The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

The commercial Northeast Atlantic exploitation of the baleen whale
species started in the sixteenth century with the catching of Bowhead
(Eubalaena glacialis). Later, in the seventeenth century, Shetland,
Scottish, Orkney, English, Dutch, and later also Danish-Norwegian
whalers learnt from the Basques and began to catch the whales and
Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) first at Svalbard, later further to the west in
the North Atlantic. 113
In 1863 the Norwegian Svend Foyn built the first steam whaler (Spes
et Fides), and in 1870 he invented the bomb harpoon, which made it
possible to hunt also the faster swimming rorquals, species such as Blue
Whale (Balaenoptera musculus), Fin Whale (B. physalus), Sei Whale (B.
borealis), Humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae), and at last also the
small Minke Whale (B. acutorostrata). Svend Foyn also invented the
inflation lance at that time to fill the killed whales with compressed air
preventing them from sinking.
These three inventions revolutionised the whaling industry in such a
way that the populations were soon depleted off northern Norway, and
the Norwegian Parliament banned whaling off the three northernmost
fylker of Norway by an Act coming into force in 1904. Accordingly,
Norwegian whalers from Tønsberg led by Svend Foyn moved first to
Iceland in 1883, to Newfoundland in 1889, and in 1892 to Gryteviken in
South Georgia. The Tønsberg whalers worked only on a small scale in
the Faroes. This area was occupied by whalers from Sandefjord who
went first to Iceland in 1883, to the Antarctic in 1892, then to the Faroes
in 1893, and finally to Shetland in 1894. 114 Faroese whaling was based
mostly on fin whales, since the blue whale was becoming scarce at that
time.
Hans Albert Grøn from Sandefjord, Norway, started up in the Faroes
in 1893 and built the first whaling station at Gjánoyri, north of Streymnes
at Streymoy. Grøn had his first catching season in 1894 with the whaling
boat Urd and got 46 whales and 940 barrels of oil. 115 The first year was
taxfree, but from 1895, a tax of 25 DKK per whale had to be paid to the
Faroes, and from 1897 this was doubled to 50 DKK per whale. The first
catching years in the Faroes were so successful that other companies
113 P.U. Jepsen, 1994. R. Smith, 1993.
114 S. Risting, 1922. J.N. Tønnesen, 1967. J.N. Tønnesen & A.O. Johnsen, 1982.
115 S. Risting, 1922.
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