152 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



Q. What things are to be caught in the sea? 



A. Marketable marine fishes are; dolphins and sturgeons, lob- 

 sters and crabs, mussels . . . 



Q. Have you strength to capture any whales? 



A. No. 



Q. Why? 



A. Because it is very dangerous to catch whales. It is only safe 

 to go upon deep water in a ship and for me in as many ships 

 as possible if to chase whales. 



Q. And yet for all that, many people do capture whales and 

 avoid danger? 



This would indicate that whaling was well known in Anglo-Saxon 

 England, and that it appears to have been carried on there, off the 

 coasts at least. 



The English were always great privateers, and from time to time 

 they captured Basque ships loaded with whale products returning 

 from Newfoundland. The Mary Margaret was probably the first 

 British ship to be specially fitted out for whaling, and that was only 

 in 161 1, but fifty years before, British fishermen occasionally went 

 to Newfoundland along with the Basque fleets. In 1578 there were 

 100 Basque codfishers and 30 whalers there, 50 Portuguese, 150 

 French and Breton, all after cod with very small ships, and 50 Brit- 

 ish ships. The earliest record of a British ship going specifially for 

 whales to the Newfoundland area is that of the Grace of only 35 

 tons and with a crew of twelve out of Bristol in 1594. They col- 

 lected only some baleen from two wrecked Basque ships. In the 

 meantime, however, as we have seen already, the Muscovy Company 

 had been formed in 1555, and reorganized in 1575, but still nothing 

 concrete happened for another quarter of a century. 



The British have only recently become noted for their invariable 

 policy of "too Httle and too late," and it is not realized in some quar- 

 ters that this is a most venerable tradition among them. After more 

 than fifty years of debate the Muscovy Company finally sent out 

 one little ship of 60 tons, under one Thomas Welden, to Bear Island, 

 where it collected some walrus oil in 1 604. Five years later a slightly 

 larger vessel, the Lionesse^ under an odd character named Jonas 

 Poole, claimed Bear Island for Britain and then, since the walrus there 

 were getting scarce, reported on "the multitude of whales that 



