Hudson shows the way for whalers

Henry Hudson, an English captain employed by the Muscovy Company, left Gravesend on 1 May 1607 aboard the Hopewell, which Dole's America in Spitsbergen describes as an eighty-ton craft. Dole and Martin Conway's No Man's Land both give 27 June 1607 as the day he reached Svalbard. Store norske leksikon, in the entry by Susan Barr, states that only when he arrived in 1607 did people become aware of the hunting possibilities there. The place that mattered was Whales' Bay, later called King's Bay, on the west coast.

Dole says Hudson did not claim to have discovered the land and noted the many whales in the bays and sounds. Conway adds that no new land was found on the voyage and that its main result was the sight of the whales in Whales' Bay. Dole records Hudson's remark that "This land may be profitable to those that will adventure it". Hudson reached the Thames on 15 September and told the Muscovy Company to send ships, where skilful men could secure whalebone, seal-skins and walrus ivory. Conway adds that crews able to kill whales could make profitable voyages. Helge Ingstad's Landet med de kalde kyster says Hudson saw rich stocks of Greenland whale that Barents and his men had apparently missed.

The company acted within a few years. In 1611, according to Conway, it sent two ships with six Basque whalers aboard, because without Basque help English crews could not attack a whale. Conway writes that the Basques killed a whale that gave 12 tons of oil, the earliest whale taken and the earliest train-oil boiled in Svalbard, and that the whale-fishery was founded that year.

Other countries followed. Store norske leksikon lists English, Dutch, German, French, Danish and Norwegian vessels among the hunters and says that armed clashes between ships of different countries occurred several times. Conway reports that in 1613 the Muscovy Company held a charter from King James I excluding all others, and that its seven vessels carried 24 Basque whalers; the Amsterdam merchants hired twelve Basques for their own ships. Ingstad writes that the English sent two warships with the fleet that year and captured a number of Dutch and Basque ships. Conway records that the Noordsche Compagnie was formed on 27 January 1614, that the English obtained an Order in Council on 12 April 1614, and that the land was annexed as King James his Newland, which the Dutch did not recognise. On 23 June 1614 the English and Dutch commanders signed an agreement in Bell Sound dividing the harbours for that season. Ingstad says the English then set up their boiling works on Danskøya and the Dutch on Amsterdamøya, where Smeerenburg later grew, and that the two sides agreed on a joint front against other competitors.

Ingstad describes three claims to the land. England relied on Willoughby's supposed discovery, on being first to whale there, and on possession; King Christian IV held that Svalbard was part of Greenland; the Netherlands based its whaling rights on discovery and possession. The two works differ on the Danish side in 1615. Conway says Sir John Cunningham came with three Danish warships and a pinnace to assert Danish sovereignty. Ingstad says five Norwegian-Danish warships under Admiral Gabriel Kruse came to demand a fee from the whalers. Ingstad adds that the English and Dutch tolerated Danish and Norwegian hunting while driving other nations' ships away.

In 1618, Ingstad says, the Dutch sent twenty-six armed ships, there was a regular battle, some English ships were taken, some of their crews were killed, and the Dutch shared the spoil. Dole adds that they burned the English house at Horn Sound. Ingstad gives the English claim of loss as 66436 pounds, and Dole says more than sixty-six thousand. Dole writes that a court decreed that the Dutch must return the goods within three months or pay twenty-two thousand pounds, but neither side paid, and the Muscovy Company later sold its whaling rights to four partners. Ingstad writes that in 1619 an arrangement gave the Dutch the north-west and the English the southern fjords, with Danes and Norwegians allowed to hunt in both areas, and that by 1623 the hostilities had ebbed out.