THE WHALE FISHERY. 397 



the North Cape, and five different companies were in 1881 represented by steamers. The first 

 promoter of the whale and .seal fishery in Norway, Capt. Svend Foyn, alone caught last summer 

 one hundred and seven whales, and is now building two new steamers for whaling. Another vessel 

 caught sixty whales on the same fishing grounds. Though it appears that whales are abundant 

 on the shores of Fin mark, it must be borne in mind from previous experience that these animals 

 must finally be exterminated. 



" The present fishing grounds are circumscribed, and there may come a time when these giant 

 animals, who propagate but slowly, may disappear from the waters where they resort while 

 devouring the masses of fish they drive in front of them. 



" The value of an ordinary whale has, been estimated at about 2,000 crowns [about $536], 

 which, for two hundred and eighty whales killed last summer, gives a total sum of over half a 

 million crowns [about $150,000]. To draw a comparison, we may state that the eleven steamers 

 fitted out this year from Dundee, Scotland, for whale fishing off Greenland, caught forty-eight 

 whales, valued at 35,000 or 630,000 crowns [$169,000, or an average of about $3,520 per whale]. 



" The fishermen engaged in the important cod fisheries off the Finmark shores have protested 

 strongly against the whale fishing on their usual fishing grounds, and to the south of this country 

 we find the same prejudice against whale fishing among the Swedes, who are this winter engaged 

 in large herring fisheries. They have lately opposed the approach of a Norwegian whaler in the 

 waters where they are engaged. The Norwegian whaler, which had been hired by a Swedish firm, 

 was driven off on the plea that it was unlawful in Sweden to shoot where herring are being 



'fished."* 



GREAT BRITAIN. 



The British whale fishery dates from about the beginning of the seventeenth century, as 

 above stated in the discussion of whaling at Spitsbergen. 



" Greenland was first discovered by the English ; but in this, as in other branches of naviga- 

 tion, \\ ( long allowed the Dutch to take a lead. It was not till after 1750 that, Government having 

 granted a bounty of 40s. a ton on every vessel employed in the whale fishery, a considerable increase 

 took place in this branch. In 1750 the vessels employed were only nineteen ; in 1756 they had 

 increased to sixty-seven. The war soou caused a decrease of one-half ; but at the return of peace, 

 in 1763, this fishery revived, and in 1770 the vessels employed amounted to fifty, in 1773 to fifty-five, 

 in 1775 to ninety six. The American war again caused a decrease, and in 1782 the vessels so 

 employed were only thirty eight. In 1784 they increased to eighty-nine, and in 1785 to one hun- 

 dred and forty. After this they exceeded two hundred annually till 1793; but the long continu- 

 ance of the late war reduced them below half the number employed previously. In 1852 the whale 

 fishery employed ships of the aggregate burden of 16,113 tons."t 



The first whale ship to enter the Pacific Ocean is said to have sailed from England in 1787, 

 and was sent l>y the colony of Nantucket whalemen who had gone to England at the close of the 

 Revolutionary war. "Capt. Archelus Hammond," says Mr. F. C. Sauford, of Nantucket, "was 

 first officer of that ship, and struck the first sperm whale ever known to be taken in that ocean. 

 He afterwards sailed from London in the ship Cyrus, which ship he gave up to Paul West, his 

 second officer, in 1801, and West made a fortune in her and left her to join his family in America, 

 arriving in 1813. Captain Hammond came home to Nantucket in 1830." 



The British whale fishery reached its greatest prosperity in 1815, when there were one hundred 

 and sixty-four whalers on the ocean. About the year 1850 there were twenty-three British vessels in 



' Commercial reports, State Department, No. 16, February, 1888, p. 293. 

 t Encyclopaedia Brittanica. 



