Greenland trip

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From CG Zorgdrager

The Greenland voyage served European whaling off Greenland from the 17th to the 19th century . Most of the shipping companies and ports were on the North Sea . At the Baltic Sea operated merchants in Lübeck and Flensburg whaling, which was as risky as rewarding. He brought prosperity above all to Emden and the North Frisian Islands .

background

The Greenland whale (around 1840)

The coveted whale oil gave rise to the Greenland voyage of European nations in the 17th century. The fishing grounds were initially in the fjords and on the coasts of Svalbard . At the beginning of the 18th century they shifted over the pack ice edges in front of the East Greenland Current north and west of Svalbard to the Davis Strait .

The whaling trips lasted from April / May to September. The floods, which were mainly used, were equipped accordingly, but were not specially prepared in terms of shipbuilding . Meteorological and oceanographic observations and records were vital and economically necessary.

Ports

Dutch Greenlander Zaandam (painting by Jochem de Vries, 1772)

Emden

When the Noorsche Maatschappij of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces was received at the end of 1642, the mayor and the city council of Emden sponsored what was probably the first trip to Greenland in Germany. They could rely on Emder and Borkumer sailors who had been whaling for the Dutch . In the summer of 1643 two ships returned with a good catch . Thereupon seventy Emden merchants, mainly members of the French Reformed community , founded the first Greenlandic company. As a partner shipping company , it was granted tax advantages; They did not have to pay any taxes for foreign equipment and peat .

In 1650 the second Emden Greenland company was founded. It was followed by others and in 1660 alone 15 ships returned safely from the Arctic Ocean to Emden. The success of the Emden Greenland Voyage and its growing whaling fleet were viewed with concern in the Netherlands. In 1661 the States General forbade all citizens to participate in whaling in foreign cities. The export of ships and fishing gear was also prohibited. As a result, Emden lost all charter ships and it was no longer possible to buy fishing gear in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, there are reports of 25 voyages to Greenland between 1662 and 1664.

The Emden Greenland companies had a Bevindhebber as an authorized business representative. The Boekhouder was responsible for the payment and disbursement of the funds and the commercial exploitation of the catch. The Equipagemeester provided the ship's equipment, the Commandeur the wages and the fishing trip. As shareholders , the participants provided the capital; they also determined the timing of the equipment, the use of the catch, the amount of the reserves and the dividend. After happy fishing trips, the shipowners donated up to 100 guilders for the widows and orphans as well as for the poor in the city. Evidence of the Emden whaling can now only be found in the Dykhus Island Museum on Borkum.

The constant consumption of cured and dried foods and the lack of fresh vegetables always made people fear scurvy . That is why the ships often called at Svalbard ; because here there was not only fresh food, reindeer , polar bears , waterfowl and bird eggs , but also vitamin-rich spoonbills . The sweet herb grew on bird droppings and was jokingly called "Greenland Salad". The Bordfeldscher Johann Dietz wrote:

“We cast anchor off Spitsbergen and brought the sloops into the sea. The first was that we brought the sick (those suffering from scurvy) ashore, who, like cattle, ate the Schlath, which a kind of herb, almost like spoonweed, ate from the earth, like cattle, and all were well in three days . "

- Johann Dietz

Probably the last Emden Greenland Company was founded in 1852 on shares . She sent some ships to seal seals . Alfred Schmidt provides informative details on the development of shipbuilding, life on board and the misfortunes of whalers and "seal knockers" .

Bremen

After the English and the Dutch , the people of Bremen wanted to participate in the profitable whaling. To this end, some merchants founded two Greenland companies , whose six ships "returned home with a rich blessing". In spite of drift ice , pack ice , violent northern storms and scurvy , 1,081 Bremen fishing vessels drove into the polar sea in the period from 1695 to 1798 . 22 ships remained at sea; most were crushed by the pack ice.

Hanover

The forgotten Greenland Tour on the left Elbe was made in Chur-Hanover . In 1767 the first ship left the Oste . In 1775 Stade , Bützfleth , Himmelpforten , Twielenfleth and Engelschoff and on the Oste Geversdorf and Osten provided the Hamburg shipping companies with 299 crews, some more than the towns on the right bank of the Elbe in Holstein . After the economic slump caused by the Napoleonic Wars , the Stader share of Hamburg's Greenland drivers was 28%. Spaden hired many masters of the Greenland voyage.

Uetersen whaling ship Freya off the Greenland island of Jan Mayen , watercolor by Johann Theodor Schultz

Hamburg and cities in Holstein and Schleswig

While the North Frisians mainly went whaling under the Dutch flag, the Greenland voyage also developed in Hamburg and in cities of the Danish Duchy of Schleswig and the German Duchy of Holstein .

