Former uses for walrus

From "The Unnatural History of the Sea,"
Walrus hide, one of the strongest leathers known, was used for high-performance rope. To make rope, a walrus would be skinned in a spiral, winding from tail to neck. A large animal might produce an unbroken strip 28 miters long (90 feet). Walrus ropes powered seige catapults in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the leather was used for drive belts in industrial machinery, but by the twentieth century, walrus hide found a more mundane role as billiard cue tips.