1426. A barrel of whale oil (thank you for your continued support)
ps: Today is Thanksgiving. Thank you for your continued support from book friends and everyone for accompanying our fishing grounds along the way! In addition, I hope that friends who like this book will try to support the genuine version. After all, this is the only income of the author. Thank you!
The water column emitted by the Arctic right whales is V-shaped, with strong water pressure and can spray out five or six meters high, like two fountains.
After one right whale spewed out the water column, other right whales also followed suit and began to spray water columns one by one. One of them happened to be next to the Melon Princess, and the water splashes could be sprinkled onto the boat!
Winnie sprinkled these fish segments in batches. The right whales were all big-bellied men and had not eaten enough. They had found no fish segments in the water, so they leaned out. This time they not only had a glimpse, but also half of their heads stuck out.
"Wow, what a bunch of greedy guys." Winnie smiled, she waved her hands repeatedly and shouted, "Goodbye, everyone, there is no food, you have to go hunting yourself!"
The right whale was unable to stand upright in the water for too long, and later became tired and got back into the water one after another. At this time, the Melon Princess continued to start and drove towards the north.
After driving for a while, the sea monster in the cab came out and smiled: "From the fish explorer, these guys are still following us."
Shaq exclaimed: "How is it possible, right whales are swimming very slowly, and they can't keep up with our fishing boats!"
The sea monster shrugged, "Maybe they had just eaten and drunk enough and burst out with great strength? But they were following, if you don't believe it, go to the cab to watch."
Qin Shiou also found it incredible that the right whales swim very slowly and could not keep up with the ship that was traveling at a speed of forty or fifty kilometers per hour. So he guessed that the bodyguards in the water were following too close.
Sure enough, the sea god consciousness entered the water and saw that the giant demon and the black bully were swimming faster like the competition. He quickly controlled the two and also issued orders to the sea pythons behind them, allowing them to dive deep and radiate outwards.
The northward the climate is colder. Qin Shiou was still interested in blowing the sea breeze outside, teasing tigers, leopards, bears and wolves. After entering the Labrador Sea, he lost this interest and only basks outside at noon at most.
Usually, Qin Shiou kept releasing his consciousness of the sea god. After entering the Red Bay of Labrador, a shipwreck more than 20 meters long appeared at the bottom of the sea.
Seeing this wreck, Qin Daguanren was excited. This ship was a three-masted sailboat. Its shape belonged to a large wooden ship that was commonly used in the 15th and 6th century. The bow had a horn and a family badge, which was a bit like a treasure ship.
But when he looked closer, he found that there were four small wooden boats at the decayed and broken tail of the ship, which should not be a treasure ship.
In order to prevent the crew from having unfaithful intentions, stealing or robbing the treasures on the ship, the treasure ship will not bring so many small boats, but the whaling ship operates in this way.
When he entered the cabin, Qin Shiou was shocked. The target was several corpses. Because the Labrador Sea was cold all year round, these corpses were sealed in the cabin. There were few bacteria, but they did not rot, and they remained dehydrated and looked like they became mummy. They looked very scary.
There are many corpses on the seabed, some will rot. Some will swell due to the soaking of sea water, but the latter type of corpse. If it does not rot for a long time, as the cells die, they will dehydrate under the differences in internal and external density, and this is what they will look like.
The dehydrated dead corpse is the most terrifying thing Qin Shiou knows. Because of strong muscle spasms, the expressions of these corpses look very ferocious, and even their facial features are crammed into a ball or they cannot tell the difference.
In the cabin next door, he found two large boxes, which were tightly sealed, which made him quite expect. Will there be any treasures inside?
As a result, he stirred up the waves, and the decaying box easily shattered, and all the white bones fell out of it! And judging from the appearance of the skull, it was clearly a human bone!
But this is unreasonable. Qin Shiou was surprised that the corpse next door was dehydrated. How could the corpse in this box be so completely decayed?
There is nothing to explore. If he couldn't figure it out, he stopped thinking about it. He continued to search, but found that there were many large oak barrels piled up in the cabin. He broke one of them and found that there was a solidified oil-like object inside.
In this way, he confirmed the ship, which was a whaling ship, and the oil should be whale oil.
The Labrador waters were once an important base for Basque whaling. In the 15th and 16th century, there were tens of thousands of right whales living in this sea. It was from that time that after uninterrupted extinction, the right whales here were now on the verge of extinction.
As far as Qin Shiou knew, at the peak of the late 16th century, during the whaling season, more than 2,000 whalers lived in the Red Bay area and produced 500,000 gallons of whale oil to make profits.
At that time, whale oil was a valuable item that could be used for lighting, lubrication, and as an additive for medicine, soap and asphalt. Whale oil, which was added with spice, was the favorite fuel of European nobles in the sixteenth century.
After the Basques caught whales in the Red Bay to refine fish oil, they only sold them to Europe through a month of ocean voyage, and the price of 55 gallons of whale oil can be as high as $10,000 today.
So for the Basques, discovering right whales in Labrador is equivalent to discovering gold mines.
But for the Qin Daguanren, this was useless. After careful searching, he found that the only valuable thing in the ship was a bucket of whale oil in the cabin and a box found in the enclosed cabin.
The box was sealed with whale oil, so although I don’t know what it is inside, Qin Shiou probably should have been well preserved.
He wanted to open it, but considering that since the owner of the box closed it with whale oil, the things inside were obviously afraid of water, he found the giant demon and asked it to suck the box with the suction cup on its tentacles, and then see it after it came out of water.
Bringing the box, Qin Shiou left helplessly. Whale oil has no value nowadays. Whether it is lighting or lubricating oil, whale oil has already had a better replacement.
In this way, he retracted the consciousness of the sea god and sighed subconsciously. Winnie next to him looked at him strangely and asked, "What happened? You seem to be very depressed?"
Qin Shiou said: "I have been on the sea for too long and have never found a suitable catch, so I will inevitably be discouraged."
Everything will turn back when extremes. After going north to supply Port Berwell, we left the Labrador waters and entered one of the coldest areas in Canada, Baffin Island.
Passing through the Hall Peninsula on Baffin Island, enter the Davis Strait. At this time, Canada and Greenland can be seen from afar across the strait.
When they arrived at this place, the temperature dropped to below zero. They booked to cross the Davis Strait to the Ilulisat Ice Bay. As a result, when the fishing boats arrived at the port of Atu Island to prepare for supply, Qin Shiou unexpectedly discovered that there were a large number of king crabs living in this sea area! (To be continued...)
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Chapter completed!