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THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

The mighty whale doth in those harbors lye,
Whose oyle the careful merchant deare will buy.

Primitive Whalemen.

FRO

Old English Poem.

Exploits of Old Ochter.

ROM very early times it is probable that Northwest Indians, Esquimaux, and Norwegians were in the habit of capturing whales in their rude way, in order to supply themselves with fat and food. There is a curious tradition extant of one Ochter, a Norwegian, who, as long ago as King Alfred's time, "was one of six that had killed sixty whales in two days, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long." But the Biscayans are believed to have been the first people who prosecuted the whale fishery as a commercial pursuit, so far back as the twelfth century. In the north of Europe and all around the Bay of Biscay

Different Whale Catchers.

Dutch Whale Diggings.

whale's tongues were among the table delicacies of the Middle Ages.

When this branch of industry failed with them, by reason of whales ceasing to visit the Bay of Biscay, the English and Dutch, taught by the Biscayans, 'who were best experienced in that facultie of whale-striking,' took it up in the Northern Seas, where the gigantic game was then every where found in vast numbers by navigators in search of the northern passage to the Indies. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Dutch had built the considerable village of Smeerenburg, on the Isle of Amsterdam, along the northern shore of Spitzbergen, within only eleven degrees of the North Pole, where the unbroken night is from September to March, and the day from March to September. This was the great rendezvous of Dutch whale ships, and it being their practice to boil the blubber on shore, it was amply provided with boilers, tanks, and all the apparatus then used for preparing the oil and bone.

This fishing colony of the frozen zone, an incidental fruit of those daring adventures after a northeast route to India, was founded nearly at the same time with Batavia in the East, and

Arctic Whaling Colony.

First Nantucket Whale Killing.

it was for a considerable time doubtful which of the two would be most important to the mother country. When in its most flourishing state, near 1680, the Dutch whale fishery employed two hundred and sixty ships and fourteen thousand seamen. This singular village and Bay of Smeerenburg, where there were seen at one time by the Dutch navigator Zorgdrager no less than one hundred and eightyeight vessels, afford, perhaps, the most remarkable instance on record of what commerce can do against unyielding laws of Nature, and over obstructions which it would seem impossible to surmount. But how soon does Nature, if ever temporarily displaced, resume her sway. Now that the whales have long since deserted those parts, even the site of the old Arctic colony is hardly discernible, and the English branch of the Greenland whale fishery is all that is prosecuted in those seas, and that with very moderate success.

The first person that is recorded to have killed a whale among the people of New England was one William Hamilton, somewhere between 1660 and 1670. In the town records of Nantucket, there is a copy of an agreement entered

Yankee Whale Fixings.

Cape Cod Enterprise.

into in the year 1672, between one James Lopar and the settlers there, "to carry on a design of whale fishing." But whether the first proper whaling harpoon used in America was wrought there or on Cape Cod can not be ascertained. From this time onward, whenever whales were descried in the bay or offing from the rude look-outs constructed along shore, notice was instantly spread, and they were attacked by boats then manned mostly by the Indians, who early evinced an aptitude and fondness for this business. Shore-whaling seems to have reached its height by 1726, during which year eighty-six whales were taken, eleven in one day. It was continued with declining success up to 1760, and for seventy years preceding that date not a single white man is known to have lost his life in the hazardous pursuit.

As early as 1700, they began to fit out vessels from Cape Cod and Nantucket to "whale out in the deep for sperm whales." These gradually crept along, emboldened by experience, north to the Labradors and south to the Bahamas, where New Providence became famous as a whale-fishing station, through the skill and daring of New England enterprise, while, as

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