This interesting cast lead whale is five inches long, one inch wide, and stands 2 inches high at the head. Small, but it weighs a solid 2 ˝ pounds. Certainly it could function as a paper weight. The lower fluke as been bent, probably to serve as a bottle opener, but I can find no image of a bottle opener like it. I suspect that the whale was made to function as a spline weight (a “duck”) when lofting out patterns for the ribs and planks of sailing ships in the 19th century. It is fairly dinged, gouged, and corroded enough to be that old. It is an item that I've never seen before. Good.