page_title: Flensing
section_title: Shore and bay whaling
hierarchical_section_title: Flensing / Open-boat / Shore and bay whaling
caption_attribution_description: The whale-oil refinery of the Amsterdam chamber of the Greenland Company on Amsterdam Island off the coast of Spitsbergen. To the left the sea with whales and ships. To the right various installations with smoking chimneys and large groups of workmen.
context_page_description: Flensing is the removing of the blubber or outer integument of whales, separating it from the animal's meat. Processing the blubber into whale oil was the key step that transformed a whale carcass into a stable, transportable commodity. It was an important part of the history of whaling. The whaling that still continues in the 21st century is both industrial and aboriginal. In aboriginal the blubber is rarely rendered into oil, although it may be eaten as muktuk.
context_section_description: In Spitsbergen, in the first half of the 17th Century, the processing of whales was primarily done ashore. Where the whale was flensed differed between the English and Dutch. The English brought the whale to the stern of the ship, where men in a boat cut strips of blubber from the whale's back. These were tied together and rowed ashore, where they were cut into smaller pieces to be boiled into oil in large copper kettles (trypots). The Dutch eschewed this system, bringing the whales into the shallows at high-tide and flensing them at low-tide. This latter method proved much less time-consuming and more effective. Both parties only cut off the blubber and the head, leaving the rest of the carcass to polar bears and sea birds.
  In Japan the whole carcass was utilized. During the open-boat whaling era in Japan (1570s-1900s), whales were winched ashore by large capstans. There, men with flensing knives would not only cut up the blubber into long strips with the assistance of these capstans, but also cut up the viscera and bones to make various products.
  Shore whaling flensing methods elsewhere differed little from the European whaling mentioned above. In California during the 19th Century whales could be winched ashore either at a sandy beach or, in the case of the Carmel Bay station just south of Monterey, they were brought to the side of a stone-laid quay to be flensed. Cutting-tackles were suspended from an elevated beam, allowing the whalemen to roll the carcass over in the water for flensing. On Norfolk Island humpback whales were flensed in the shallows along a rocky beach. Men sliced the blubber from the lean with the assistance of a winch.
caption: "Smeerenburg". A whale (left foreground) is being flensed. Painting by Cornelis de Man (1639).
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