The Uses of Whalebone in 1820
Before plastics, fibreglass, and carbon fibre, whalebone was used to make items requiring strength, flexibility, and light weight. Though it was really a by-product of the whale oil trade, whalebone was, for a while, a a lucrative part of the business of whaling. No doubt it had its unique qualities, but I suspect that the vast list of uses to which whalebone was put was more a triumph for whaling industry marketing than the application of a wonder material.
William Scoresby Jr., has the following to say about the uses of whalebone in his 1820 book An Account of the Arctic Regions Vol. II (pp. 435-436):
This singular substance, when softened in hot water, or simply by heating it before a fire, has the property of retaining any shape which may be given it, provided it be secured with the required form, until it becomes cold. This property, together with its great elasticity and flexibility, renders it capable of being applied to a great variety of useful purposes.
The first way in which whalebone seems to have been employed was in the stays of ladies. Its application to this purpose, was, at one period, when the quantity imported was small, so general, that it attained, in the wholesale way, the price of 700L. per ton. Subsequently, however, it has become less valuable, and of late it has fallen somewhat into disrepute, some ladies having superseded its use in stays, by supporting themselves with plates of steel. There has, for many years, been an extensive consumption of this article in the manufacture of umbrellas and parasols. The white enamel, (found in some specimens of whalebone), has recently been fabricated into ladies hats, and into a variety of ornamental forms, as head-dresses; and the black enamel, and the coarser material of which the interior is composed, have been worked into a great variety of useful articles, fo which patents have been obtained. The black enamel is employed in the same way as cane, in the construction of the seats or backs of chairs, gigs, sofas, &c.; and the grosser parts in the interior of the blade, when divided into fibres, and curled, are capable of being used int the stuffing of mattresses &c. The hair on the edge of the whalebone answers admirably every purpose of bullock’s hair in stuffings fro chairs, sofas, setttees, carriages, mattresses, cushions &c. An attempt has been made to build whale-boats of this material, but the great alteration which takes place in its dimensions, in the different states of the atmosphere, on account of its ready absorption of moisture, renders it inapplicable. It has been used, with much better effect, in the construction of portmanteaus, and travelling trunks. Hygrometers, ramrods of fowling-pieces, fishing-rods, the shafts, springs, and wheels of carriages &c. are articles, in the formation of which, whalebone has already been employed.
