ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES 41 



between the various European nations at that time, and the 

 Govemmelit of the Netherlands, in an effort to regain its lost 

 prestige, subsidized the industry. Without an allowance for 

 insurance, repairs, and incidental expenses, an Arctic voyage 

 cost about ninety-eight hundred florins for outfit, supplies, and 

 wages, and the Government allowed any returned whaling 

 vessel fifty florins for every cask of blubber necessary to bring 

 its cargo up to a hundred casks, or five thousand florins if she 

 returned empty — a most suggestive measure. 



In the German whaleship Greenland, harassed by many fears, 

 a young man named Kohler sailed on March 16, 1801. His 

 curious narrative, to which his excessive and naive prudence 

 lends no little humour, dwells much upon such matters as the 

 food and drink, of which he finds little good to say. At four 

 o'clock every morning, they had coarse groats with butter for 

 breakfast. On a Sunday they would have gray peas and pickled 

 meat for dinner, on a Monday, yellow peas and stockfish, and 

 so on in endless rotation day after day, and week after week. 

 It was small satisfaction to calculate, on a Sunday morning, 

 when gray peas and meat were in order, that the next Sunday, 

 owing to inexorable succession, yellow peas and stockfish would 

 begin the week. The bread was old and wormy, and they had 

 to wash it before they ate it. Because they had thriftily filled 

 the water casks with oil on one voyage, and used them again for 

 water on the next voyage, the water acquired a flavour and 

 aroma that ill suited the taste of the men. Each man provided 

 his own supply of tea and coffee, and they drank much beer. 



The two days when they got white beans, and the two days 

 when they got sauerkraut stand out from the rest of the voyage 

 as times of exceeding great rejoicing, and when, on the captain's 

 birthday, they drank the health of the King of Denmark, with 

 twenty-two bottles of wine and had potatoes, their enthusiasm 

 knew no limit. 



Whalers of the period sometimes ate whale meat, and some- 

 times they tried seagulls and bears. When they were at 

 Spitzbergen they got ducks and birds' eggs in great quantity, 

 shot reindeer, and gathered for salad, a plant that helped keep 



