202 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY. 
IV. 
NOTES ON THE ARCTIC WHALE-FISHERY 
FROM YARMOUTH AND LYNN. 
By Thos. Southwell, F.Z.S., V.-P. 
Read 30 th January, 1906. 
The importance of the Whale-fishery not only from a com- 
mercial point of view, but also as a training school for our 
naval seamen, was fully recognised of old and encouraged by 
successive governments, and there was scarcely a seaport on 
the East coast which did not more or less at some time 
participate in it. In our own county, Yarmouth and Lynn 
long took part in the venture, but the materials for a history 
of the parts they played, like the object of their pursuit, are 
rapidly vanishing, the log-books kept during the voyages are 
lost or destroyed, and even tradition has for the most part 
faded away ; it therefore appears most desirable to put on 
record such scanty materials as remain, and this has induced 
me to collect the scattered facts which have come under my 
notice in many years’ study of the group of animals to which 
they refer, with a view to preserving them ere it is too late, 
and in accordance with our tradition of giving precedence to 
local matters, I have in what follows confined myself to tw'o 
Norfolk ports — Yarmouth and Lynn. 
The Whale-fishery, as you are doubtless aware, is an exceed- 
ingly ancient industry ; the Norwegian voyager, Ohthere, in 
his narration to King Alfred, spoke of the Whales captured 
in the 9th century in his own country, and the Basques were 
Whale-fishers in the Bay of Biscay certainly as early as the 
13th century ; they are even said to have frequented the 
Banks of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 
