CHAPTER XII
WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WHALE’S LEGS
If a whale is struck near the tail by the harpoon it is almost powerless to pull because the strain on the rope straightens out its body and the animal can swim only with difficulty. Practically all of the forward motion is developed by means of the flukes and the side fins are only used as balancing organs and in turning and rising to the surface. The flukes are not twisted in a rotary movement like the propeller of a ship, as is commonly believed, but wave straight up and down.
While hunting in Alaska I had an excellent opportunity to see the manner in which a whale swims. I had climbed to the barrel at the masthead while we were following an enormous humpback and as the water was like glass save for the long swell, I could see 15 or 20 feet beneath the surface.
Suddenly the dim outlines of the whale took shape in the green depths far below me but when near the surface the animal checked its upward rush, turned downward, and dove directly under the ship, rising a hundred fathoms away on the port beam. I could see every movement of the great body as clearly as though the whale had been suspended in mid-air. When the animal turned, the side fins were thrown outward but were pressed close to the body as it swam under the ship.
Posterior view of a blue whale on the slip at Aikawa, Japan. The flukes have been cut off and the wide thin caudal portion of the body is well shown.
A whale’s flippers must not be compared with the fins of a fish, for in structure the two are quite unlike. The flippers of all cetaceans are merely the fore-limbs of ordinary land mammals, which have become overlaid with blubber to form a paddle in adaptation to an aquatic life and have the bones, blood vessels, and nerves of the human arm. The flipper of the humpback whale has four greatly elongated fingers but in some other species there are five fingers as in the human hand.
Cetaceans also have rudiments of the hind-limbs. These consist of the pelvis, which is fairly well developed, and small nodules of bone representing the femur and sometimes the tibia; the latter is cartilaginous except in rare cases. These rudiments are, of course, entirely concealed within the body and can only be found by carefully cutting away the flesh surrounding the sexual organs.
The flipper of a humpback whale. “The flippers of all cetaceans are merely the fore-limbs of ordinary land mammals, which have become overlaid with blubber to form a paddle.”
One of the most striking things about the blue whale, and indeed all its relatives, are the folds which extend longitudinally from the lower jaw backward over the throat, breast, and abdomen. In different species of whales the folds vary in number and width, the furrows between them being about an inch in depth and the skin capable of great extension.
The use of the folds has been a subject of disagreement among naturalists, but my own belief is that they are an adaptation to increase the mouth capacity and to give greater power of expansion to the lungs.
After the humpback’s flipper has been stripped of blubber. The forearm, wrist and fingers are shown. In this species the digits have been reduced to four and are greatly elongated.
The folds are not composed of flesh but entirely of blubber, the layer of fibrous fat which covers the bodies of all whales, porpoises, and dolphins and lies between the skin and the flesh. Since cetaceans are warm-blooded animals (fish and reptiles are cold-blooded) it is necessary for them to have some protection from the cold. Hair is not sufficient for this purpose as in land mammals; consequently the layer of blubber, which acts as a non-conductor and prevents the heat of the animal’s body from being absorbed by the water, has been developed. It is from this that the whale oil of commerce is boiled or tried out. The blubber may be easily peeled off the body in strips called “blanket pieces,” which are cut into blocks and after being sliced are put into the trying out kettles.
The folds on the throat of a finback whale. Probably the folds are an adaptation to increase the mouth capacity and to give greater power of expansion to the lungs.
When one of these great pieces of blubber is being torn off a whale’s body it sometimes gives way and springs back with tremendous force. At the Oshima station in Japan, my cook who had one day been pressed into service when several whales were waiting to be cut in was struck fairly upon the head by a blanket piece and instantly killed; his skull was crushed as though it had been paper and his neck, shoulder, and arm broken. At Aikawa a blubber strip gave way when half the carcass of a humpback was suspended in the air, letting the weight of some fifteen or twenty tons fall upon a cutter standing below; when taken from beneath the whale the poor fellow could hardly be recognized as a human being.
Kyuquot had trouble, also, when a blanket piece struck a flenser’s knife, driving it into his side and injuring him badly. And yet it is surprising what tremendous strength and tenacity the fibrous blubber has. A few inches of it will resist the strain of several thousand pounds, and I have seen a whale drag a ship through the water for half an hour with only two harpoon prongs caught under the blubber of the back.
