History of Basque whaling

The Basques of modern day Spain and France were among the first people to catch whales commercially rather than purely for subsistence, starting perhaps as early as the 600s and with more certainty by about 1000. They dominated the European whale trade for five centuries, spreading to the far corners of the North Atlantic and even reaching the South Atlantic. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain, when writing about Basque whaling in Terranova (i.e. Newfoundland), described them as "the cleverest men at this fishing".^[1] By the early 17th century, other nations entered the trade in earnest, seeking the Basques as tutors, "for [they] were then the only people who understand whaling", lamented the English explorer Jonas Poole.

Having learned the trade themselves, other nations adopted Basque techniques and soon dominated the burgeoning industry – often to the exclusion of their former instructors. Basque whaling peaked in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, but was in decline by the late 17th and early 18th centuries. By the 19th century, it was moribund as the right whale was nearly extinct and the bowhead whale was decimated.