The Northern Whale-Fishery

CHAPTER I.. Chronological History of the Northern Whale Fisheries.

CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTHERN WHALE FISHERIES.

In the early ages of the world, when beasts of prey began to multiply and annoy the vocations of man, the personal dangers to which he must have been occasionally exposed would oblige him to contrive some means of defence. For this end, he would naturally be induced, both to prepare weapons, and also to preconceive plans for resisting the disturbers of his peace. His subsequent rencounters with beasts of prey would, therefore, be more frequently successful, not only in effectually repelling them when they should attack him, but also, in some instances, in accomplishing their destruction. Hence, we can readily and satisfactorily trace to the principles of necessity the adroitness and courage evidenced by the unenlightened nations of the world, in their successful attacks on the most formidable of the brute creation; and hence we can conceive that necessity may impel the indolent to activity, and the coward to actions which would not disgrace the brave. For man to attempt to subdue an animal whose powers and ferocity he regarded with superstitious dread, and the motion of which he conceived would produce a vortex sufficient to swallow up his boat, or any other vessel in which he might approach it—an animal of at least six hundred times his own bulk, a stroke of the tail of which might hurl his boat into the air, or dash it and himself to pieces—an animal inhabiting at the same time an element in which he himself could not subsist; for man to attempt to subdue such an animal, under such circumstances, seems one of the most hazardous enterprizes of which the intercourse with the irrational world could possibly admit. And yet this animal is successfully attacked, and seldom escapes when once he comes within reach of the darts of his assailer.

It seems to be the opinion of most writers on the subject of the whale-fishery, that the Biscayans were the first who succeeded in the capture of the whale. This opinion, though perhaps not correct, deserves to be mentioned in the outset of an investigation into the probable origin of this employment. A species of whale, probably the Balæna rostrata, was a frequent visitor to the shores of France and Spain. In pursuit of herrings and other small fishes, these whales would produce a serious destruction among the nets of the fishermen of Biscay and Gascony. Concern for the preservation of their nets, which probably constituted the whole of their property, would naturally suggest the necessity of driving these intruding monsters from their coasts. With this view, arrows and spears, and subsequently gunpowder, would be resorted to. Finding the whales timid and inoffensive, the fishers would be induced to approach some individual of the species, and even to dart their spears into its body. Afterwards they might conceive the possibility of entangling some of the species, by means of a cord attached to a barbed arrow or spear. One of these animals being captured, and its value ascertained, the prospect of emolument would be sufficient to establish a fishery of the cetaceous tribe, and lead to all the beneficial effects which have resulted in modern times.

Those authorities, indeed, may be considered as unquestionable, which inform us that the Basques and Biscayans, so early as the year 1575, exposed themselves to the perils of a distant navigation, with a view to measure their strength with the whales, in the midst of an element constituting the natural habitation of these enormous animals; that the English, in 1594, fitted an expedition for Cape Breton, intended for the fishery of the whale and the walrus, (sea-horse,) pursued the walrus-fishing in succeeding years in high northern latitudes, and, in 1611, first attacked the whale near the shores of Spitzbergen; and that the Hollanders, and subsequently other nations of Europe, participated in the risk and advantages of these northern expeditions. Some researches, however, on the origin of this fishery, carried on in the northern seas, will be sufficient to rectify the error of these conclusions, by proving that the whale-fishery by Europeans may be traced as far back at least as the ninth century.

The earliest authenticated account of a fishery for whales is probably that contained in Ohthere’s voyage, by Alfred the Great. This voyage was undertaken about 890, by Ohthere, a native of Halgoland, in the diocese of Dronthein, a person of considerable wealth in his own country, from motives of mere curiosity, at his own risk, and under his personal superintendence. On this occasion, Ohthere sailed to the northward, along the coast of Norway, round the North Cape, to the entrance of the White Sea. Three days after leaving Dronthein, or Halgoland, “he was come as far towards the north as commonly the whale-hunters used to travel.” Here Ohthere evidently alludes to the hunters of the walrus, or sea-horse; but subsequently, he speaks pointedly as to a fishery for some species of cetaceous animals having been at that period practised by the Norwegians. He told the king, that with regard to the common kind of whales, the place of most and best hunting for them was in his own country, “whereof some be forty-eight ells of length and some fifty,” of which sort, he affirmed, that he himself was one of the six who, in the space of three (two) days, killed threescore.

From this it would appear, that the whale-fishery was not only prosecuted by the Norwegians so early as the ninth century, but that Ohthere himself had personal knowledge of it. The voyage of Ohthere is a document of much value in history, both in respect to the matter of it, and the high character of the author by whom it has been preserved. By a slight alteration in the reading of the Saxon manuscript, as suggested by Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, it is possible to suppose that the threescore animals slain by Ohthere in two days were not whales but dolphins. This supposition removes the improbability of the exploit recorded, and does not contradict or explain away the fact of larger whales having been likewise hunted and captured.

A Danish work, which there is reason to believe is of a date much earlier than that which we assign to the first fishery of the Basques, declares that the Icelanders were in the habit of pursuing the whales, which they killed on the shore, and that these islanders subsisted on the flesh of some one of the species. And Langebek does not hesitate to assert, that the fishery of the whale (hovlfangst, by which he probably means a species of delphinus,) was practised in the most northern countries of Europe in the ninth century.

Under the date of 875, in a book entitled the “Translation and Miracles of St. Vaast,” mention is made of the whale-fishery on the French coast. In the “Life of St. Arnould, bishop of Soissons,” a work of the eleventh century, particular mention is made of the fishery by the harpoon, on the occasion of a miracle said to have been performed by the saint. There are also different authorities for supposing that a whale-fishery was carried on near the coast of Normandy and Flanders, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century.

The English, it is to be expected, did not remain long behind their continental neighbours in this lucrative pursuit. It is difficult to determine whether the whales referred to in the few early documents which we possess, were such as were run on the English shore by accident, or subdued by the English on the high sea. By Acts of Parliament, A.D. 1315 and 1324, the wrecks of whales, cast by chance upon the shore, or whales or great sturgeons taken in the sea, were to belong to the king. Henry IV. gave, in 1415, to the church of Rochester, the tithe of the whales taken along the shores of that bishopric. In the sixteenth century, the inhabitants of the shores of the Bay of Biscay were the most distinguished whale-fishers. At first, they confined their attacks to those animals, probably the Balæna rostrata of Linnæus, which used to present themselves in the Bay of Biscay at a certain season every year. Gradually becoming bolder, the Biscayans advanced towards the coasts of Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, in the pursuit. The Icelanders united their energies with the Biscayans, and conducted the whale-fishery on so extensive a scale, that, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the number of vessels annually employed by the united nations amounted to a fleet of fifty or sixty sail.

The first attempt of the English to capture the whale, of which we have any satisfactory account, was made in the year 1594. Different ships were fitted out for Cape Breton at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, part of which were destined for the walrus-fishery, and the remainder for the whale-fishery. The Grace, of Bristol, one of these vessels, took on board 700 or 800 whale-fins, or laminæ of whalebone, which they found in the Bay of St. George, where two large Biscayan fishermen had been wrecked three years before. This is the first notice I have met with of the importation of this article into Great Britain.

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