IN THE YEAR 1613. 
33 
conduct vessels to the new fishing ground, and to prose¬ 
cute discoveries, with a commission as Grand Pilot. 
Four ships, with one hundred and seven men and 
boys, including six Bask harpooners, were fitted out for 
Spitzbergen the following year; which is usually re¬ 
garded as the beginning of the British whale-fishery. 9 
Two of the ships, however, were to go thence to Nova 
Zembla, and prosecute discoveries. 
Of the two vessels remaining at Spitzbergen, one was 
wrecked, and the other overset and sank while lading. 
The crew r s would have fared ill but for the presence of 
a 64 Hull interloper,” commanded by Thomas Marma- 
duke, which carried the men and a portion of their 
freight to London. 
Hull was, and is, one of the most active commercial 
towns in England. Its merchants were among the first 
to engage in the fisheries ; and, disregarding the mo¬ 
nopoly of the Muscovy Company, they sent their ships 
wherever the fish were most plentiful. 
There was, at this time, a class of independent pilots, 
who were ready to enter any service that offered the 
best pay. Sometimes they were in the employment of 
9 This is said to have been the first voyage undertaken expressly for that pur¬ 
pose.— Barrow's Chron. Hist., p. 226; Scoresby's Arctic Regions , vol. ii. p. 22; Purclias , 
vol. iii. p. 465. Of course, whales had been taken, long before, by the English; but 
not as a distinct and regular business. Anderson says, under date of 1593, “ Some 
English ships now made a voyage to Cape Breton, at the entrance of the Bay of St. 
Lawrence, in America ; some for morse-fishing, and others for whale-fishing, says 
Hakluyt: which is the first mention to be met with of the latter fishery by any Eng¬ 
lish. And, although they found no whales there, they, however, discovered on an island 
eight hundred whale-fins, where a Biscay ship had been lost three years before; and 
this, too, is the first account we have of whale-fins, or whalebone, by the English. 
How the ladies’ stays were made, before this commodious material was found out, does 
not appear. It is probable that slit pieces of cane, or some tough and pliant wood, 
might have been in use before.” — Hist, of Com., vol. ii. p. 245. 
5 
