Just acquired!
These statutes (printed in Amsterdam in 1843) form the articles of association of the Dutch Whaling Company, which operated under a government-granted monopoly. This apparently did no good, as almost every Dutch whaling voyage in search of the sperm whale in the south failed to repay its initial investment. According to Men and Whales by Richard Ellis (1991):
“One of the least known–and least successful–entries into the southern whale fishery was the Dutch. Representing a long tradition of northern whaling which stretched back to the early seventeenth century, the burghers of the Netherlands made a feeble attempt to join the sperm whale sweepstakes in the Southern Ocean . . . It [later] appeared that whatever whale oil was going to be used in Holland would be delivered there by Yankee whalers.”
*A free copy of Logbooks & Leviathans (a pamphlet about out Nicholson Collection) will be sent to anyone who knows the significance of the title of this post.
Notes For Bibliophiles 