THE DUTCH WHALERS PREDOMINANT 157 



June) whales. After securing five more " fish " 

 they sailed for Bear Harbour, where twenty-eight 

 ships were at anchor, twenty Dutch and eight 

 Germans. They returned home on the 2 ist August. 

 The fishery conditions at this time are not well 

 described. Zorgdrager 1 gives a general account of 

 the extent of the whaling grounds, which comprise 

 the waters from Davis Strait, past Greenland, 

 Iceland, Spitsbergen to Nova Zembla. Martens 

 says the whales are more abundant in the spring 

 towards the west, off Greenland and Jan Mayen, 

 later they move east to Spitsbergen. According to 

 Zorgdrager there was a considerable fishery north 

 of Jan Mayen in 74 north from 1611 to 1633. 

 In the eighties of the seventeenth century there 

 was a prosperous fishery in Gael-Hamkes Bay in 

 Greenland. 



The ice fishery has been well described by 

 Martens and Zorgdrager, for the period at the end 

 of the seventeenth and the commencement of the 

 eighteenth century. The treatment of the whale's 

 carcass was apparently evolved by the Dutch, the 

 other nations copying their methods. 



1 The full title of Zorgdrager' s book, which was published at 

 Amsterdam in 1720, is, " Bloyende Opkomst der Aloude en 

 Hedendaagsche Groenlandsche Visschery, waar in met eenege 

 g-eoeffende ervaarenheit de geheele omflag deezer Visscherye 

 beschreeven, en wat daar in dient waargenomen naaukeurig 

 verhandelt wordt." A German translation (with different illus- 

 trations) was published at Leipzig in 1723, under the title, 

 " Alte und neue Groenlandische Fischerei und Walfischfang." 

 A second enlarged edition was published at the Hague in 1727, 

 a third edition at Amsterdam in 1728, and a second German 

 edition at Niirnberg in 1750. 



