The Muscovy Company whaling at Svalbard

EDGE, Thomas.

['Greenland' & 'Edges Island'.]
London: Henry Featherstone, 1625. 295 x 335mm.

Despite having 'Greneland' written across one island this is a map of Svalbard, flanked by scenes of whale fishing & processing, and hunting polar bears and walruses (here called 'seamorces').
This map was published in 'Purchas His Pilgrimies', attributed by Samuel Purchas to Thomas Edge, one of the whalers of the Muscovy Company making voyages to Svalbard from 1611, alongside William Baffin and Robert Fotherby. Edge isstill remembered in the name of one of the islands of the archipelago, Edgeøya (here Edge's Island),
Purchas is not confusing Svalbard with the modern Greenland: the name was an anglicisation of Nicolo Zeno's name for the Arctic land he 'discovered' in the 14th century, 'Engroniland' or 'Grolandia'. The name stuck despite Fotherby writing that there was nowhere 'yet knowne and discovered that is lesse greene than it'. The Dutch called the archipelago Spitzbergen.
The discovery of Spitzbergen was the beginning of English whaling. In 1612 the Moscovy Company obtained a charter supposedly giving them exclusive rights to exploiting the islands; in 1613 a fleet of seven ships under Benjamin Joseph and Edge arrived to find 17 foreign ships, which they either bullied into leaving or forced to hand over half their catch. By 1625 competition from the Dutch made Spitzbergen less attractive to the English, so the whalers turned west to the real Greenland.
An influential map: Johannes Blaeu based his map 1659 'Spitzberga' map on it; and a very close copy was issued in 'Churchill's Voyages and Travels' (1704 and later editions), recognisable by the whale being much larger in the scene second from the top on the left.


Stock ID : 23464