PART I 

 LAUNCHING 



CHAPTER II 

 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND 



THE beginnings of the whale fishery are still 

 shrouded in mist. Only at rare intervals does the 

 modern chronicler catch glimpses of vague and 

 shadowy forms moving across the foggy expanse of 

 mediaeval waters/ Possibly the Japanese and the Tartars were 

 the first to engage in the practice of whale-hunting, making use 

 of large boats which seldom ventured far from shore. The 

 Northmen, however, were probably the first Europeans to 

 molest the whale through deliberate pursuit, even though 

 their hunting was but occasional, unsystematic, and non- 

 commercial. So small was the scale of their operations, and 

 so completely have the traces thereof been obliterated, that 



^Authentic information regarding early European whaling is meager in 

 the extreme. The main sources of material are to be found in the following 

 works: Hakluyt, "Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discov- 

 eries of the English Nation"; Anderson, A., "Historical and Chronological De- 

 duction of the Origin of Commerce"; Moriniere, Noel de la, "Histoire Gen- 

 erale des Peches"; McCulloch, J. R., "A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, 

 and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation." Amongst the 

 works devoted entirely to whaling there are three, in particular, which con- 

 tain important sections concerned with the early history of the industry. These 

 are Scoresby, W., "An Account of the Arctic Regions, With a History and 

 Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery"; Scammon, C. M., "Marine Mam- 

 mals of the Northwestern Coast of North America"; and (the only recent 

 one) Jenkins, J. T., "History of the Whale Fisheries." Virtually all of the 

 material embodied in this chapter was taken from one or another of these 

 publications; and further specific references will not be made to them. 



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