274 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



The entry of the Scots into the British whaling business coin- 

 cided with the real beginning of the build-up of the English fleet. 

 In 1765 there were 33 English and 8 Scots whalers; ten years later 

 there were 95 English and 9 Scots; in 1785, 136 English and 13 Scots; 

 and by 1788, 216 English and 31 Scots. This year marked the high 

 point of British Arctic whaUng, and also the beginning of the south- 

 ern fishery, as we have seen. The American Revolution reduced 

 the combined fleet to 5 1 ships, and though Britain was at peace for a 

 time thereafter, press-ganging continued and this, combined with a 

 drastic reduction in the bounty to twenty-five shillings a ton in 1792, 

 again more than halved the fleet. Thereafter, it averaged about a 

 hundred, though it dropped to only 50 in 1800 and rose to 150 in 

 1 816, which marked the opening of the decade in which British 

 whaling as a whole reached its highest tide. 



The British first visited the Davis Strait in 1773 when the Dutch 

 were still whaling there with 182 vessels. Ten years later a group of 

 Dutchmen — the Germans — gave up whaling and turned to sealing 

 exclusively, and the Hollanders' fleet began to decline rapidly, 

 though it was not till about 1820 that they too gave up whales in 

 favor of seals. In the meantime the British slowly forged ahead, or 

 perhaps we might better say, hung on, despite twenty years of al- 

 most continuous wars. During this time, Hull emerged as the lead- 

 ing English whaling port and in 1816 she sent 64 ships to the two 

 fisheries. Meanwhile, the Scots fleet grew healthily but slowly, and 

 its profits remained surprisingly stable. The most significant aspect 

 of this build-up phase of British whaling was, however, the whale- 

 men's first real encounter with a phenomenon that was new both to 

 them and to seamanship as a whole. This was the Arctic Ice. 



Now, the Arctic Ice is composed of three quite separate things. 

 First, there is seasonal ice, which is just a lot of frozen sea; second, 

 there are icebergs, which originate on land, act like and are, in fact, 

 great hunks of "rock" that can float; and third, there is the perma- 

 nent Arctic Ice-raft. This is, comparatively speaking, only a few 

 feet thick, but at the present time extends over the whole Arctic 

 Ocean like an immense, inverted, shallow bowl. It is not, however, 

 rigid, homogenous, or even permanent, for it revolves very slowly 

 like a huge wheel, while its component parts flow in and out of 

 each other in the most complicated and sometimes amazing manner. 



