Oils and fats

1703

Older people will remember swallowing whale oil to keep healthy in winter. This came into fashion in the seventeenth century. Whales provided large quantities of oil and fat for lamps, candles or to lubricate leather and wool. Almost everything was used: bone for knife handles and painting frames, and to keep hooped petticoats in shape. This is a whaling fleet of the Amsterdam ship-owner Gerrit Doornekroon. Every summer the whalers gathered on Amsterdam Island, in the Spitsbergen archipelago.