The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-02-04

 medal to the local union holding the greatest number of medal contests dur ing 1917. Any information regarding the contests will be gladly furnished by Mrs tJ, P. Moore, 21S South Elyton street, I'West End.
 
 a bunch of waste as a wad On the top of this is the harpoon. which is attached | to long line or cable connected with 1 a steam winch on the deck. The har- poon ends in sharp point which consists l of hollow iron cap filled with blasting powder. To this cap time fuse is attached and the bomb explodes inside the whale The harpoon has expanding arms which spring out after it enters the whale and holds it while 1t is fight l ing for it's life. The whale has to be l played and 1t will drag the ship this way l and that. The cable consists of about POGO l feet of manila rope as thicks as a mans 1 arm.
 1 When the animal Is dead this is reeled up by the steam engine on board, thus dragging the whale to the ship. The great mammal is now filled with air from 1 the air compressor on board. This makes l the carcass so light that 1t will float. I It can then be lowed to the nearest har- 1 bor and anchored, being marked with 1 white flag, while the ship goes out to 1 catch more whales, or it may be lowed direct to the station. Some of the whales | weigh as much as 90 tons, but they are easily carried along through the water { in this way.
 l After the whale arrives at the plant, ! 1t Is hauled up an inclined plane onto l the wharf by means of a donkey engine. | The men then get on the whale, and cut the meat into long strips1a foot thick I arzI xxrt6 Ehnt1 1 knives. A hook is attached to the end of one of these strips, and the engine pulls it off the body by means of a wire 1 cable. At the same time two men walk along and chop the blubber loose with heavy ax blades foot long. The Aleuts are err ployed at Akutan and the Japanese l at Port Armstrong for this purpose The blubber is cut up by revolving knives and put into steam cookers to get out the oil. !! It is cooked again and again, in order that none may be lost.
 The next process is cutting up the carcass. In this the workmen use long knives and chop the meat into 30 or 40-pound chunks. They then throw it into the boilers where it is cooked eight or ten hours. The oil rises to the top and Is drawn off. while the meat left goes into the drying tanks for conversion into fer tilizer.
 The bones also are cooked. They are rich in oil and valuable as a fertilizer. They are crushed when they come from the cooker. and then dried and sacked for the market. Each sack holds about 200 pounds and is worth S2.60. The meat fertilizer, which is powdered and sacked the same way, sells for s a sack. A single sperm whale will produce from 10 to 20 barrels of oil, most of which comes from hole in the head. The first step in butchering sperm whales is to sever the head and take out the oil.
 It is from the sperm whale that am- bergris comes. The word means gray amber and the substance is a gray, wax like, solid mass, that is found in the ab- domen of the sperm whale in Jumps weighing from half-ounce to 100 pounds. It is sometimes found floating on the sea, or living on the sand near the seacoast. Ambergris Is very valuable It Is worth in the neighborhood of $500 pound and two pieces recently taken from sperm whale sold for $10,500. They weighed about 3S pounds. The stuff is largely used in perfumery and also in medicines. It is formed by the bile of the sperm whale, and when first taken out it has a disgusting smell.
 The total catch of the Port Arm strong plant last season was about 200. whales. The whales were of half dozen different varieties, most of them being sperm, sulphur bottom, finbacks and humpbacks. These varieties are among the most common to the whale fisheries of today. They were not con- sidered of great value in the past, the right whale, of which I speak farther on in this letter. being by far the most profitable. Now they arc catching fin backs by means of the harpoon gun in many parts of the ocean. Tn the Ant 2 arctic sea around South America the annual catch is not less than 10,00t ifinbacks and humpbacks. They are talk ling many humpbacks also about the islands of South Georgia, not far from the Falklands, and in 1910 the whales killed there produced more than 75,- . 100000 pounds of oil, or enough to fill a basin in which a whale steamer could turn about and maneuver. In 1907 200( whales were caught not far from Cape Horn, and near there the whalers found strait that seemed to liter ally boil with whales. There were SC many that single boat would cap ture eight or more in a day. In 191' the South Shetland islands and they caught more than 5000 whales
 | The whale catch of the world is nov upward of 10000 a year. This includes the right whale, the finback, the hump Dack, the sperm Whale, sulphur potion and others The most of these ar caught in the southern oceans man, being captured about South Africa There are fleets of whaling vessels tha start out from the ports on the coas of Capt Colony. and also from thos
 of Natal and the Mozambique channe There are altogether l2 whaling sta tions there. and they are now captur ing about 2000 whales every year.
 The Japanese are great whalers They have their boats made in Nor
 way, and they come into the Alaska
 waters and elsewhere to fish The gov
 ernment gives bounties to the industr
 and at present Japan has seven nativ companies with 2S whaling vessels I
 one year one of these companies ha captured as many as 500 whales.
 The Russians do some whaling an
 also the English. There are four place
 in Europe where the business is cal
 ried on, and 16 steamers have bee Ioperating on the coast of Great Britain
 They catch a few hundred whale tevery year The total number of whale Icaupht in Eurone and North Americ