Flensing is the removing of the outer integument (blubber

Blubber

Blubber is a thick layer of vascularized adipose tissue found under the skin of all cetaceans, pinnipeds and sirenians.-Description:Lipid-rich, collagen fiber–laced blubber comprises the hypodermis and covers the whole body, except for parts of the appendages, strongly attached to the musculature...

) of whale

Whale

Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...

s. English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 whalemen called it "flenching", while American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 whalemen called it "cutting-in".

Open-boat

Shore and Bay whaling

In Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

, in the first half of the seventeenth century, the processing of whales was primarily done ashore. Where the whale was flensed differed between the English and Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. The former brought the whale to the stern of the ship, where men in a boat cut strips of blubber from the whale's back, which were tied together and rowed ashore, where they were cut into smaller pieces to be boiled into oil

Whale oil

Whale oil is the oil obtained from the blubber of various species of whales, particularly the three species of right whale and the bowhead whale prior to the modern era, as well as several other species of baleen whale...

 in large copper kettles. The Dutch, meanwhile, 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 thus more effective. Both parties only cut off the blubber and the head, leaving the rest of the carcass to polar bear

Polar Bear

The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...

s and sea birds.

In Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, on the other hand, the whole carcass was utilized. During the open-boat whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

 era in Japan (1570s-1900s) whales were winched ashore by large capstan

Capstan

Capstan may refer to:*Capstan , a rotating machine used to control or apply force to another element*Capstan , rotating spindles used to move recording tape through the mechanism of a tape recorder...

s. 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 bone

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

s to make various products.

Shore whaling flensing methods elsewhere differed little from the Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an whaling mentioned above. In California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 during the nineteenth century whales could be winched ashore either at a sandy beach

Beach

A beach is a geological landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles or cobblestones...

 or, in the case of the Carmel Bay

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a small city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, the town is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history...

 station just south of Monterey

Monterey, California

The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...

, 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 similar to a whaleship. On Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...

 humpback whale

Humpback Whale

The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...

s were flensed in the shallows along a rocky beach. Men sliced the blubber from the lean with the assistance of a winch

Winch

A winch is a mechanical device that is used to pull in or let out or otherwise adjust the "tension" of a rope or wire rope . In its simplest form it consists of a spool and attached hand crank. In larger forms, winches stand at the heart of machines as diverse as tow trucks, steam shovels and...

.

Pelagic whaling

By the 1630s whaling had spread offshore and into the ice floes west of Spitsbergen. Here whales were flensed alongside the ship, the blubber cut into small pieces and put into casks to either be boiled into oil at a station ashore, or, by late century, on the return to port. At about the same time Basque whalers began trying-out oil aboard ship, but this appears to have met limited success: the method wasn’t fully utilized until the late eighteenth century.

American whaleships also adopted this method. The whale, whether it be a baleen or toothed whale, was usually brought to the starboard side of the ship tail-first. A cutting-stage was lowered over the carcass consisting of three heavy planks where men with long-handled cutting spades could stand to "cut in" the whale. The blubber was cut in strips called "blanket pieces" in a circular fashion (like peeling an orange

Orange (fruit)

An orange—specifically, the sweet orange—is the citrus Citrus × sinensis and its fruit. It is the most commonly grown tree fruit in the world....

). For a baleen whale

Baleen whale

The Baleen whales, also called whalebone whales or great whales, form the Mysticeti, one of two suborders of the Cetacea . Baleen whales are characterized by having baleen plates for filtering food from water, rather than having teeth. This distinguishes them from the other suborder of cetaceans,...

 the sides of the lower lips were cut off and its upper jaw, filled with valuable baleen

Baleen

Baleen or whalebone is a filter-feeder system inside the mouths of baleen whales. The baleen system works when a whale opens its mouth underwater and then water pours into the whale's mouth. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and remain as food...

, was hacked off with an axe. For a sperm whale

Sperm Whale

The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, is a marine mammal species, order Cetacea, a toothed whale having the largest brain of any animal. The name comes from the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in the animal's head. The sperm whale is the only living member of genus Physeter...

 the tooth-studded lower jaw was wrenched off, and head taken off and brought aboard; if it was a particularly large specimen, it would be brought aboard in two segments. Besides the blubber and baleen, whalemen would also take the tongue of a baleen whale, as well as the flukes of both baleen and toothed whales before setting the carcass adrift for sharks and other scavengers. The blanket pieces were hoisted down into the blubber room, where men cut the pieces into smaller "horse pieces" about four feet by six inches. These in turn were made into "bible leaves", which were put into the two (or three) try-pots to be boiled into oil. The baleen, meanwhile, was pulled from the gum, washed with sand and water, polished, and put into bundles.

