EARLY HISTORY OF WHALING 65 



They noticed that the thickness of the large whale of 

 the north was double that of the Sarda, its whale- 

 bone longer, and that its oil was clear, whereas that 

 of the Sarda was always cloudy. 



Thomas Edge, who took charge of the first 

 English whaling expedition to Spitsbergen, received 

 instructions as to the voyage in which two distinct 

 species of whales are mentioned ; one is unquestion- 

 ably the Greenland Whale, and the other the 

 Sarda. This Sarda is the Nordcaper of the 

 Dutch, but is it the same as the Sarda of the 

 Basques? Most probably it is, and the Basques 

 were mistaken in thinking that the whales of the 

 Bay of Biscay and the whales they met off the 

 Grand Banks were two distinct species. 



Prior to the first voyages of Columbus (1492) and 

 John Cabot (1497) to America there was an 

 extensive fishery for sea fish at Iceland, a fishery 

 participated in by British, Bretons, and Basques, 

 and probably not confined to Icelandic waters but 

 extending both to Greenland and the Grand Banks 

 of Newfoundland. 



The traces of these fishermen's voyages, under- 

 taken when the science of . navigation was in its 

 infancy, are scattered and fragmentary. The actual 

 references to whaling are of the slightest, but are 

 nevertheless sufficient to indicate that there was 

 some whaling prior to the great Spitsbergen fishery. 



In the will of John Sparks of Cromer (1483), there 

 is mention of a " Bloberhouse " ; l in the Carta 



1 Rye. " Cromer, Past and Present," p. 51. 



