66 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



Marina of Olaus Magnus (1539) there is a represen- 

 tation of an English whaler. 



Actual records of whaling voyages in the sixteenth 

 century are rare, though a French Basque named 

 Savalet told Lescarbot that he had made forty-two 

 voyages, and Echevete the Spanish Basque had 

 made twenty-eight voyages across the Atlantic to 

 the Newfoundland coast, and as the Basques were 

 predominantly whalers it is very probable that some, 

 if not all, of these voyages were for whales. 



The Basques, moreover, had the best ships at this 

 period, and were therefore better able to hunt the 

 whale. English vessels were small, their average 

 size being less than fifty tons; the Bretons and 

 Normans had also poor vessels, whereas a Basque 

 ship of four hundred tons with a crew of forty men 

 is recorded. Ordinary fishing vessels at this period 

 had flush decks, three masts, the foremast being 

 very far forward, the mizzen very far aft; the sails 

 were three big lug sails, the ballast sand and the 

 cook-room a solid structure of brick and mortar 

 built on the ballast. 



On the whole the available evidence tends to 

 show that the Basque whalers regularly visited the 

 Newfoundland bays toward the middle of the 

 sixteenth century. According to Harrisse the 

 presence of Basques at Newfoundland is not attested 

 before I528. 1 



The Spanish authorities in general agree with 



1 Decouverte et evolution carlo gra-phique de Terre-Neuve et 

 des Pays Circonvoisins, I4Q7, 1501, 1769, par Henry Harrisse, 

 Paris, 1890, 



