* * * * *
                                        
                             Oil, schmoil Part deux
                                        
> Bear with us. Whaling, after all, was one of the world's first great
> multinational businesses, a global enterprise of audacious reach and
> import. From the 1700s through the mid-1800s, oil extracted from the
> blubber of whales and boiled in giant pots gave light to America and much
> of the Western world. The United States whaling fleet peaked in 1846 with
> 735 ships out of 900 in the world. Whaling was the fifth-largest industry
> in the United States; in 1853 alone, 8,000 whales were slaughtered for
> whale oil shipped to light lamps around the world, plus sundry other parts
> used in hoop skirts, perfume, lubricants and candles.
> 
> But, in fact, whaling was already just about done, said Eric Jay Dolin, who
> wrote some of the text for the exhibit and is the author of “Leviathan: The
> History of Whaling in America.” Whales near North America were becoming
> scarce, and the birth of the American petroleum industry in 1859 in
> Titusville, Pa., allowed kerosene to supplant whale oil before the electric
> light replaced both of them and oil found other uses.
> 
> By 1861, whaling was in such decline that the federal government bought 38
> old whaling ships, loaded them with stones and sunk them in Charleston
> Harbor in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to blockade the
> Confederate port.
> 

“They Used to Say Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too [1]”

Yeah, I think I've mentioned this before [2] … 

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/nyregion/03towns.html?_r=1&partne
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2008/02/15.3

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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