History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 179
cargoes confiscated; but the Dutch returned under the protection of ships of war and
suceeeded in re-establishing themselves.
The voyage of Richard Chancellor in 1553 through the White Sea to Archangel was
the first step in the opening up of the Spitzbergen Seas. The Dutch navigator Berents
discovered Spitzbergen in 1596, and he was followed in 1607 by Hudson in the
Hopewell. They found the sea swarming with whales which showed no fear of ships.
The first whaling expedition was fitted out by the Muscovy Company under the
command of Jonas Poole, and four voyages, made from 1609 to 1612, were so
successful as soon to attract the competition of other nations. Hot quarrels between
the Muscovy Company and Dutch ship-owners drove the latter in self-preservation to
form a Northern and Greenland Company, which obtained its charter in 1614, and this
Company soon had a score of well-armed ships, each with two sloops, and proceeded
to exploit the fisheries.
They were so successful that for a time they drove the English altogether from the
Greenland fishery. The Dutch maintained a fishery at Jan Mayen until 1640, but this
was not of such importance as the Spitzbergen fishery. In the latter 10,019 whales
were taken by them in the ten years from 1679 to 1688; about 1680, when the fishery
was at the height of its prosperity, they had 260 ships and 14,000 seamen engaged in
it. They built at Spitzbergen their own huts for the blubber boiling, and there the
whalers pitched their tents, so that a regular village, Smeerenburg, sprang up, which
was deserted at their departure.
The Dutch Northern Company had lost its charter in 1642, and the whale fishery from
the Netherlands was henceforth free. In 1660 the Greenland fishery was mainly
prosecuted from the Friesland ports, though by the end of the 17th century
Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Vlaardingen, Delfshaven, and the Zaan villages had gained
most of this trade. There sailed annually then about 200 ships, though in good years
about 250. The fishery was prosecuted on an extensive scale till 1770 and then began
to decline, until at the end of the 18th century no more ships were being sent out. New
ground for whaling had been opened out by the Dutch when they started the fishery in
the Davis Strait in 1719, and for a time this was some compensation for the increasing
English, French, and Low German competition. At first they killed large numbers of
whales, but English ships soon came in to compete.
The German ports also engaged extensively in whaling. In 1721, 79 ships sailed from
Hamburg and Bremen, while an average of 45 ships sailed every year from Hamburg
alone during the period from 1670 to 1719. The Germans continued to take part in the
industry until 1873.
The English had lost in the reign of James I. In 1660 double alien customs were
imposed on whalebone and blubber imported as a merchant's speculation, and not by
the owners of the ship which had prepared the cargo. A joint-stock company was
formed in 1692, which was subsequently allowed to import whale oil free of duty; the
company, however, soon ran through its capital, and the fishery was then left to
private enterprise, supported, however, by government bounties. The trade was so
stimulated that in 1755 no less than £55,000 was paid out in bounty.
In the first quarter of the 19th century there was scarcely a port of any importance on
the east coast of England that was not represented in the whale fisheries, and most of
the Scottish east coast ports and Greenock on the west coast were also taking part.
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