In 1644 the Danish King Christian IV allowed a shipowner from the Netherlands in Hamburg to establish a Societas Groenlandiae . Within 30 years, the Hanseatic city's fishing fleet grew to 83 ships. The big profits meant that the Greenland voyage was also successfully started in Glückstadt (1671) and Altona (1685). In Beidenfleth , Brunsbüttel , Elmshorn , Kollmar , Friedrichstadt , Itzehoe and Uetersen as well as in Flensburg as the only Baltic Sea port , the Greenland voyage did not acquire any major significance. Mercantilism in the entire Danish state made whaling in the cities flourish after 1770; however, the Napoleonic Wars and the continental blockade largely brought him to a standstill. The Greenland voyage could only be resumed after the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Since the whale population had meanwhile been severely decimated, it was increasingly operated as a seal hive. It was also given up in Altona in 1836, in Glückstadt and Flensburg in 1863 and in Elmshorn in 1872.

See also: German whaling and Johann Dietz

Rømø, Fanø and North Friesland

In the history of the North Frisian Geest Islands and Halligen, which belonged to the Danish Duchy of Schleswig until 1864, and on the Wadden Sea islands of Rømø and Fanø to the north , the Greenland voyage played a central role. With the already barren and dangerous life, there was great hardship everywhere after the Burchardi flood. When Louis XIII. In the same year the Basques , the Heuer had forbidden under non-French flags, more and more made Nordfriesen and Jutlanders on to on Dutch to hire Greenland drivers. Soon whole families and neighborhoods were driving with certain shipping companies . A significant whaling fleet of its own was not created on the North Frisian Islands; but their seamen soon became sought-after harpooners , helmsmen and commanders ( captains ) of whaling ships. The reward for the dangerous and hard work in the Arctic Ocean was new prosperity on Sylt , Amrum , Föhr and the Halligen as well as on the island of Rømø, north of North Friesland. The social position of women improved significantly because they were left to their own devices for months and were responsible for the house and yard.

Lübeck

Kayak from 1607 in the Schiffergesellschaft

The Baltic port of Lübeck also took part in the Greenland voyage. Participation in whaling in the North Atlantic began at the beginning of the 17th century. One in the Schiffergesellschaft shown today kayak of the Eskimos is one of the early testimonies. It was salvaged in 1607 by sailors from Lübeck south of Greenland. According to another opinion, the kayak came from a Danish expedition to Greenland in 1605/06. The boat was measured in 2002 and today has some replicas.

Because of the high business risk, a whaling company was founded in 1680. The Greenland voyage was only operated sustainably after the end of the Thirty Years War from 1665. With the decline of the Hanseatic League , this business area was also developed and expanded by Lübeck. The Lübeck Greenland Driver Society consisted predominantly of members of the merchant company and controlled Lübeck whaling from 1665 to 1692. She led a total of 44 ships from partner shipowners to Greenland. In addition, the Lübeck wholesale merchant Thomas Fredenhagen was active in this business area as a sole trader with six ships: in 1683 alone “Der Engel Michael” lightened a good 16 whales on Einsegelstraße , the landing place for Lübeck whalers. Einsegelstraße is today's Einsiedelstraße; in the middle of the 18th century the castle Bellevue was built here , which suggests the decline in whaling before that time.

Pictorial representations of the Greenland voyage have also been preserved in the St. Annen Museum Lübeck from the 18th century . A resumption of whaling in the South Atlantic failed in 1844 because the necessary funds could not be raised.

Flensburg

Between 1722 and 1863 ships sailed from the Flensburg harbor into the waters around Greenland and Spitsbergen for whaling and sealing. The Flensburg Greenland Voyages were varied and successful and can be divided into four phases. In the first phase, the "Greenland Company" was founded in 1722, which apparently failed due to the loss of a ship in 1728. The second phase began in the 1740s with the establishment of a public limited company called “Handlungs-Societät auf Grönland”. The stock corporation set up to spread the risk was based on 500 owner shares of 300 Lübische Mark each . The corporation operated five whale and seal fishing ships. Two to three whales could be shot with each of these. The brought back oil was boiled in a boiling plant in St. Jürgen . Due to the high costs, all of the company's ships were sold in 1757/58 and only 44 Lübische Marks were repaid to the shareholders. In the subsequent third phase, only a few individual sailors operated Greenland voyages from Flensburg. To support the industry, from which several suppliers also benefited, the Danish government offered bonus payments from 1784. In 1789 sole proprietorships operated by whaling from Flensburg founded the “Greenlandic Action Interests”. This apparently operated a boiling plant at the port near Nordertor , which was relocated to the so-called "Greenland Gang" around 1800 due to the stench. The fourth phase began after the Napoleonic Wars . From 1817 up to eight whalers drove out of Flensburg. The last Flensburg whalers were decommissioned in 1863. Half a century later, in 1913, the Greenland Gang , in which Flensburg's last oil distillery was located, was officially named. In addition to this, various exhibits in the Flensburg Maritime Museum are still reminiscent of the Flensburg Greenland voyages.

