The 16th century in Canada saw the first contacts, since the Norsemen 500 years earlier, between the indigenous peoples in Canada living near the Atlantic coast and European fishermen, whalers, traders, and explorers.
Labourd is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées Atlantiques département of Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is one of the traditional Basque provinces, and identified as one of the territorial component parts of the Basque Country by many, especially by the Basque nationalists.
This article discusses the history of whaling from prehistoric times up to the commencement of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. Whaling has been an important subsistence and economic activity in multiple regions throughout human history. Commercial whaling dramatically reduced in importance during the 19th century due to the development of alternatives to whale oil for lighting, and the collapse in whale populations. Nevertheless, some nations continue to hunt whales even today.
A whaleboat is a type of open boat that was used for catching whales, or a boat of similar design that retained the name when used for a different purpose. Some whaleboats were used from whaling ships. Other whaleboats would operate from the shore. Later whaleboats usually could operate under sail or oar - American whaling crews in particular obtained better results by making their first approach to a whale under sail, then quickly unstepping the mast and using oars thereafter.
Mikel Laboa Mancisidor was one of the Basque Country's most important singer-songwriters.
Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.
Red Bay is a fishing village in Labrador, notable as a significant underwater archaeological site in the Americas. Between 1530 and the early 17th century, it was a major Basque whaling area. Several whaling ships, both large galleons and small chalupas, sank there, and their discovery led to the designation of Red Bay in 2013 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Whaling Museum & Education Center, formerly known as The Whaling Museum, is a maritime museum located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York dedicated to the local history, the maritime heritage of Long Island and its impact on the whaling industry.
A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales.
The A. T. Gifford was the last American schooner-rigged whaleship to cruise Hudson Bay. She caught fire and sank in late 1915. Although the captain and a few of his crew escaped the wreck, none survived the disaster.
A chalupa is a small boat that functions as a shallop, water taxi or gondola, such as those seen at the "floating gardens" of Xochimilco south of Mexico City, Mexico. Chalupa is also the name of the type of whaling boat used by the Basques in the mid-16th century in what is now Newfoundland and Labrador.
The whaling disaster of 1871 was an incident off the northern Alaskan coast in which a fleet of 33 American whaling ships were trapped in the Arctic ice in September 1871 and subsequently abandoned. It dealt a serious blow to the American whaling industry, already in decline.
A trainera is a traditional boat of the Cantabrian Sea coast at the southern end of the Bay of Biscay, propelled by oars, and formerly sailing. It is a boat of fine lines with raised prow and rounded stern, to resist the waves of the Cantabrian sea. Traineras were originally used by fishermen to bring in the day’s catch of anchovies and sardines from sea to market, usually competing to sell their caught fish before others came in. Today, this historical tradition has become a major sport of coastal boat racing.
Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded.
Sperm whaling is the human practice of hunting sperm whales, the largest toothed whale and the deepest-diving marine mammal species, for the oil, meat and bone that can be extracted from the cetaceans' bodies.
The Slaying of the Spaniards was one of the last documented massacres in Icelandic history. Some Basque whalers went on a whaling expedition to Iceland and were killed after a conflict in 1615 with local people in the region of the Westfjords.
Two Brothers was a Nantucket whaleship that sank on the night of February 11, 1823, off the French Frigate Shoals. The ship's captain was George Pollard, Jr., former captain of the famous whaleship Essex. The wreck was discovered in 2008 by a team of marine archaeologists working on an expedition for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. She is thought to have been built in 1804 by Joseph Glidden in Hallowell, Maine.
The Basques were among the first people to catch whales commercially rather than purely for subsistence and dominated the 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, described them as "the cleverest men at this fishing". 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.
Selma de Lotbinière Barkham,, was a British-Canadian historian and geographer of international standing in the fields of the maritime history of Canada and of the Basque Country.
The settlement of Basques in the Americas was the process of Basque emigration and settlement in the New World. Thus, there is a deep cultural and social Basque heritage in some places in the Americas, the most famous of which being Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Central America, Guatemala and Antioquia, Colombia.
