THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 477 



memorial was addressed to Denmark in 1637 to refute 

 their claims to a whaling monopoly off Iceland, and as 

 these claims are not mentioned again in the States' 

 Resolutions of the next years, they appear to have been 

 suffered to drop, as had the Greenland difficulties in 1616. 

 Still, pretensions of the said nature were not given up 

 by Denmark. In 1639 Dutch whalers were menaced 

 and annoyed by Danish men-of-war, in virtue of a law 

 issued against all who should fish off Spitzbergen without 

 a Danish passport ; and once more a " well-reasoned 

 memorial" from the States appears to have settled 

 matters. It would indeed have been indifferent policy for 

 Denmark to push them too far against a power whose 

 navy had just then beaten Spain and kept England at 

 bay in the famous battle of the Downs. I have found 

 no further mention of fishery difficulties with Denmark 

 till a century later, when the Danish claims for the first 

 time gave rise to actual violence, the first motive for 

 which, however, was taken not from a fishing but from a 

 trading monopoly. 



It has been recorded in another chapter that Dutch 

 whalers used in the eighteenth century to apply themselves, 

 besides the exercise of their industry properly said, to 

 traffic with the natives of the Arctic countries. This trade 

 first occasioned a collision between Denmark and Holland 

 in the year 1739, in a bay near Disco Island, Greenland. 

 A Dutch whaler anchored there, and doing business with 

 the natives, was arrested and captured by a Danish man- 

 of-war, and four more Dutch vessels, equally trading with 

 the inhabitants, soon after endured a regular bombardment 

 by three of the King of Denmark's ships, whose com- 

 mander, having captured the vessels and crews, launched 

 the latter off to sea in open boats, and brought the ships 



