12 A History of the American Whale Fishery. 
west as the Banks of Newfoundland, touching Iceland 
and Greenland on the way. From Gosnold’s journal 
of his voyage in 1602 itis also probable that they cruised 
southward along the New England coast.” It is impos- 
sible to say what proportions the Biscayan industry 
ever assumed, though it is unquestioned that the Biscay 
whalers were the mainstays of many of the whaling 
fleets of Europe for a long time after whaling became 
an important industry. The Icelanders, with whom 
the Biscayans came in contact, were attracted by the 
prospect of a new branch of commerce. They fitted 
out vessels, and uniting their energies with those of the 
Biscayans, carried on such an extensive fishery that 
toward the end of the sixteenth century the number 
of vessels employed by the united nations amounted 
to fifty or sixty sail annually." As late as 1721 twenty 
ships were sent out on whaling voyages from different 
ports in the Bay of Biscay, but toward the latter part 
of the eighteenth century the occupation appears to have 
been totally abandoned.” 
The French in general had greatly neglected the 
whale fishery during the seventeenth century. In 1784 
they attempted to revive it, fitting out ships at Dunkirk 
and offering inducements for Nantucket whalemen to 
remove to that place, but before the project was well 
begun it was interrupted by the French Revolution 
and whaling as a French enterprise was practically 
abandoned. 
After the French, the English were the next important 
nation to embark in the whaling industry. The first 
English attempt of which there is any satisfactory 
account, was made in 1594, when ships were fitted out 
for Cape Breton, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, 
part of the vessels were to engage in hunting the walrus, 
10 Ricketson: History of New Bedford, p. 56. 
1 Scoresby, p. 18. 
12 Scoresby, p. 163. 
