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do a site search on storm oil and you will find a lot of previous discussion, including a thread on 11/14/02. Here is one of the more interesting responses and as you can see it dates back to
whaling vessels.

http://archive.boatnerd.com/archive/11-02/0000521e.htm

interesting.
wonder how they ever came up with that?

[quote="Randy S"]Some of the boats that I worked on in the 70s also had small bunkers of storm oil - right in the bow. The theory was that in the event of a collision, the bunkers would break open and the oil would spread without any human involvement.[/quote]
All of the boats that I worked on while on the Lakes had the above mentioned storage tanks in the windless room. There was piping that led from the storm oil tanks to the hause pipe. To be used to lessen the effect of large seas.

The Grand Trunk Milwaukee Carferries had their storm oil in the bow, a drum of each side of the stem.

Some of the boats that I worked on in the 70s also had small bunkers of storm oil - right in the bow. The theory was that in the event of a collision, the bunkers would break open and the oil would spread without any human involvement.

Storm oil is used to keep waves from breaking in a heavy weather emergency situation. According to what I've read, doesn't take much oil. Has to do with changing the water's surface tension. It can be helpful to keep waves from breaking over a ship, lifeboat or person in the water being rescued.
Storm oil is not petroleum based. Old-fashioned storm oil were based on fish oils: http://books.google.com/books?id=L3NKAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA778&ots=fw8BOwa07I&dq=%22storm%20oil%22%20waves&pg=PA778#v=onepage&q=%22storm%20oil%22%20waves&f=false

Newer versions are vegetable-oil based and are obviously biodegradeable. Storm oil was required to be carried in lifeboats and as the link shows, slowly released using a dispenser while a sea anchor kept the lifeboat headed in the proper direction.

i often hear of storm oil.
what is this and how does it work?
is it a pollutant?
thank you.