508 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



easily taken, and their blubber was tried out on shore while 

 the vessel remained at anchor in some bay where operations 

 centered. The crews of the nations whaling here frequently 

 engaged in hostilities, so that it became necessary for a time to 

 divide the Spitsbergen coast among the several nationalities. 

 Meanwhile the Dutch whalers were busy at Jan Mayen pur- 

 suing this species there. In the course of two decades of this 

 slaughter the whales became scarce in the bays of Spitsbergen 

 though still for a time plentiful in the adjacent seas, so that 

 the carcasses could still be towed into some harbor and the oil 

 tried out on shore. "But as the whales increased their dis- 

 tance it became necessary to take the blubber on board, and 

 the ships could enter port only occasionally. The blubber had 

 to be packed in casks and the oil was extracted at home, after 

 the conclusion of the voyage. The factory buildings in Spits- 

 bergen had become useless, and Scoresby remarks that several 

 of them were still to be found in 1671 " (Harmer, 1928). With 

 the opening decades of the eighteenth century, the fishery in 

 these seas, which had begun to decline even by 1640 or there- 

 abouts, was now almost unprofitable. The few whales still to 

 be found were sought along the borders of the ice pack in 

 places difficult of access and at a distance from land. 



At about this time the Dutch in 1719 began whaling in 

 Davis Strait, and the activities thereafter centered on the west 

 coast of Greenland. The pursuit eventually was chiefly car- 

 ried on by whalers from England and Scotland and continued 

 actively for nearly two centuries. Some idea of its magnitude 

 may be gained from the figures given by Scoresby (1820, vol. 

 2, pp. 128-131), who presents a table showing that in the four 

 years ending with 1817 a total of 586 vessels was sent out to 

 the fishery from British ports alone, and their total catch was 

 5,030 whales, practically all of which were bowheads. The 

 Dutch between 1719 and 1778, took nearly 7,000 in Davis 

 Strait and Disco Bay. Nevertheless, as Harmer points out, 

 this slaughter was small compared to that lately carried out in 

 the Antarctic waters against the fin whales. In 1851, vessels 

 began wintering over in Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, in 

 order to be on hand at the breaking up of the ice in spring. 

 Vessels equipped with steam penetrated through Lancaster 

 Sound to Pond Inlet, and other waters where whales still could 

 be found following open water along the edge of the ice pack. 



