APPENDIX A 



^he Chronology of Whaling 

 from i;;o a.d. fo igjo a.d. 



THE chronology of modern whaling, which may be said to have been 

 initiated about the middle of the sixteenth century when the British 

 and Dutch entered the business, can readily be displayed from the his- 

 torical or temporal point of view. Exact dates and a wealth of statistics 

 are available. However, when we attempt to show the volume of the 

 whaling prosecuted, we immediately encounter insurmountable diffi- 

 culties. 



Upon what criteria are we to base our assessment? Various alternatives 

 are equally permissible, namely, the number of ships employed, the 

 tonnage of those ships, the number of people employed on them or in 

 the industry as a whole, the number of whales taken, the volume of oil 

 and other products produced, landed, or sold, the value of those products, 

 or even the dividends paid. None of these is wholly satisfactory, and for 

 none do we have over-all figures, because at different times and in dif- 

 ferent countries different methods of assessment were used. Moreover, 

 during long periods no proper records were kept at all. Thus, the best 

 we can attempt is some composite picture based on a general assessment 

 of the amount of activity in this field by any one people at any one time. 

 The results are displayed in the accompanying chart. 



As basic criteria in composing this we have taken certain historical 

 statements found in records of later Basque whaling, on the one hand, 

 and in the official statistics given by the International Whaling Com- 

 mission of the post- World War II period, on the other. From these it 

 would appear that, whereas the Basques, even at the time of their most 

 industrious enterprise, probably never landed more than a hundred 

 whales in any one year, the modern industry has taken as many as 

 twenty thousand in a similar period. The comparative activity is shown 

 in these proportions on the accompanying chart, but it must be clearly 



