FLOATING GOLD

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11664, 31 October 1923, Page 3

FLOATING GOLD

FORTUNES IN AMBERGRIS RICH SPERM WHALES. There is gold in the sea —tons and toiiK of it. Down at llock, beside Port Phillip, a scientist lias worked for years at the problem of extracting it. He estimates that in Port Phillip alone there is enough gold to pay off Australia’s Commonwealth debt and leave him any amount over. The only trouble is that it does not pav to get it out. Like some land stocks, the mine is too heavily watered. The nearest approach to gold that the sea has yet been found to yield is that curious substance called ambergris. We have borrowed the name from, the French, who called the stuff ‘‘grey amber.” But the old-time whalers usually pronounced it “ambergrease.” It has a rather greasy feel about it, anyway. THE WORLD’S RECORD. This “floating gold” ia a good deal more valuable, weight for weight, than gold. There is no fixed quotation for itj the price depending on the scarcity at the moment. As lar back as 1904 it was quoted at £8 an ounce in America. To-day it might well be worth twice that.

It is occasionally found, too, in quantities which make the world’s greatest gold nuggets, such as “The Welcome Stranger,” look small. As with gold nuggets, the world’s record is probably held by Australia. Many years ago Tasmanian fishermen found! nearly 10001 b. weight—avoirdupois, not troy—of ambergris in a sperm whale which they came upon near Port Davey. They took the ambergris to Hobart, deposited it in a bank, and eventually sold it for £27,000. W. G. Burn Murdoch states in his “Modern Whaling” that this huge mass of Ambergris was found by Norwegians. This is not the case; the Sneers were four fishermen from Hobart. There is, a tradition that the whale hdd been killed by whalers, who had missed the ambergris. If that is true, the feelings of the whalers when they heard what they had lost may be imagined. But whalers always keep a sharp look-out for ambergris when they kill a sperm whale.

Before that the record was held by a mass of ambergris weighing 6001 b, which the schooner Watchman, of the famous American whaling port of Nantucket, brought home from the Bahamas in 1858. The Nantucket men had better luck, or managed their sales better, if the statement that they sold the ambergris for £60,000 is correct. SOLD FOR £IO,OOO.

# For a, very long period the record in size was held by a lump of ambergris weighing 1921 b, which the Dutch East India Company obtained from the King of Tidore, in the Moluccas. The Grand Duke of Tuscany offered 50,000 crowns for it.

About 50 years ago a block of ambergris weighing 1621 b lloz mysteriously appeared in London where it was sold for £IO,OOO. The seller stated that ho did not feel disposed t-o say where the ambergris came from.

There is a proposal on foot at present to revive Australia’s lor.g dead whaling industry, and to make Sydney once more a whaling poit. Even :l sperm whakng is included, it will not bo possible to rely on ambergris as a steady source cf profit. But if a lump or two of it could bo found it wouid sweeten the business up, figuratively, not literally to a remarkable extent. Whilo the leally big findfc of Ambergris have been made inside the whale, the substance is sometimes found floating on the sea. or washed up on the 6horo With the decay of sperm whaling in the Pacific that is the only chance of any ambergris being found in Australian waters in these days. How email tho chance is appears from the fact that it is 30 years since any ambergris came on the market in Sydney. UNFULFILLED HOPES. If you wandered into a wholesale druggist’s or the business place of any other likely customer lor ambergris with a lump as big as a prize pumpkin you would probably be received with incredulity. For in those 30 years all sorts of other things have been forwarded from various remote corners of Australasia in the fond, but always vain, hope that they weie ambergris. One such find was a lump of greyish substance pioked up on an island in Torres Strait. Captain Bruce, a Torres Strait pilot, sent it to Sydney for analysis; with a feeling that he had struck it rich at last, and that he need pilot no more. The analyst reported that the substance was tallow, but not very good tallow. A lump of paraffin wax, too, has before to-day fired its finder with a dream of sudden riches. The next time you are in doubt about it warm tho substance. If it is ambergris it gives off a rather agreeable, but pungent, odour. Jf it contains tho beaks and other parts of cuttlefish, it is cither ambergris or an unusually thorough attempt at fraud. If it does not contain them, it may 6till bo ambergris. ITS USE r N COOKERY. In colour ambergris may range from light grey lo nearly black. It has n waxy look, a low specific gravity, and usually a> rather unpleasant earthy smell when cold. It is now established that ambergris is a the sperm whale. No other kind of whale yields ambergris. Nor does one sperm whale out of a thousand. It is an abnormal product, beginning apparently in an over-hearty meal of cuttlefish. The whales that yield it are usually thin and miserable, and look as if they had been Buffering badly from indigestion. Our handy ancestors used to eat ambergris—when they could afford it. It was currently reported at the time that Charles TT. was poisoned by some venom put into his favourite dish of iggs and ambergris. ft sounds like eating, not the goose that laid the golden ogirs. but the , trolden eggs Most of us

would probably find tho dish deadly enough without the poison. Chinese mandarins still use ambergris to flavour the tea of honoured guests, and rich Arabs use it for their coffee.