Probably it was about the same time that nine men, who were by accident separated from one of the London fishing-ships, were left behind in Spitzbergen; all of them perished in the course of the winter, and their bodies were found in the ensuing summer shockingly mangled by beasts of prey. The same master who abandoned these poor wretches to so miserable a fate was obliged, by the drifting of the ice towards the shore, to leave eight of his crew, who were engaged in hunting reindeer for provision for the passage home, in the year 1630. These men, like the former, were abandoned to their fate; for on proceeding to the usual places of resort and rendezvous, they perceived with horror that their own, together with all the other fishing-ships, had departed. By means of the provisions procured by hunting, the fritters of the whale left in boiling the blubber, and the accidental supplies of bears, foxes, seals, and sea-horses, together with the judicious application of the buildings which were erected in Bell Sound, where they took up their abode, they were enabled not only to support life, but even to maintain their health little impaired, until the arrival of the fleet in the following year. It is surely permitted us to hope, that amidst the retirement and dreariness of these frozen regions, these hardy sailors found opportunities for serious reflection and prayer to the God of heaven, and that their minds, with eternity so near to them, were sufficiently acquainted with the one way of salvation to yield themselves to Him who is able to preserve his servants unto life eternal.
The preservation of these men revived in the Dutch the desire of establishing colonies, and in consequence of certain encouragements proclaimed throughout the fleet, seven men volunteered their services, were landed at Amsterdam Island, furnished with the needful articles of provisions, etc., and were left by the fleet on the 30th of August, 1633. About the same time, another party, likewise consisting of seven volunteers, were landed on Jan Mayen Island, and left by their comrades to endure the like painful service with the former. On the return of the fleet in the succeeding year, this last party were all found dead from the effects of the scurvy; but the other, which was left in Spitzbergen, nine degrees further towards the north, all survived. Other seven volunteers proposed to repeat the experiment in Spitzbergen during the ensuing winter, and were quitted by their comrades on the 11th of September, 1634. They all fell victims to the scurvy.
The Dutch, encouraged by the hope that the profitable nature of the whale-fishery would continue unabated, incurred very great expenses in making secure, ample, and permanent erections, which they gradually extended in such a degree that at length they assumed the form of a respectable village, to which, from the Dutch words “smeer,” signifying fat, and “bergen,” to put up, they gave the name of Smeerenberg. Their expectations of continued success were not, however, justified, and the fishery began to decline so rapidly from the year 1636-7, to the termination of the company’s charters, that their losses are stated on some occasions to have exceeded their former profits. On the expiration of the charters, in the year 1642, their renewal was refused by the states-general, and the trade was laid entirely open to all adventurers. It increased in consequence almost tenfold; and on the dissolution of the monopoly, the shipping in the whale-fishery commerce accumulated to between two and three hundred sail. Prior to the time when the trade was laid open, the Jan Mayen whale-fishery, like that of Spitzbergen, attained its maximum. The prodigious destruction of whales occasioned their withdrawal, and the island was at length abandoned as a whale-fishing station.
The whale-fishery of the Dutch was somewhat suspended by the war with England in 1653; but between the years 1660 and 1670, four or five hundred sail of Dutch and Hamburgh ships were yearly visitants to the coasts of Spitzbergen, while the English sometimes did not send a single ship. The British government saw with regret such a profitable and valuable speculation entirely laid aside. To encourage, therefore, its renewal, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1672, whereby the rigours of the Navigation Act were dispensed with, and its essential properties so modified for the ten following years that a vessel for the whale-fishery, being British-built, and having a master and one-half of the crew British subjects, might carry natives of Holland, or other expert fishers, to the amount of the other half. In the year 1693 was formed the “Company of Merchants of London, trading to Greenland,” to whom was granted an extension of the indulgences allowed by this Act of Parliament. From various losses, combined, probably, with unskilful management, this company was so unfortunate that, before the conclusion of their term, their capital of £82,000 was entirely expended. These circumstances tended much to discourage the subjects of Great Britain from making any vigorous attempt to renew the fishery. The direct importation of Greenland produce into England being inconsiderable, its importation from Holland or other foreign states was permitted; whalebone, however, was required to be brought into the country in fins only, and not cut, or in any way manufactured; nor could it be landed before the duty chargeable thereon was secured or paid, under penalty of the forfeiture of the goods and double their value. Immense sums were annually paid to foreigners for whalebone at this period.
