page_title: Whaling in the United Kingdom
section_title: The northern whale fishery
hierarchical_section_title: Whaling in the United Kingdom / The northern whale fishery
caption_attribution_description: William Scoresby. Line engraving by E. Smith, 1821, after A. Mosses. Iconographic Collections Keywords: William Scoresby
context_page_description: Commercial whaling in Britain began late in the 16th century and continued after the 1801 formation of the United Kingdom and intermittently until the middle of the 20th century.
  The trade was broadly divided into two branches. The northern fishery involved hunting the bowhead whale off the coast of Greenland and adjacent islands. The southern fishery was activity anywhere else, including in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans and off the Antarctic. The Sperm whale, the Southern right whale and Humpback whale were the main target species in South Sea whaling. The industry went on to become a profitable national enterprise and a source of skilled mariners for the Royal Navy in times of war.
  Modern whaling, using factory ships and catchers fitted with bow-mounted cannon that fired explosive harpoons, continued into the 20th century and was mainly focused on the Antarctic and nearby islands where shore stations had also been established. The collapse of whale stocks in the 1960s, due to overfishing, saw Britain abandon the industry after three and a half centuries of involvement.
context_section_description: A vessel owned by the London-based Muscovy Company discovered and began to exploit the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) whaling grounds in 1611. By 1617 at least fifteen British vessels were whaling off Spitsbergen each season. Ongoing participation in the fishery proved elusive. It was due, in part, to costly competition between rival chartered companies as they tried to exclude each other, and their foreign rivals, from the region. In the meantime, the Dutch had entered the fishery and soon became dominant. By the 1660s, there were hundreds of Dutch and German vessels active off Spitsbergen, while in some years not a single British vessel.
  Parliament tried to revive British involvement late in the 17th century. It began with legislation in 1672 that allowed British whaling crews to be composed of up to half foreign nationals, such as the skilled Dutch. The Act also exempted British-caught oil from customs duty, and imposed a £9 a tun duty on oil and £18 on “whale fins” (baleen) imported from other national fleets. It was not till Dutch involvement began to falter in the 1690s, due to political turmoil and warfare in Holland, that the British saw an opportunity, which led to the creation of the Greenland Company. The initiative was unsuccessful and the losses incurred were so large they discouraged further British involvement in the trade till the 1720s, when Henry Elking persuaded the South Sea Company to try the Spitsbergen fishery. Two dozen new vessels were built and equipped and sent forth under the direction of Elking as agent and superintendent for the Greenland Fishery on a salary of £100 a year plus 1.5% of gross sales. This initiative too was unsuccessful and spelled the end of chartered company involvement in the trade in Britain.
  Parliament wanted to revive whaling to reduce the trade imbalance with Holland and at the same time build up a naval reserve of ships and men that could be easily mobilised in times of war. In 1732 it offered an annual bounty of twenty shillings (one pound sterling) a ton for all whaling vessels over 200 tons fitted out in Great Britain, the relevant legislation coming into force in 1733. The bounty was increased to thirty shillings a ton in 1740, but even then only four or five British vessels sailed north each year. Most of these were owned by merchants who imported whale oil.
  The government increased the bounty to forty shillings a ton in 1750 and this proved the tipping point for a take off in the trade. Just two ships were fitted out in 1749, increasing to twenty in 1750, and eighty-three by 1756. The forty shillings a ton bounty represented a subsidy of £600 for the average sized 300 ton ship in the trade. Also important was a jump in demand for whale oil. The manufacture of woollen textiles was increasing and right whale oil was widely used to clean wool before it was spun. The Industrial Revolution needed lubricants for machinery, and growing urbanization increased the demand for lamp fuel, including in street lighting. London was the best lit city in the world, with 5000 street lamps by the 1740s. The building industry also used whale oil as an ingredient in paint, varnish and putty. All of this increase in demand led to a rise in price. The average wholesale price was £14 7s a tun early in the 1740s and this rose to £27 a tun in 1754. At the same time Dutch had started to withdraw from the fishery.
  Scottish ports were well placed to participate in the growth of the fleet. They were closer to the northern whaling grounds and sent forth more whalers to the Arctic than English outports early in this revival of interest in the trade. Scottish ports involved in the trade, in order of importance, were, Leith, Dunbar, Barrowstoness, Dundee, Aberdeen, Montrose, Glasgow, Anstruther, Greenock, Kirkcaldy and Alloa.
  London remained the single most important port dispatching 71% of British whalers in 1753. Other English ports involved include Hull (from 1598), Newcastle (1752), Whitby (1753), Exeter (1754), Ipswich (1786) and Peterhead (1788). Additional English and Welsh ports participating dur
caption: Captain William Scoresby jnr. (1789-1857) was a noted Arctic whaler, explorer, scientist, author and clergyman.
exif: {}