THE DUTCH WHALERS PREDOMINANT 123 



The worst year on record was 1668 when the 

 Dutch ships failed to get higher than the Voorland. 

 In an ordinary year the vessels went two hundred 

 and twenty-four miles from Spitsbergen before the 

 real ice fields were found, some thirty-six miles long 

 with smooth water. Sometimes over one hundred 

 ships were attached to the same field. They drifted 

 south with the ice ; when free, if full, they went 

 home, if not, they went back again to 79 N. to make 

 the same circuit again, or to the old whaling grounds 

 to the eastward to Disco or Nova Zembla. 



If, after a mild winter, there happened to be a hot 

 summer and winds favourable for scattering the ice, 

 then there was a good deal of open water in the ice- 

 bearing current of Greenland, and consequently few 

 whales, for they avoided open water. When the 

 Dutch whalers had been unsuccessful in the west 

 ice and were induced to go to Nova Zembla, it was 

 probably because there was too much open water, 

 and if this assumption be correct, then they only 

 went to Nova Zembla in favourable years. 



The most favourable year for going north that 

 way must have been a south-ice year when the ice 

 north and east of Nova Zembla came down towards 

 the North Sea, and in those south-ice years all the 

 Dutch whalers got plenty of whales in the south ice 

 and did not go north. In some years, when the 

 Dutch whalers had been unsuccessful in the west ice 

 the opening in the ice near Nova Zembla was some- 

 times so great that no ice could be seen. 



The general opinion in the seventeenth and 



