WHALERS OF LONG AGO 17 



lookout towers for spouting whales and put to sea after them in 

 small boats. When the lookout sighted the white spout he 

 sounded a bell to call the villagers, and they came racing 

 helter-skelter, from plough and hut and shop, to their boats. 

 The whales that they took they towed ashore and stripped of 

 the blubber, which they boiled beside the sea. Whole com- 

 munities shared the danger, the labour, and the gains of the in- 

 dustry. 



As the whales became fewer and shyer, whaling became less 

 directly a community undertaking. Building larger and better 

 vessels than those sent out by their neighbours on the Continent 

 and across the Channel, the Basques put to sea for whales, and 

 they are said to have cruised on the banks of Newfoundland as 

 early as 1372; but the story of those first expeditions is lost, 

 excepting a few vague hints, and not until the middle of the 16th 

 Century, when one Jean de Urdaire commanded a whaler and 

 afterward, so simply were the navies of that day organized, 

 became an admiral, is it possible to learn in detail the story of 

 their voyages. 



At that time the whale served various uses now forgotten. 

 The flesh, especially the tongue, was sold for meat on the coast 

 and was salted for sale farther inland. The whalebone, before 

 its common use for *' ladies' stays,'' was fashioned into knife 

 handles and even shredded into plumes for the helmets of 

 noble knights in tourney. The vertebrae were made into chair 

 seats, and the entire skeleton into garden fences. For several 

 centuries the oil — train oil, so called from the Dutch word 

 Traan, a tear or drop — was of great importance in soap-making 

 and in the manufacture of woollen cloth, perhaps before its use 

 for street lamps — to which it succeeded — was even thought 

 of. 



At all events, whaling is an ancient trade. There is evidence 

 that Basque whalers were crossing the Atlantic by the middle of 

 the 16th Century, and we know definitely that late in that 

 century the Basques commonly fished and whaled in the waters 

 off Newfoundland. 



Of early whaling on the western side of the Atlantic, there 



