History of whaling
Early depictions of whaling at the Neolithic Bangudae site in Korea, unearthed by researchers from Kyungpook National University, may date back to 6000 BCE.
Cultures that practiced whaling with drogues included the Ainu, Inuit, Native Americans, and the Basque people of the Bay of Biscay.
[7] In his History of Brittany (1582), the French jurist and historian Bertrand d'Argentré made the claim that the Basques, Bretons, and Normans were the first to reach the New World "before any other people".
[10] The Belgian cetologist Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (1878, 1892) repeated such assertions by saying that the Basques, in the year 1372,[Note 1] found the number of whales to increase on approach of the Newfoundland Banks.
It appears to have been the French Basques, following the lead of Breton cod-fishermen that reported finding rich whaling grounds in Terranova (Newfoundland).
The Basques called the area they frequented Grandbaya (Grand Bay), today known as the Strait of Belle Isle, which separates Newfoundland from southern Labrador.
[10] By the 1540s, when the Spanish Basques began sending whaling expeditions to Newfoundland, the ventures were no longer experimental, but a "resounding financial success from their inception."
[13] Ambroise Paré (1510–90), who visited Bayonne when King Charles IX (r. 1560–74) was there in 1564, said they used the baleen to "make farthingales, stays for women, knife-handles, and many other things".
The references include acts of piracy in the 1550s, the loss of a ship in 1565, a disastrous wintering in 1576–77, and, on Christmas Eve 1584, a will written for a dying Basque, Joanes de Echaniz; the first known Canadian will.
By the 18th century whaling in Nantucket had become a highly lucrative deep-sea industry, with voyages extending for years at a time and traveling as far as South Pacific waters.
Investment and financing arrangements allowed managers of whaling ventures to share their risks by selling some equity, but retain a substantial portion of the profit.
In the 1860s Captain Thomas Welcome Roys invented a rocket harpoon, making a significant contribution to the development of the California whaling industry.
A memoir by John R. Jewitt, an English blacksmith who spent three years as a captive of the Nuu-chah-nulth people from 1802 to 1805, makes clear the importance of whale meat and oil to their diet.
The fishery spread to what is now the Spanish Basque Country in 1150, when King Sancho the Wise of Navarre granted petitions for the warehousing of such commodities as whalebone (baleen).
The following season San Sebastián and Saint-Jean-de-Luz sent out a combined eleven or twelve whalers to the Spitsbergen fishery, but most were driven off by the Dutch and English.
They met with twenty other whaleships (eleven or twelve Basque, five French, and three Dutch), as well as a London interloper, which were either ordered away or forced to pay a fine of some sort.
In order to allow a rapid transference of this technique to Spitsbergen, suitable anchorages had to be selected, of which there were only a limited number, in particular on the west coast of the island.
[36] Early in 1614, the Dutch formed the Noordsche Compagnie (Northern Company),[37] a cartel composed of several independent chambers (each representing a particular port).
The ten ships sent by the Muscovy Company were relegated to the south side of Fairhaven, Sir Thomas Smith's Bay, and Ice Sound.
In 1626 nine ships from Hull and York destroyed the Muscovy Company's fort and station in Bell Sound, and sailed to their own in Midterhukhamna.
[54] Following the events of 1638 hostilities, for the most part, ceased, with the exception of a few minor incidents in the 1640s between the French and Danes, as well as between Copenhagen and Hamburg and London and Yarmouth, respectively.
The whale was harpooned and lanced to death and either towed to the stern of the ship or to the shore at low tide, where men with long knives would flense (cut up) the blubber.
The stations at first only consisted of tents of sail and crude furnaces, but were soon replaced by more permanent structures of wood and brick, such as Smeerenburg for the Dutch, Lægerneset for the English, and Copenhagen Bay for the Danes.
[64][65] The Southern fishery was launched when Samuel Enderby, along with Alexander Champion and John St Barbe, using American vessels and crews, sent out twelve whaleships in 1776.
Jacob Nicolai Walsøe was probably the first person to suggest the idea of using a small steamboat with a gun mounted in the bows, while Arent Christian Dahl experimented with a combination of an explosive and a harpoon in a single projectile, in the Varanger Fjord (1857–1860).
[76] In 1863 Svend Foyn invented a harpoon with a flexible joint between the head and shaft and adapted Walsøe and Dahl's ideas, initiating the modern whaling era.
In February 1864, Svend Foyn began his first whale-hunting trip to Finnmark in the schooner-rigged, steam-driven whale catcher Spes et Fides (Hope & Faith).
The Faroese Ministry of Culture (Mentamálaráðið) recommended conservation in 2007, suggesting that the whaling station be made into a maritime museum with activities for the visitors.
It revived with the invention of harpoons shot from cannons, explosive tips and factory ships, which allowed distant whaling.
Otherwise the main areas of missing data are: bycatch in countries other than Japan and Korea (generally much smaller), narwhals before 1954; belugas in Canada and USA before 1970, and in Nunavut (Canada) for all years; belugas in USSR in Bering, East Siberian and Laptev Seas and Sea of Okhotsk outside Amur River area.
