphorus and nitrogen compound fertilizer made from whale bone powder is soluble in water and easy to absorb. It is very suitable for the growth of domestic crops, especially various fruit trees.

In addition to the whale bone, the whale liver and some internal organs must also be processed as soon as possible.Among them, whale livers are prepared to be made into cod liver oil, and some internal organs can also be made into cod liver oil, but others can only be cooked into food.Whale viscera is very rich in vitamin A and vitamin D. The cod liver oil preparation can be used as nutritional health care products or even medicines. It is very valuable for young children who need to supplement these vitamins.And some special parts of whale internal organs, such as thymus, pituitary gland, thyroid gland, etc., can be used for pharmaceuticals, because more than 20 kinds of hormones can be extracted from these.But now it seems that this is too high-end for the East Coast people at that time, so they have no choice but to give up.

In the kitchen next to the steamer, several chefs are also processing whale tail fins.Whale tail fin is a rare and precious dish in later generations, the meat is delicious, and some local time travelers naturally like it, and there are some instructions in this regard before departure.At this time, these chefs were dividing the work to process this huge whale tail fin. They cut the tail fin into strips, and then packed them with refined salt, preparing to bring them back to the mainland.

After these caudal fins are brought back to the mainland, they are cut into filaments according to the texture of the meat, and then soaked in hot water several times. After cooling, add some seasonings and mix them to make cold dishes.The taste is not only extremely delicious, but also quite nutritious. If there is no accident, it should become a famous dish in China.

Calculated in this way, the use of whales by the people on the east coast has really reached a heinous level, which is many times better than the Europeans who only extract whale blubber.It can be said that except for those whale skins, the people on the east coast can almost dispose of them on the boat or in the baleen whale port.Whale skin cannot be processed for the time being due to the need for some chemical products such as soda ash, sulfuric acid and other substances. This makes Zhang Yun, the captain of "Hunter 1", a little depressed, although the whale skin has already been made into salt hide. , but if it takes too long, it will affect the quality more or less.

However, Matthias, the mayor of Baleen Whale Harbor, became Zhang Yun's savior again.After listening to his complaints, Mathias said that because the island often tans some cow, sheepskin and seal skins, there are many kinds of materials, and there are many good tanners of animal skins, so they can try tanning Take the whale skin.

Overjoyed, Zhang Yun immediately decided to let them have a try. There is not much soda ash in Baleen Whale Harbor, but lime water can be used to make do with it.In addition, there is a certain amount of necessary supplies such as sulfuric acid and alum stored in the warehouse on the island, so the conditions for tanning whale skin are almost complete.

In fact, there is nothing mysterious about tanned whale skin.It is nothing more than a few steps. One is soaking in water, that is, soaking the salted skin in water to restore it to the state of fresh skin.The temperature of the water is generally 15 degrees, and the soaking time depends on the drying time of the salt, generally about 12 hours, in short, it is to make it soft.Since the skin of the sperm whale captured by the people on the east coast has only been salted and dried for a few days, and most of the skin has not had time to be salted, it is still in a fresh state, so this process is very simple.

The second step is to put the whale skin into alkaline water (soda ash is added to the water) for saponification and degreasing reaction, that is, the oil and alkali react to form soap, and at the same time use a knife to scrape off the residual fat, residual meat and other substances on the inner surface of the skin.This is a technical job, and the people on the east coast have been groping for a long time before they can determine the ratio of various chemical components required for degreasing.At this time, the amount of soda ash is not much, so it is not impossible to replace it with lime water. At worst, it can be degreased several times.

The degreased skin is repeatedly washed with water, oiled, scraped, and then soaked in a solution of sulfuric acid and salt.After soaking for 24 hours, take it out and put it in the chrome solution (potassium dichromate from the dye factory) for 48 hours, then take it out, cut it evenly, press the oil, and then wash it with water.Of course, if there is no potassium dichromate in it, you can also use alum and other items instead.

In short, this is a long process, and it is not a particularly high-tech job. Europeans or Chinese in the 17th century knew how to tan animal hides. People on the east coast just provided some chemicals to make the finished products of this process higher quality and shorten the time.The thickness of the tanned whale skin is about two to three millimeters, which can be used to make clothes, shoes and even leather armor.The rain boots made of whale skin are excellent in water resistance and will not deform or break in the severe winter. It is a high-quality leather.The skin of a whale can make one or two thousand pairs of rain boots, and even the skin of a big sperm whale can make two or three thousand pairs of shoes without any problem.

Really full of treasures!Zhang Yun also sighed a little. This adult sperm whale weighing less than 60 tons is expected to eventually provide people on the east coast with more than 2000 pairs of high-grade rain boots, about 13 tons of whale oil, 4 tons of compound fertilizer (whale bone powder), and more than 11 tons of spiced whales. Dried meat, more than 200 kilograms of cod liver oil, a large number of waterproof raincoat water bladders (made of whale intestines) and other utensils, delicious caudal fin meat, handicrafts made of whale teeth, and precious spices such as ambergris.Zhang Yun can't even calculate the value of these products, but he thinks tens of thousands of yuan or even 10,000+ yuan is possible, which is really amazing!Now he really despises his European whaling colleagues. They don't have such excellent processing methods and utilization knowledge as the people on the east coast. They only extract whale blubber, and discard everything else in the sea.They don't know what they are throwing into the sea, what a reckless waste!

(End of this chapter)