- Bellsund
Bellsund is a 20 km long sound on the west coast of
Spitsbergen , part of theSvalbard archipelago.History
Bellsund was first seen by
William Barents in 1596. He simply referred to it as "Inwyck" (inlet). In 1610Jonas Poole explored Bellsund, giving the fjord the name it retains to this day. He named it after a nearby bell-shaped mountain. In 1612 the Dutchman Willem Van Muyden was 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, and French whaling vessels resorted to Bellsund, but were either ordered away by armed English vessels or forced to pay a fine of some sort.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 (
Recherchefjorden ), on the south side of Bellsund. It was appropriated by the English the following year. In 1626 this station was damaged byYork and Hull whalers, who then sailed to their whaling station in Midterhukhamna, just across the entrance ofVan Keulenfjorden . The latter port 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 mid-1650s.References
*Conway, W. M. 1904. Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the Seventeenth Century. London.
*Conway, 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.
*Norwegian Polar Institute [http://miljo.npolar.no/placenames/pages/searchE.asp Place Names of Svalbard Database]
*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).
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
