478 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



to Denmark as prizes. The Dutch sailors only escaped 

 death from starvation by their happily falling in with 

 some of their countrymen's vessels after a few days' 

 navigation, who carried them home and reported what had 

 happened. The Commissioners of the Greenland fishery 

 of course lost no time in petitioning the States for redress ; 

 and the proprietors of the captured Dutch vessels mean- 

 while resorted to retaliation by arresting a Danish vessel 

 then lying at Amsterdam. This at once called forth a 

 protest from the Danish Ambassador Griis (or Grys), who, 

 while demanding the release of the arrested ship, stated 

 the alleged cause of the proceedings against the Dutch 

 in Greenland to be a monopoly of trade granted to a 

 Danish subject on certain parts of that coast, including 

 the bay near Disco where the above-mentioned facts had 

 occurred. The Republic was then no longer as formidable 

 a naval power as a century before, and the States saw 

 fit on this occasion to use the utmost forbearance. They 

 showed to the Danish diplomatist that the arrest laid 

 on one of his country's merchant vessels was a matter 

 of civil litigation, and therefore could not occasion an 

 intervention by the political authorities ; but at the same 

 time they prevailed upon the magistrates of Amsterdam 

 and the parties concerned to release the Danish vessel, 

 a measure dictated by comitas gentium, which, as the 

 States did not fail to represent to the Danish Ambassador, 

 they expected to be responded to by the release of the four 

 captured Dutch vessels. Denmark, far from consenting to 

 such an amicable termination of the difference, gave it con- 

 siderable extension by falling upon the Dutch cod-fishing 

 fleet, then assembled round Iceland to the number of about 

 one hundred vessels. After some chasing and annoying 

 of this fleet, Danish men-of-war ultimately captured four 



