62 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



documentary evidence in the Archives of Bayonne 

 and elsewhere as to the existence of a flourishing 

 fishery as early as the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries, a fishery which must have persisted until 

 the seventeenth century, since the earliest har- 

 pooners engaged in Spitsbergen were Basques, 

 there is but little evidence as to the manner in which 

 the fishery was carried on. The term " Baleinier " 

 occurs frequently in marine documents of Bayonne 

 in the Middle Ages. It referred to a special type 

 of vessel, very seaworthy, as ships went in those 

 days, of eighty to one hundred tons burden, devised 

 originally for the whalers, but extended in its use, 

 firstly by the pirates, and secondly on the voyages of 

 discovery of the fifteenth century. 



Fischer gives a long list of references to whales 

 and whaling, but these are mostly acknowledg- 

 ments of the lordship of the coasts and the seas and 

 the inhabitants thereof; or documents of a similar 

 nature. 



In the sixteenth century the flesh, and especially 

 the tongue of the whale, was sold in the markets of 

 Bayonne, Cibourre, and Biarritz. The blubber 

 was salted and sold inland, in the east of France. 

 The first detailed description of the Basque whaling 

 is that by Ambroise Pare, who visited Bayonne when 

 Charles IX. was there in 1564. 



The whale is taken in several places in winter, 1 



1 But Clayrac fixes the time of the appearance of the whales 

 off the coasts of Guienne and Biarritz as the September equinox. 

 See Us et coutumes de la mer, Rouen, 1671. 



