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 memorial added that there were few, if any, English harpooners or English seamen skilled and exercised in whale-catching, so that "the said trade could not be regained nor carried on without foreign harpinierers, or upon individual risks without a joint-stock fund." As, however, the Greenland fishery did not rally under the protective charter conferred upon the parties subscribing, an additional capital of 42,000l. was raised in 1696, and a new Act obtained, exempting the Company from all duties upon oil, blubber, and whale fins imported during the term of their charter, but before it expired the entire capital was lost, and the Company relinquished the business. Under these circumstances the trade in 1702 was thrown open by Parliament, the Act pronouncing that it had been neglected by the Company, and thus lost to the nation. Twenty years afterwards, in 1721, the number of foreign ships engaged in the Greenland and Davis's Straits fishery were three hundred and fifty-five, of which Holland sent two hundred and fifty-one ships, Hamburg fifty-five, Bremen twenty-four, Biscay twenty, and Bergen, in Norway, five.

In 1699 the trade with Russia, now daily becoming of greater importance, in consequence of the impulse given to the Russian mercantile navy by Peter the Great, was also practically thrown open by an Act entitling any person to admission to the Russia Company upon payment of an entrance fee of five pounds. It was about this time that the Czar abdicated temporarily his high functions as a powerful barbarian prince, and, assuming a pilot's dress, repaired to the Dutch city of Saardam, then celebrated for its extensive ship-building, where he purchased a small vessel,