410 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



monopoly left competition free.* Not being bound to any 

 particular place or establishment, nor burdened with a con- 

 siderable capital sunk in buildings, boilers, forts, &c., whalers 

 from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Zaandam, Rijp and many 

 other towns began to sail after the whales wherever they 

 could be found, and generally brought home sufficient cargoes 

 of blubber and whalebone. The killing of walrus and seals 

 was likewise practised with some success after the Arctic 

 or Greenland Company's dissolution, which took place in 

 1645 ; and the trade, which had at first been fostered by the 

 company's monopoly, thus acquired renewed vigour after its 

 extinction.! It should, however, be added, that quarrels 

 and even actual deeds of violence between Dutch whalers 

 occurred frequently in the first years after the expiration of 

 the monopoly.^ 



A trade so very dependent on climatic circumstances 

 could scarcely yield anything like constant profit ; and it 

 is accordingly described as being " more of a lottery than 

 a trade," by most of the authors who have written about it. 

 A series of accounts of ships wrecked and crews miracu- 

 lously saved from death by cold and starvation sufficiently 

 corroborate this statement, and are corroborated in their 

 turn by several placards issued at different periods by the 

 States of Holland to secure the owner's rights to vessels 

 abandoned in the ice in various parts of the Arctic Sea. 

 These accidents gradually became more frequent as the 

 whales retreated into or under the more northern ice ; a 

 period of their migrations which coincides with a consider- 

 able change in the method of fishing. During the prosperity 

 of the Arctic Company, when whales, as related above, 



* Zorgdrager, p. 195. 



f Den Koopman, vol. i. p. 239. 



t Res. Holl. 1644, pp. 576-578 ; 1645, P- l 8 ; 1651, p. 279. 



