Greenland Whaling Fishery Pictures

Series of four Indian ink drawings on paper. By William Joy (1803-1859 or 1860). Approximately 21cm x 32cm. Presented by Captain George William Manby in 1841.

William Joy was a marine artist from Great Yarmouth, who along with his brother John Cantiloe Joy (1806-1859), were known in the art world at the time as the ‘Brothers Joy’.

The Brothers Joy never went to Greenland, but their patron, Captain Manby certainly went on a whaling expedition there in 1821. Manby was an accomplished draughtsman and probably brought back drawings and engravings of the scenes he saw there, which William Joy would have used to produce this series of four ink drawings.

Although whales have been hunted for around 4,000 years by the native tribes of Greenland – it was in 1611 that commercial whaling began to occur there. The English Muscovy Company was the first to hunt whales off Greenland, quickly followed by Dutch, Spanish and French vessels. By the mid 17^th Century whales around Spitzbergen started to become scarce and the Dutch whalers began hunting more intensively further West. In 1719, Dutch whalers began to exploit the Davis Strait (West of Greenland) as a whale fishery. In the late 18^th Century British whalers took over the whaling monopoly off Greenland. It was not until 1914 that the British finally stopped whaling in Arctic waters.

It was in the heyday of British whaling that Captain Manby went on his expedition to the Greenland whaling fisheries in 1821. Manby would have witnessed small crews of men rowing out alongside the whales with hand thrown spears and harpoons. This was a dangerous time to be a whaler as it was before the invention of exploding harpoon-heads in 1864.