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The Basques called the area they frequented Grandbaya (Grand Bay), today known as the Strait of Belle Isle, which separates Newfoundland from southern Labrador. Their initial voyages to this area were mixed cod and whaling ventures. Instead of returning home with whale oil, they brought back whale meat in brine.
Maritime history dates back thousands of years. In ancient maritime history, [1] evidence of maritime trade between civilizations dates back at least two millennia. [2] The first prehistoric boats are presumed to have been dugout canoes which were developed independently by various Stone Age populations.
The early maps were oriented with east at the top. This is believed to have begun in the Middle East. [41] Religion played a role in the drawing of maps. Countries that were predominantly Christian during the Middle Ages placed east at the top of the maps, in part due to Genesis, "the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden". [41]
A third annal says three Basque ships were whaling from Strandir in 1608, while another source says that a Southern Basque ship was whaling around Strandir in 1613 – which would be consistent with an illustration on an early 18th-century map that says: "Anno 1613 by de Biscayers beseylt." The ship was directed to a suitable harbor in ...
Whaling is the hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16th century, it had become the principal industry in the Basque coastal regions of Spain and ...
It was also definitionally a long haul—if ships were at sea for 18 months, that was an incredibly short trip, and it wasn’t uncommon for voyages to last a decade or longer.
Commercial whaling in Great 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.
Spermaceti was especially valuable, and as sperm whaling voyages were several years long, the whaling ships were equipped for all eventualities. There have also been vessels which combined chasing and processing, such as the bottlenose whalers of the late 19th and early 20th century, and catcher/factory ships of the modern era.