The Origin of Whaling. 13 
the rest in the whale fishery. One of the vessels carried 
home a large quantity of whalebone, which had been 
cast up from the wreck of two large Biscay fishermen 
in St. George’s Bay. This bone was probably the first, 
at least the first recorded, importation of whalebone 
into England." 
It was the Spitzbergen fishery, however, which 
attracted most of the English ventures, this northern 
fishery growing out of the attempts to discover a north- 
east passage to China and from the trading of the Russia 
Company to Moscow by way of the White Sea and 
Archangel. The discovery of the Greenland grounds 
followed that of Spitzbergen as a natural outcome of 
the spirit of adventure of the time. The merchants of 
Hull fitted out whaling vessels as early as 1598, con- 
tinuing regularly for several years, on the coasts of 
Iceland, near North Cape, and about Spitzbergen after 
its rediscovery by Hudson in 1607. In that short time 
the whale fishery, as Scoresby says,“ “proved the most 
lucrative and most important branch of national com- 
merce, which had ever been offered to the industry of 
man.” The English, however, had but little opportunity 
to reap benefit from this trade before other nations ap- 
peared as competitors. 
Whaling was a novel enterprise in the commercial 
world at the opening of the seventeenth century. It was 
practical and easy because the whales were found in 
abundance in convenient places, and the fishery was 
expected to enrich the adventurers far beyond any other 
branch of trade then carried on. It inevitably drew 
the attention of all the commercial people of Europe, 
Scarcely had the English established themselves in the 
Spitzbergen fishery before they were followed by the 
Dutch, Spanish, French, Danes and Hamburg mer- 
chants.* 
18 Scoresby, p. 18. 
ky Oe 
18 Scoresby, p. 100. 
