#funfax

And the only footage that currently exists of said segment is in this promo clip

O boy, ARE YOU READY FOR PARAGRAPHS? Lanterns used a lot of different kind of oils, ranging from plant–based ones to oil from other animals, including fish, seals, pigs, etc. Whale oil however was a better illuminant than candles/oils rendered from other animal fat in that it didn’t smoke or smell as badly (though it still didn’t smell great and still smoked a bit). It was more expensive, so economics would also tie into what lighting options people would have available to them. Not everyone had the means to use whale oil, and that’s doubly true for sperm oil which I’ll talk about…in a moment.

Another thing that made whale oil desirable is that it also doesn’t freeze at subzero temperatures, which is important to note. Houses in say, 19th century New England, were much colder than they are now, generally speaking. Having a fuel source that wasn’t going to solidify in winter was convenient. Which was not the case with lard oil for instance—here’s an incredibly snarky article from a Nantucket newspaper being like ‘HAHA OH NO….YOUR ‘SUPERIOR’ LARD OIL…IT FROZE’.

Its ability to to withstand cold temperatures was doubly important as things started to become more industrialized and it became more and more valuable as a lubricant for machinery for that same purpose.

There is also a distinction of whale oil vs. sperm oil. Whale oil comes from the blubber of any whale, whereas sperm oil comes from the head-matter of the sperm whale (as did spermaceti candles, made from the waxy substance that was left once the oil was pressed out). This was the most prized and also the most expensive. This was fancy rich people stuff. It gave off a superior, bright, odorless light, and could not only withstand very cold temperatures but very hot temperatures as well (continued to be used into WW1 as a lubricant for battleship engines for this purpose) and so it was A Big Deal for a while.

But in addition to the more desired lighting qualities, as to why an massive industry was designed around hunting whales for oil than say…a bunch of seals, I imagine would in one way be tied to the sheer volume of it and the assembly-line process that was developed to get a huge yield of oil quickly. One big sperm whale could yield 70-90 barrels of oil, and was of course a dangerous thing to hunt but probably amounted to less labor than trying to get the same volume out of other sea creatures. Pilot whales for instance, also had oil and are much smaller, but unless things were boring, desperate, or they wanted to practice, whalers often wouldn’t expend the energy lowering for those compared to other whales.

Already posted the stones of power ones, but the postcards Jo scrolls through on her phone in season 1 episode 1 mirror the places the power of stones rain down in in season 2 episode 8!

1990s Original Fun Fax!