The Dutch pioneered whaling in the Davis Strait, the open water between Greenland and Labrador. Since the late seventeenth century, they established trading relationships with the Eskimos along Greenland's west coast, but it was not until 1719 that they moved their hunting grounds from the exhausted East Greenland and Spitsbergen to Davis Strait. Here, they discovered a vast new population of bowheads that were larger and easier to catch than the Greenland-Spitsbergen bowheads. The British followed the Dutch to the new quarry, quickly aiding to the decrease in whale populations. As a result of the increasing scarcity of whales, whalers travelled further into the more dangerous north.
This print was created as a pair with 'The Greenland Whale Fishery' (AF-MX-P001) during the peak of British whale fishing in the Davis Strait and Greenland. Both fisheries declined substantially during the American Revolutionary War. When peace was restored, British whale fishery prospered again until the surfeit of vessels and overfishing led to a quick decline again by the 1790s.
