The Greenland Seas, as Seen by the Dutch 



With the decUne in the number of black right whales, notably around 

 Spitsbergen, due to the increased efficiency of whaling methods employed 

 by the Dutchmen, new sources of raw material had to be sought. This 

 led the Dutch first to the northwest and then southward. The reasons 

 for this movement were twofold. First, a new species of whale, the 

 arctic, Greenland, or bowhead, had been discovered by the Basques in 

 the East Greenland Sea, and this animal ranged south round the coast of 

 Greenland and into the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. Second, at that time 

 there was another practically unmolested population of black rights on 

 the western side of the Atlantic that migrated up and down the New 

 England coast and spent the summer in the Labrador Basin when its 

 arctic cousin, the bowhead, was far north by the ice. 



On passing Spitsbergen and turning left, the Dutch immediately came 

 face to face with the Arctic Ice-front. The permanent Ice-raft lies athwart 

 the East Greenland Sea, but pack ice blocks the western half of this, the 

 Greenland Sea, and the Denmark Strait, and thence extends to Cape 

 Farewell and up into Davis Strait. Drift ice ranges much farther south 

 and east, as shown on this map by the fine dotted line. The southern 

 limits of pack ice vary widely between winter and summer and their 

 extent varies from year to year. Also, the over-all volume of pack ice 

 seems to fluctuate over the decades and centuries. In winter it fills Baffin 

 Bay and Davis Strait and often blocks most of the Labrador Basin, link- 

 ing up with the ice of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. South of Spitsbergen 

 it may reach almost to Jan Mayen Land. Iceland, the southern tip of 

 Greenland, and the coast of Norway are kept free only by the Gulf 

 Stream, branches of which bathe these lands with their comparatively 

 warm waters. Thus it was that this ocean river had much greater sig- 

 nificance than winds or land conformity to the whalers of this period. 

 It defined the limits of their operations, and, to almost as great an extent 

 as did the Ice-front itself, it regulated their movements. 



The most profitable whaling was prosecuted right at the Ice-front, so 

 the whalers followed this to the north every spring and then retreated 

 south again before its advance, in the fall. Thus, they finally reached 

 north to Lancaster Sound and passed through this into the Gulf of 

 Boothia among the Canadian Islands. Foxe Basin and Hudson's Bay did 

 not prove to be profitable grounds because the whales went up Baffin 

 Bay and then turned west. 



