THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 7 
for the benefit of the cathedrall church. In the hauen is a great swalth’; and 
when the tide doth runne out, all the whales doe runne into the sayd swalth.”” 
Boty’s account 1s of course pre-Columbian, and as it is supposed to relate to 
the most flourishing period of the Norse colonies in Greenland, we may properly 
consider that the events mentioned in it occurred in the 12th century. What- 
ever the fact as regards the date of this observation, we may well doubt that the 
whales referred to were whalebone whales. It is much more probable that they 
were white whales, Delphinapterus. 
Passing on to the times of Columbus and the great discoverers and explorers, 
the earliest bit of information about the larger whales of Greenland which I find is 
in Beste’s narrative of Martin Frobisher’s third voyage to Davis Strait in 1578. 
An odd accident happened to one of the vessels in his fleet, which is thus 
described : 
[1578. FROBISHER’S THIRD VOYAGE. |] 
“On Monday, the laste of June [1578], wee mette with manye greate whales, 
as they hadde beene porposes. 
“This same day the Salamander being under both hir corses and bonets, 
hapned to strike a greate whale with hir full stemme, wyth such a blow, that the 
ship stoode stil and stirred neither forwarde-nor backward. The whale thereat 
made a great and ugly noise, and caste up his body and tayle, and so went under 
water, and within two dayes after there was founde a greate whale dead , swimming 
5 
above water, which we supposed was that the Salamander stroke.” 
The place where this happened must have been just east of Frobisher Bay, the 
entrance to which (Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland *) they sighted July 2d. 
It is somewhat singular that there is no vessel named Salamander in the roster 
of the fleet. As there is a Salomon or Sollomon, however, it is probable that the 
name is misspelt in the paragraph quoted above. 
From the expression “greate whales, as they hadde beene porposes,” in the first 
sentence, it might be inferred that the Salomon ran against an Orcinus or Hyperod- 
don, rather than a baleen whale, but it seems hardly probable that either of these 
could stop a vessel of above 130 tons under full sail. Furthermore, I presume it 
* An eddy, or whirlpool. 
* A Treatise of Iver Boty a Gronlander, etc. In Asher’s Henry Hudson the Navigator 
(Hakluyt Society, 1860, p. 231). From Purchas His Pilgrimes, v, 3, pp. 518-520. Writings of 
William Barentz in Hudson’s possession. 
The complete heading of the narrative is as follows: “A Treatise of Iver Boty a Gronlander, 
translated out of the Norsh language into High Dutch, in the yeere 1560. And after out of High 
Dutch into Low Dutch, by William Barentson of Amsterdam, who was chiefe Pilot aforesaid [of the 
expedition of 1595 to the Northeast]. The same copie in High Dutch is in the hands of Iodocvs 
Hondivs, which I haue seene. And this was translated out of Low Dutch by Master William 
Stere, Marchant, in the yeere 1608, for the vse of me Henrie Hudson. William Barentsons Booke 
is in the hands of Master Peter Plantivs, who lent the same vnto me.” 
*The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher. Ed. by R. Collinson. Hakluyt Soc., 1867, p. 
234. Reprinted from the rst ed. of Hakluyt’s Voyages. 
“Or Cape Resolution, Resolution Island. 
