Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/31

Rh the fields of enterprise that attracted most attention was that of the northern fisheries. Besides whales, the frequenters of the Greenland coasts now began to kill morses, or sea-horses, whose teeth were then esteemed more valuable than ivory. The fishery was at first prosecuted by individual adventurers, but at length the Russia Company having entered into the business obtained, in 1613, a charter from James, excluding all other persons from sailing to Spitzbergen; acting upon which they that year fitted out seven armed ships, with which they drove away from those seas four English fishing-vessels, and fifteen sail of Dutch, French, and Biscayans, and forced some other French ships, which they permitted to remain, to pay them tribute for their forbearance. The next year the company sent out thirteen ships; but the Dutch had now taken care to be provided for them, and, appearing with eighteen vessels, four of which were men-of-war, set them at defiance, and remained and fished at their case, as usual. In 1615 a new claim to the dominion of Spitzbergen and the surrounding waters was preferred by the Danes, who made their appearance with three ships of war, being the first Danish vessels that had ever been seen in that quarter, and demanded tribute or toll both from the Dutch and the English, who were, however, too strong for them to succeed in enforcing their claim. We have already mentioned the junction of the Russia and East India Companies for the prosecution of the Greenland fishery. It is said to be in 1617 that the earliest mention is found of fins or whalebone being brought home along with the blubber. The dispute between the English and Dutch about the right of fishing still continued to be waged with great animosity and occasional violence; meanwhile, "the manner of managing the whale-fishing of both nations," says Anderson, in a summary of the details given by the voyagers of the time, "was then quite different from what it is in our days. The whales, in those early times, having never been disturbed, resorted to the bays near the shore, so that their blubber was easily landed at Spitzbergen, where they erected cookeries (that is, coppers, &c.) for