HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



The North Pacific whaling fleet of 1884. 



* Okhotsk and Japan Seas. 



tLost. 



DAVIS STRAIT AND HUDSON BAT FISHERY. 



ORIGIN OF THE FISHERY. The whale-fishery had been extensively prosecuted by the Dutch 

 at Spitzbergen and on the east coast of Greenland for more than a hundred years before it was 

 found necessary to seek other fields. The Dutch were the first to push into iiew waters and cap- 

 ture the animals on the west coast of Greenland in Davis Strait. They inaugurated the fishery 

 there in the year 1719, and were soon followed by other European nations. Probably the first 

 American vessel to visit Davis Strait sailed from New England, under Captain Atkins, in 1732. 

 He cruised as far as 66 north. In 1736 several whaling vessels returned to New England from 

 those parts, and in 1737 the Davis Strait fleet from Massachusetts alone numbered between fifty 

 and sixty vessels, a dozen of which were fitted at Provincetown. 



Douglass, in his History of North America, published in 1760, says " some New England 

 men a few years since attempted whaling in the entrance of Davis Strait, but to no advantage; 

 they generally arrived there too late, in keeping too near the Labrador shore (they kept within 50 

 leagues of the shore, they should have kept 150 leagues to sea); they were embayed and impeded 

 by the fields of ice. Last year [1745] Nantucket brought about 10,000 barrels of whale oil to mar- 

 ket, this year they do not follow it so much, because of the low price of oil in Europe, notwith- 

 standing this year they fit out six or seven vessels for Davis Strait, and sail end of March; they 

 sometimes make Cape Farewell in fifteen days, sometimes in not less than six weeks. The 

 whaling season in both Greeulands is in May and June; the Dutch set out for Davis Strait 

 beginning of March; sometimes they are a month in bearing to weather Cape Farewell; they 

 do not arrive in the fishing-grounds until May. Anno 1743, perhaps a medium year, the Dutch 

 had in Davis Strait fifty whaling ships (at Spitzbergen or East Greenland they had one hun- 

 dred and thirty-seven whalers) and got seventy-six and a half whales." 



The American whale-fishery was very prosperous just before the Revolutionary war, when the 

 annual northern fleet fitted out I'nuu Massachusetts numbered one hundred and eighty-three 