Modern

Shore and bay whaling

Flensing at stations in the early modern era (late nineteenth century) differed little from earlier methods. In Finnmark

Finnmark

or Finnmárku is a county in the extreme northeast of Norway. By land it borders Troms county to the west, Finland to the south and Russia to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea to the northwest, and the Barents Sea to the north and northeast.The county was formerly known as Finmarkens...

 the whales were merely flensed at low-tide. Later mechanical winches and slipways were introduced. The whale was winched up the slipway onto a flensing plan, where men with long-handled knives shaped like hockey stick

Hockey stick

A hockey stick is a piece of equipment used in field hockey, ice hockey or roller hockey to move the ball or puck.- Field hockey :Field hockey sticks have an end which varies in shape, often depending on the players position...

s would cut off long strips of blubber with the help of winches. As more and more of the carcass was utilized flensing became more specialized. Soon the entire whale was being used. For example, at Grytviken

Grytviken

Grytviken is the principal settlement in the British territory of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. It was so named in 1902 by the Swedish surveyor Johan Gunnar Andersson who found old English try pots used to render seal oil at the site. It is the best harbour on the island, consisting of a...

, a whaling station at South Georgia, after the blubber had been stripped off the carcass by a group of flensers, a gang of three lemmers would pull it aside with the aid of steam winches and blocks to remove the meat and bone. Other men armed with steel hooks cut the meat into smaller pieces and fed them into meat cookers, while the bones were put into separate boilers.

Pelagic

At first, factory ship

Factory ship

A factory ship, also known as a fish processing vessel, is a large ocean-going vessel with extensive on-board facilities for processing and freezing caught fish...

s, simply more modern versions of earlier American whaleships, could only anchor in a bay to process whales. They used virtually the same techniques as open-boat whalemen, bringing the carcass alongside the ship, cutting the blubber into long strips, which were cut into smaller pieces to be boiled in large steam cookers. In the southern summer of 1912-13 the first successful attempt was made by a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 factory ship at catching and flensing whales in the pack ice off South Orkney

South Orkney Islands

The South Orkney Islands are a group of islands in the Southern Ocean, about north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. They have a total area of about ....

. A further breakthrough occurred in the 1923-24 season when the Norwegian factory ship Sir James Clark Ross spent an entire season in the Ross Sea

Ross Sea

The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land.-Description:The Ross Sea was discovered by James Ross in 1841. In the west of the Ross Sea is Ross Island with the Mt. Erebus volcano, in the east Roosevelt Island. The southern part is covered...

 flensing whales alongside the ship while anchored in Discovery Inlet off the Ross Ice Shelf

Ross Ice Shelf

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

. With the introduction of the stern slipway in the Lancing in 1925 flensing could be performed entirely on the open sea.

The carcass was brought to the stern of the factory ship, where several other carcasses could be waiting to be processed. A line was looped around the small of its tail and it was brought to the bottom of the slipway, where the small of its flukes was secured by a whale claw (a giant pair of tongs invented by the Norwegian Anton Gjelstad in 1931) and pulled up unto the deck of the ship by powerful steam winches. On each side of the whale there were large chocks built into the deck so the carcass wouldn't roll in a rough sea. Two flensers, one on each side, cut longitudinal slits along the length of the body, while another man with spiked boots climbed atop the whale to make further cuts. With the use of a winch on an arch at the center of the ship two strips of blubber were pulled off (like the peeling of a banana

Banana

Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....

), which was attended by "a crackling like a bonfire of peasticks."

Next the lower jaw, which can be as long as twenty feet for a blue whale

Blue Whale

The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales . At in length and or more in weight, it is the largest known animal to have ever existed....

, was lifted skyward, wrenched off and the baleen cut out. The carcass was rolled over and a third strip of blubber was pulled off. The blubber was further cut into smaller pieces and fed into manholes in the deck which lead to the cookers. The carcass was brought forward where the lemmers, just like their Grytviken counterparts, took care of the meat, bone, and viscera. This allowed another whale to be brought up the slipway and unto the deck to be flensed. The meat was flensed similar to the blubber, while the bones were sliced by a steam-driven bone saw

Saw

A saw is a tool that uses a hard blade or wire with an abrasive edge to cut through softer materials. The cutting edge of a saw is either a serrated blade or an abrasive...

. The carcass was once again turned over, allowing more of the meat and ribs to be taken off. The good-quality meat was frozen, while virtually everything else was dropped down through the manholes into the cookers.