142 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



of which will be most dangerous to English 

 navigation. 



The dispute between the Greenland or Mus- 

 covy Company and the " Interlopers," as they 

 were called, was really an important trade 

 quarrel between monopolists on the one hand 

 and free traders on the other. Briefly, the 

 Muscovy Company claimed the sole right to the 

 whale fishery at Spitsbergen on the following 

 grounds : x 



Their discovery of the trade and its protection 

 from the Dutch, their chartered rights confirmed by 

 the Navy Commissioners and the Committee for 

 Trade, and their vested interests. In 1654 a strong 

 effort was made to put an end to these everlasting 

 disputes, which naturally exercised a detrimental 

 influence on the whaling trade. A petition to the 

 Protector was drawn up (i7th January, 1654), by 

 Francis Ashe, Governor of the Muscovy Company, 

 in which an appeal is made for regulations for the 

 trade, so that rival interests should not clash in 

 certain harbours, and more harbours might be 

 opened up for whaling. The Company wished to 

 retain possession of Home and Bell Sounds, urging 

 that private adventurers could not succeed, because 

 the erection of storehouses is needful to store the 

 oil of a successful year, which will occur every three 

 or four years, when the whales come in shoals, and 



1 To give full details of this dispute would require a special 

 volume. See The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, from 

 1611 to 1671. 



