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Date: | Wed, 10 May 2006 03:27:20 -0400 |
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Well George, now you have an interesting conundrum. There always remains the
possibility that the Basque whalers came south into "American" waters in
search of whales, but no one has dug into the Basque archives to know for sure.
As well, the early 18th century whalers in New England did not invent their
trade. British and Dutch whaling companies probably hunted off New England long
before the Massachusetts industry, but again the old archives have not been
exhausted. Suffice to say that American whaling hands from European ships
settled in New England and generations of their offspring created a culture of
whaling that has become famous today. But to test for a Basque or Dutch
connection to those early Americans would be quite a research job. Strangely, the
methods and strategies did not differ that much until the development of the
bomb lance around 1850. Oh, and by the way, bomb lances went out of fashion
by the end of the 19th century, but a whale dissected off the Pacific Coast by
fisheries people yielded fragments of a bomb lance in the 1950s and the San
Diego Natural History Museum folks pondered if this was due to great age or
if people were still using that technology in the mid 20th century?
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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