Bellsund
Bellsundis a 20-kilometer (12 mi) long sound on the west coast ofSpitsbergen,part of theSvalbardarchipelago ofNorway.It is separated fromVan Mijenfjordenby the islands ofAkseløyaandMariaholmen.Bellsund is located south ofNordenskiöld Landand north ofWedel Jarlsberg Land.[1]
History
[edit]Bellsund was first seen byWilliam Barentsin 1596. He simply referred to it asInwyck(inlet). In 1610Jonas Pooleexplored Bellsund, giving the fjord the name it retains to this day. He named it after a nearby bell-shaped mountain. In 1612 the DutchmanWillem Cornelisz. van Muydenwas the first to attempt to catch whales here, but he wasn't very successful as he didn't have any Basque whalemen among his crew. In 1613,Basque,Dutch,andFrenchwhaling vessels resorted to Bellsund, but were either ordered away by armedEnglishvessels or forced to pay a fine of some sort.[2][3][4]
In 1614 the Dutch agreed to give Bellsund to the English, but only for one season. In 1615 the Dutch built the first semi-permanent whaling station in Spitsbergen at the mouth of Schoonhoven (Recherche Fjord), on the south side of Bellsund. It was appropriated by the English the following year.[4]In 1626 this station was damaged byYorkandHullwhalers, who then sailed to their whaling station inMidterhukhamna,just across the entrance ofVan Keulenfjorden.Here they were found by the heavily armed flagship of the London whaling fleet, theHercules,under admiralWilliam Goodlad.A two-hour battle ensued, resulting in defeat for the Hull and York fleet and their expulsion from Spitsbergen.[5]Hull continued to send whaling vessels to occupy this station for the next 25 years, while the English as a whole probably resorted to Bellsund at least until the late 1650s.[4]
References
[edit]- ^Norwegian Polar InstitutePlace Names of Svalbard DatabaseArchivedJune 23, 2007, at theWayback Machine
- ^Purchas, S. 1625.Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others.Volumes XIII and XIV (Reprint 1906 J. Maclehose and sons).
- ^Conway, W. M. 1904.Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the Seventeenth Century.London.
- ^abcConway, W. M. 1906.No Man's Land: A History of Spitsbergen from Its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country.Cambridge: At the University Press.
- ^Appleby, John C. "Conflict, cooperation and competition: The rise and fall of the Hull whaling trade during the seventeenth century".The Northern Mariner,XVIII No. 2, (April 2008), 23-59.
77°40′N14°15′E/ 77.667°N 14.250°E
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