THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 53 



ed them thither, and the blubber could no longer be landed, 

 but had to be cut from the floating whale in small pieces, 

 and brought home in casks for boiling. The new method 

 of fishing was often found dangerous to man, and perilous 

 to shipping. So discouraged were the English adventurers, 

 that they soon afterward relinquished the fishery, until the 

 time of Charles II. In 1618, with respect to the whale-fish- 

 ing of Holland, De Witte quotes Sievan Van Aitzma, who 

 says * that the whale-fishery to the northward employs about 

 12,000 men at sea.' Anderson, in his ' Annals of Commerce,' 

 treats this as an exaggeration. 



"In 1634 'The Dutch Greenland Company ' made an ex- 

 periment of the possibility of human beings living through 

 a whole winter at Spitsbergen, till then believed to be im- 

 possible. They left seven of their sailors to winter there, 

 one of whom kept a diary from the llth day of September 

 to the 26th of February following. The men were then 

 down with the scurvy, and their limbs were benumbed with 

 the cold, so that they could in no way help themselves. They 

 were found dead in the house they had built for themselves, 

 on the return of the ships in 1635. In 1670, Sir Joseph 

 Child, in 'Discourses on Trade,' informs us that in 'the 

 Greenland whale-fishery the Dutch and Hamburgers have 

 annually four or five hundred ships, and the English only 

 one ship last year, and none in the former one.' In an ac- 

 count of the Dutch whale-fishery for forty-six years ending 

 in 1721, we are informed that the 5886 voyages made had 

 secured 32,906 whales, valued at 16,000,000, a clear gain 

 out of the sea, mostly by the labor of the people. 



"In 1740 England made a determined effort to establish 

 the business in her dominions. To this end she granted an 

 additional bounty to those formerly established ; making in 

 all thirty shillings per ton for each voyage on the ships em- 

 ployed; and to induce her mariners to engage in the busi- 



