In 1612 the Dutch became the leaders and were still very active about 1680, employing two hundred and sixty ships and fourteen thousand seamen, and during the last part of the seventeenth century they furnished nearly all Europe with oil. To them is attributed the improvements in the harpoon, the line, and the lance, and to their early prominence in the industry we owe the very name “whale,” a derivation from the Dutch and German word “wallen,” meaning to roll or wallow. They established a whaling settlement at Spitzbergen, only eleven degrees from the North Pole, where they boiled the oil; in fact, during the early days of whaling all nations “tried out” their oil on land. The Dutch continued to be the leaders until about 1770, when the English superseded them owing to the royal bounties.
EARLY NEW ENGLAND WHALING
The history of American whaling really begins with the settlement of the New England Colonies. When the “Mayflower” anchored inside of Cape Cod, the Pilgrims saw whales playing about the ship, and this was their chief reason for settling there. It afterwards proved that the products of the whale formed an important source of income to the settlers on Massachusetts Bay.
The subject of drift, or dead whales which were washed ashore, first attracted the colonists, and there are numerous references to them on record. It was the invariable rule for the government to get one-third, the town one-third, and the owner one-third, and in 1662 it was voted that a portion of every whale should be given to the church. The whale fishery increased steadily, so that in 1664 Secretary Randolph could truthfully write to England, “The new Plymouth colony made great profit by whale killing.” The success of the settlers on Cape Cod and elsewhere encouraged Salem to consider ways and means of whaling; for as early as 1688 one James Loper, of Salem, petitioned the Colonial authorities for a patent for making oil, and four years later some Salem whalers complained that Easthamptonites had stolen whales that bore Salem harpoons. As early as 1647 whaling had become a recognized industry in Hartford, Conn., but for some reason did not prosper.
The first white people to explore our New England coasts discovered that the Indians were ahead of them in the pursuit of the whale. The Red Men in canoes attacked these beasts with stone-headed arrows and spears which were attached to short lines. Usually wooden floats were tied to the line, which impeded the progress of the animal, and by frequent thrusts these early hunters actually worried the life out of the whale.
This print shows the high sterns of the old Dutch ships.
Waymouth’s Journal of his voyage to America in 1605 gives the first description of the Indian method of whaling in canoes on the New England coast from November to April, when spouters generally abounded there. “One especial thing is their manner of killing the whale” runs the quaint description “which they call a powdawe; and will describe his form; how he bloweth up the water; and that he is twelve fathoms long: that they go in company of their king with a multitude of their boats; and strike him with a bone made in fashion of a harping iron fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him; then all their boats come about him as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death; when they have killed him and dragged him to shore, they call all their chief lords together, and sing a song of joy; and those chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoil and give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed, they hang up about their houses for provisions; and when they boil them they blow off the fat and put to their pease, maize and other pulse which they eat.”
Early method of bringing whales on shore by means of a windlass.