Graves

North Atlantic whalers
St. Laurentii (Süderende) on Föhr
Borkum
Magdalenenfjord in Svalbard
Krossfjord in Spitsbergen (Dutch)
Red Bay in Labrador ( Basques )
South Atlantic whalers
Ocean Harbor , South Georgia

literature

  • Klaus Barthelmess: The first printed German whaling journal. Christian Bullens "Tag = Register" of a Hamburg fishing trip to Spitsbergen and Northern Norway in 1667 . Amsterdam, Bremerhaven 2003. ISBN 90-6707-568-X
  • Ludwig Brinner: The German Greenland Tour . K. Curtius, Berlin 1913.
  • Heinrich Dirks, Wolfgang Schöningh: Whale! Falloverall! Pictures from Emden's Greenland trip in the old days [textbook]. Zopfs, Leer 1953.
  • Jan I. Faltings: Föhrer Greenland voyage in the 18th and 19th centuries and its economic, social and cultural significance for the development of a specifically island-North Frisian seafaring society . Quedens, Amrum 2011. ISBN 978-3-924422-95-0 .
  • Whale fishing. 16 plates about the Greenland voyage after engravings by Adolf van der Laan around 1720 . German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven 1984.
  • Joachim Münzing; Ernst Schlee (ed.): The hunt for the whale. Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg's Greenland Tour . Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens, Heide (Holstein) 1979, ISBN 3-8042-0210-1 .
  • Wanda Oesau: Schleswig-Holstein's Greenland trip on whale fishing and seal hitting from the 17th to 19th centuries . Glückstadt, Hamburg, New York 1937 (1955, 1979), ISBN 3-87030-057-4 .
  • Georg Quedens : "Fall överall !!" Amrum Greenland trip on whaling and seal hitting . Quedens, Amrum 2002, ISBN 978-3-924422-67-7 .
  • Edi Wieser: Knud Rasmussen's last trip to Greenland . Salzburg 1936 GoogleBooks .
  • Harald Voigt: The North Frisians on the Hamburg whale and seal hunters 1669–1839 . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1987, ISBN 3-529-02911-4 .
  • Cornelis Gijsbertsz Zorgdrager, Abraham Moubach: Old and new Greenland fishing and whale fishing . Leipzig 1723. Reprint Hamecher, Kassel 1975. ISBN 3-920307-20-8 . GoogleBooks .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Schleswig was a Danish imperial fief until 1864, Holstein (with Altona) was a German imperial fief until the dissolution of the Roman-German Empire in 1806, both duchies were divided into ducal / Gottorfian, royal and jointly ruled shares in the 17th and early 18th centuries, In the 18th century, the rule was increasingly centered under the Danish king, from the late 18th century onwards one speaks of the entire Danish state, but Holstein remained as a German and Schleswig as a Danish fiefdom

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c G. Wegner: Meteorological and oceanographic information from the "Greenland Voyage"
  2. ↑ a b c d Alfred Schmidt: Whaling in Emden
  3. ↑ Master Johann Dietz (DjVu)
  4. ↑ Schaffermahlzeit ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schaffermahlzeit.eu
  5. ↑ Holger Kuhne: Greenland Driver from the Oste ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.niederelbe.de
  6. ↑ a b c d e Ulrich Pietsch: The Lübeck Sea Shipping from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age . Booklets on the art and cultural history of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, Vol. 5, Lübeck 1982, pp. 18 ff., ISBN 3-9800517-1-4
  7. ↑ Werner Neugebauer : "The Greenlander" - an Eskimo kayak in the house of the Schiffergesellschaft zu Lübeck , in: Mitteilungen der Geographische Gesellschaft zu Lübeck 55 (1982), pp. 199–230
  8. ↑ Kayak Replicas
  9. ^ Antjekathrin Graßmann : Lübeckische Geschichte , Lübeck 1988, p. 475
  10. ^ Nicolaus Lange: Kaufmannschaft zu Lübeck , Lübeck 2003, p. 46
  11. ^ Andreas Oeding, Broder Schwensen, Michael Sturm: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg !. Flensburg 2009, article: Greenland trip
  12. ↑ Flensburg street names . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2005, ISBN 3-925856-50-1 , article: Grönlandgang
  13. ↑ Weekly Whale News (2010) ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cetacea.de