It was not, it appears, until the whale-fishery was on the decline at Spitzbergen, that the Davis’s Strait fishery was resorted to. The Dutch sent their first ships in the year 1719. The shipping employed in the Greenland and Davis’s Strait whale-fisheries, in 1721, by foreign nations, amounted to three hundred and fifty-five sail. When, by the lapse of some years, the unfavourable impression produced on the minds of speculative persons by the immense losses suffered by English adventurers in the whale-fishery had partly worn off, the propriety of attempting this trade was suggested by Henry Elking, and was proposed to the directors of the well-known South Sea Company. The British legislature, by exempting the produce of the Greenland Seas from existing duties on the condition of its being imported in British ships, held out encouragements to the company similar to those offered to former adventurers. The South Sea Company caused a fleet of twelve new ships, about 306 tons’ burden each, to be built in the river Thames, equipped each vessel with the necessary supplies of cordage, casks, and fishing instruments, and engaged for their use the duke of Bedford’s wet-dock at Deptford, where boiling-houses and other conveniences were constructed. In the spring of 1725, the fleet being all in readiness, put to sea, and returned safe with twenty-five and a half whales. The proceeds of this voyage, though scarcely sufficient to pay the expenses incurred by the fitments and the hire of foreign harpooners, were yet superior to those of any succeeding year during the period in which the company pursued the trade. For eight successive years the company persevered in the whale-fishery, with indifferent or bad success, and after the season of 1732 were compelled to abandon it. In 1736, a London ship, which visited the whale-fishery, procured a cargo of seven fish—a degree of success which was fortunately different from that of most of the antecedent English whalers. The English government offered a bounty of twenty shillings per ton on the burden or tonnage of all British whale-fishing ships of 200 tons or upwards; and this, in 1749, was increased to forty shillings per ton.
Gradually the British whale-fishery began to assume a respectable and hopeful appearance. The combined fleets of England and Scotland, in the year 1752, amounted to forty sail; in 1753, to forty-nine; in 1754, to sixty-seven, in 1755, to eighty-two; and in the year following, to eighty-three sail—which was the greatest number of ships employed in the trade for the twenty years following; while the least number amounted to forty sail during the same period. On the establishment of the British whale-fishery, the legislature directed its attention to the means for securing the perpetuity of the trade, and the economical application of the bounty. These enactments were not carried in the House of Commons without considerable debate. In 1768, the king of Prussia, interesting himself in the Greenland fishery, caused some ships to be equipped from Emden; and in 1784, the king of France attempted the revival of the whale-fishery, by equipping, at his own expense, six ships in the port of Dunkirk. In 1785, the king of Denmark, in imitation of the English, granted a bounty of about thirty shillings sterling per ton, to all vessels in the Greenland and Iceland fisheries, on the condition of the ships being fitted out and their cargoes sold in a Danish port.
The Act of the British Parliament of 1786, embodying several additional regulations on the subject of the whale-fishery, and rehearsing and revising former acts, has ever since been considered the fundamental act on the subject of the Greenland and Davis’s Strait whale-fishery. By accounts laid upon the table of the House of Commons during this session, it appeared that the bounties granted for the encouragement of the British whale-fisheries, carried on in the Greenland Sea and Davis’s Strait, from the year 1733, when bounties were first given, to the end of 1785, had amounted to £1,064,272. 18s. 2d. for England, and £202,158. 16s. 11d. for Scotland. By a subsequent act, the bounty was reduced to twenty-five shillings per ton, from the 25th of December, 1792, to the 25th of December, 1795; and from this period until the expiration of the act in 1798, to twenty shillings per ton, at which latter rate it has continued ever since. From a list, it appears, that in 1788, 255 British ships sailed for the whale-fishery, of which 129 were of a burden under 300 tons; 97 of 300 to 350 tons; 16 of 350 to 400 tons; 11 of 400 to 500 tons; 1 of 565 tons; and 1 of 987 tons. They were fitted out from the ports of London, Hull, Liverpool, Whitby, Newcastle, Yarmouth, Sunderland, Lynn, Leith, Ipswich, Dunbar, Aberdeen, Bo’ness, Glasgow, Montrose, Dundee, Exeter, Whitehaven, Stockton, Greenock, Scarborough, Grangemouth, and Queensferry.
CHAPTER II.
SITUATION OF THE EARLY WHALE-FISHERY—THE MANNER IN WHICH IT WAS CONDUCTED—AND THE ALTERATIONS WHICH HAVE TAKEN PLACE.
Immediately after the discovery of Spitzbergen by Hudson, in the year 1607, the walrus-fishers, who carried on an extensive and profitable business at Cherie Island, finding the animals of their pursuit become shy and less abundant, extended their voyage to the northward, until they fell in with Spitzbergen, the newly discovered country, about the time when the Russian Company equipped their first ships for the Greenland whale-fishery. As the coast abounded with whales and sea-horses, Cherie Island was deserted, and Spitzbergen became the scene of future enterprize. At this time, the mysticetus was found in immense numbers throughout the whole extent of the coast, and in the different capacious bays with which it abounds. Never having been disturbed, these animals were unconscious of danger; they allowed themselves to be so closely approached that they fell an easy prey to the courageous fishermen. It was not necessary that the ships should cruise abroad, throughout the extended regions of the Polar Seas, as they do at the present time, for the whales being abundant in the bays, the ships were anchored in some convenient situation, and generally remained at their moorings until their cargoes were completed. Not only did the coast of Spitzbergen abound with whales, but the shore of Jan Mayen Island, in proportion to its extent, afforded them in like abundance.