Ivory coloured sperm whale tooth

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

51537

Title

Tooth of a sperm whale

Description

One ivory coloured sperm whale tooth. One end comes to a point and has a polished surface and the other is sharp and hollow.

Date

1942

Location

Museums Collection Centre

Copyright

The City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries

This sperm whale tooth is an unusual example of natural history from our Queensferry collections. We know little about how it came to be in our care, other than it is said to be from a whale caught in 1942 near South Georgia. The South Atlantic Ocean around South Georgia and Antarctica were abundant in sperm whales in the early 20th century.

There is little evidence of South Queensferry operating as a whaling port, apart from a reference to a ‘boiler’ on the pier marked on an Ordnance Survey map in 1856, similar to a boiling-house at Bo’ness which was used by Greenland whalers for processing whale carcasses.

It is more likely that the tooth was brought back from a whaling trip. There was a heavy British presence in South Georgia, with the largest whaling port being named Port Leith. Many Scottish men worked in the whaling industry up until the middle of the 20th century, as it was an important part of the economic recovery of the country following the Second World War. It is likely that the tooth was brought back by one such Scottish whaler after months on the other side of the world, a reminder of their time away from home.

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Related subjects

Animals > Mammals > Whales

Places > Edinburgh areas > South Queensferry

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

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