When a female whale is pregnant the blubber is much thicker and softer than at other times and yields a greater supply of oil; from other causes it may also be very thin, and become hard and dry. The blubber varies in color and may be light yellow, deep pink, or almost white. It is thinnest upon the sides, throat, and breast, and thickest on the “neck” just behind the blowholes, at the dorsal fin, and from that point along the ridge of the back, or “caudal peduncle,” almost to the flukes. On the sides an average thickness in the fin whales is six inches, but just behind the dorsal fin it may reach twelve or fourteen inches.
Since cetaceans live in the water where they do not touch rough surfaces their skins are very soft and smooth; the skin is about half an inch thick and may be separated from the blubber only with difficulty. It is composed of one or more thin outer sheets (epidermis) which may be easily stripped off, leaving exposed the tender under layer (dermis). The skin is perfectly dry and does not possess either the oil (sebaceous) or sweat (sudoriferous) glands usually present in the skins of land mammals. Because of the development of blubber, and the absence of functional hair, such glands are no longer necessary. The skins of some cetaceans, notably the white whale, or beluga, and the bottlenose porpoise are made into leather and furnish the “porpoise hide” of commerce, but that of other porpoises or whales has not been put to extensive commercial use.
A cross section of the folds on the breast of a humpback whale. The upper thin black margin is the skin, then comes the thick white blubber below which is the red flesh.
I have often read of ships being followed for days by whales but have no first-hand information of such occurrences. Scammon, however, remarks that he has “observed them following in a vessel’s wake for several leagues,” and gives an extract from the journal of Dr. J. D. B. Stillman of San Francisco, in 1850, concerning a blue whale, or “sulphur-bottom,” as it is sometimes called, which followed the ship Plymouth for twenty-four consecutive days. The account is so interesting that I quote it in full:
The eye and ear of a blue whale. The eye is just above the corner of the mouth and the ear is the small spot about four feet behind it. The ear canal is just large enough to admit a small pencil, but because water is such a good medium for carrying sound, whales hear excellently.
November 13th: We are witnesses of a very remarkable exhibition of the social disposition of the whale. A week ago today we passed several, and during the afternoon it was discovered that one of them continued to follow us, and was becoming more familiar, keeping under the ship and only coming out to breathe. A great deal of uneasiness was felt, lest in his careless gambols he might unship our rudder, or do us some other damage.
It was said that bilge-water would drive him off, and the pumps were started, but to no purpose. At length more violent means were resorted to; volley after volley of rifle shots were fired into him, billets of wood, bottles, etc., were thrown upon his head with such force as to separate the integument; to all of which he paid not the slightest attention, and he still continued to swim under us, keeping our exact rate of speed, whether in calm or storm, and rising to blow almost into the cabin windows.
He seems determined to stay with us until he can find better company. His length is about eighty feet; his tail measures about twelve feet across; and in the calm, as we look down into the transparent water, we see him in all his huge proportions.
November 29th: The bark Kirkwood hove in sight, and bore down to speak to us. When off a mile or two to leeward, our whale left us and went to her, but returned soon after. He showed great restlessness last night; and today, whenever we stood off on the outward tack, he kept close below us, and rose just under our quarter, and most commonly to windward, to blow. But whenever we stood toward the land he invariably hung back and showed discontent. This afternoon he left us.
It is now twenty-four days since he attached himself to us, and during that time he has followed us as faithfully as a dog an emigrant’s wagon. At first we abused him in every way that our ingenuity could devise to drive him off, lest he might do us some mischief; but save some scratches he received from our ship’s coppering and numerous sloughing sores, caused by the balls that had been fired into him, no damage was received by either of us by his close companionship, though our white paint was badly stained by the impurity of his breath.
We long since ceased our efforts to annoy him, and had become attached to him as to a dog. We had named him “Blowhard,” and even fancied, as we called him, that his came closer under our quarter, when I felt like patting his glabrous sides, and saying: “Good old fellow.”
As the water grew shoaler he left us, with regret unfeigned on our part, and apparently so on his. This story of the whale is so remarkable, that were there not so many witnesses, I would not venture to tell it, lest I be accused of exaggeration. There were a number of experienced whalemen among our passengers, who said the animal was a “Sulphurbottom.”[6]
The skull of an eighty-foot blue whale, the skeleton of which was sent to the American Museum of Natural History from Japan. When crated for shipment the skull had a space measurement of twenty-one tons.