You are here: Home » Ships

The Whaling Ships

The Hudson's Bay Company Ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone Bartering with the Eskimos off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, in 1819 69 Ko The Hudson's Bay Company Ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone Bartering with the Eskimos off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, in 1819

Whaling in the Davis Strait has been a massive effort. The height of this industrial operation as far as ships and men were involved happened from 1720 to 1740 where the Dutch sent some 1736 ships in the eastern part of the Davis Strait harvesting over 3000 whales. (Ross 1993: 543)

At the beginning of the nineteen century the British whaling industry became dominant in the Davis Strait whaling grounds as their vessels penetrated in the northwestern part of the Strait. Due to improved technology, from 1810 to 1840 the number of catches per voyages increased dramatically. From 1692 voyages, the British vessels catch over 15 000 whales. (Ross 1993: 543)

Compare to these figures, whaling in the Cumberland Sound and Hudson Bay was a minor operation. In total, American and British whaling ships made spent 201 ship-seasons in the Hudson Bay harvesting in total 565 whales. (Ross 1993: 547)

But it is in these last years of the declining whaling industry that the impact on Inuit society became significant since from 1853 and on ships have been wintering in the Arctic.

The first whaling ship rigged with a steam engine was the Tay built in Dundee, Scotland, in 1857. Rapidly, the Dundee whaling fleet adopted the steam engine which provided the ships with much more power while navigating in the ice floes. The New England whalers kept using sailing vessels to the end of whaling era.

Whaling ships were rather small ranging about double the size of a big whale, some 40 meters (125 feet). Before counting extensively on Inuit man power, a whaling ship would carry a crew of some 50 men. In the last decades of whaling, the number of men decreased even to twenty and in most case, the majority of these men had no experience in sailing or whaling. The captains were mostly relying on Inuit expertise.