From Davis Strait to Bering Strait: The Arrival of the Commercial Whaling Fleet in North America's Western Arctic

Abstract

... This paper, then, focuses primarily on the whaling industry as a whole and not centrally upon the arctic regions - because the impetus for the arrival of the whaling fleets at the gates of the American Arctic came directly from the economic centers of Europe and America, and only as the result of a concatenation of political and economic events were the fleets drawn to the north. My discussion will not deal specifically with the history of either the Davis Strait or the Bering Strait whale fishery. It will, rather, analyze the series of events between their two discoveries that led the whaleships to Bering Strait: for although whale fisheries in most parts of the world have been capably studied, far less attention has been paid to the causes which led the fleets to abandon one fishery and begin the exploitation of another. ...