148 A HISTORY OF THE WHALE FISHERIES 



Sound) long after it had been abandoned by the 

 Dutch and French. 



Lancelott Anderson was a whaling captain of 

 Hull. He was on the whaling ship which rescued 

 in May, 1631, the eight English whalemen who had 

 been left behind on Spitsbergen the previous year, 

 and were the first to winter there. 1 He is also 

 mentioned in a list of those engaged in the whaling 

 in 1654. His account of the whaling follows : 



" First, that they usually went out of Hull in the 

 beginning of May, and that it proved three weeks or 

 four voyage to the place they went to which lay in 

 78 gr. of Latitude. 



" Secondly, that they saild between great masses 

 of ice of seventeen or twenty fathomes thick part of 

 which stood out high above the level of the main 

 mast, off which ran spouts of fair fresh water, when 

 the sun shind upon them. To some of these 

 masses of ice (which were of far lesser bulk) they 

 often times fastened their ships by the Ankor when 

 the winds were higher than ordinary to hinder it for 

 running too swiftly that it might not split itselfe upon 

 those great ices. 



" Thirdly, that they caught their whales in some 

 large Bay or other and particularly in the Bay call'd 

 Bell Sound. 



" That they always swome to them in their Boates 

 with harping irons of this shape O -2> to strike them, 



1 V God's Power and Providence shewed in the Miraculous 

 Preservation and Deliverance of Eight Englishmen," London, 

 1631. Reprinted, Hak. Soc., 1855. 



