were spotted by the whalemen from suitable vantage points, and pursued by shallops, chaloupes or chalupas, which were manned by six men. (These terms derive from the Basque word "txalupa", used to name the whaling boats that were widely utilized during the golden era of Basque whaling in Labrador in the 16th century.) The whale was harpooned and lanced to death and either towed to the stern of the ship or to the shore at low tide, where men with long knives would flense (cut up) the blubber. The blubber was boiled in large copper kettles and cooled in large wooden vessels, after which it was funneled into casks. The stations at first only consisted of tents of sail and crude furnaces, but were soon replaced by more permanent structures of wood and brick, such as Smeerenburg for the Dutch, Lægerneset for the English, and Copenhagen Bay for the Danes. Beginning in the 1630s, for the Dutch at least, whaling expanded into the open sea. Gradually whaling in the open sea and along the ice floes to the west of Spitsbergen replaced bay whaling. At first, the blubber was tried out at the end of the season at Smeerenburg or elsewhere along the coast, but after mid-century the stations were abandoned entirely in favor of processing the blubber upon the return of the ship to port. The English meanwhile stuck resolutely to bay whaling, and didn't make the transfer to pelagic (offshore) whaling until long after. In 1719, the Dutch began "regular and intensive whaling" in the Davis Strait, between Greenland and Canada's Baffin Island. The British South Sea Company financed 172 whaling voyages to Greenland from London's Howland Dock between 1725 and 1732. Beginning in 1733, the British Government offered a 'bounty' for whale oil, leading to further expansion. However, due to reductions in the bounty and wars with America and France, London's Greenland fleet fell to 19 in 1796. During the 17th and 18th century North Frisian Islanders had a reputation of being very skilled mariners, and most Dutch and English whaling ships bound for Greenland and Svalbard would recruit their crew from these islands. Around the year 1700, Föhr island had a total population of roughly 6,000, of whom 1,600 were whalers. In 1762, 25% of all shipmasters on Dutch whaling vessels were people from Föhr, and the South Sea Company's commanding officers and harpooners were exclusively