The country was called “King James his Newland” by the Muscovy Company, and Greenland by the Dutch and Danes and also for long by the English. In 1613 the Muscovy Company fitted out a large fleet under the command of Benjamin Joseph, an experienced seaman. The Admiral or leading ship was the _Tiger_ of 200 tons, with Joseph in command and William Baffin as pilot. The _Matthew_ of 250 tons was Vice-Admiral, and Captain Marmaduke appears to have commanded her, with Fotherby as pilot. Thomas Edge, who afterwards did such good service as a discoverer as well as a whaling captain, was also in the fleet. The Rear-Admiral was the _Gamaliel_ of 200 tons, the fourth ship was the _John and Francis_ of 180 tons, and the fifth the _Annula_ of 140 tons. There was also a pinnace of 60 tons called the _Richard and Barnard_. The fleet left the Thames on the 13th May, and by the 1st June, all the ships being in company, they were off Prince Charles’s Island on the west coast of Spitsbergen, anchoring in Sir Thomas Smith’s Bay between Prince Charles’s Island and the mainland of Spitsbergen. On the 4th June they killed their first whale. At first the English were quite ignorant of the art of whale-killing, and this, the most important part of the business, was left to two dozen Basques who were shipped for the voyages and ordered “to be used very kindly and friendly, being strangers, and leaving their own country to do us service.” In the middle ages a whale frequented the Bay of Biscay (_Balaena Biscayensis_) rather smaller than the right whale, but differing very little in other respects. It is now extinct. The fishermen of Biscay and Guipuzcoa had been engaged in pursuing this whale from time immemorial, and the dangerous occupation had trained a most expert and daring race of sailors along those coasts. They did not use ships in their whaling. There were _atalayas_ or watch-towers on the heights above the little fishing towns, whence signals were made that a whale was in the offing, and instantly the boats started in pursuit. The King and the Church shared the profits. Fernando III of Castile and Leon in about 1220 decreed that “_si mactaveris aliquam ballenam dabis mihi unam tiram a capite usque ad caudam sicut forma est_.” The churches received part of the whalebone, and in the church at Lequeitio there is a most interesting record of whales caught, with occasional notes of happenings, extending over a century. A whale figures in the coat-of-arms of St Jean de Luz, Fuenterrabia, Guetaria, and Motrico. When the Muscovy Company began to send fleets to Spitsbergen, it was the custom to enter one or two boats’ crews of Basques from St Jean de Luz or San Sebastian to attack and kill the whales, while the rest of the crews got the gear ready on shore for boiling down. But it was not long before the English had learnt their lesson from the Basques and become expert harpooneers.