Whaling in the Arctic

Cleveley the Younger accompanied Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on the first British scientific expedition to Iceland in 1772, travelling as the expedition artist. He was the son of a ship's carpenter and marine artist, and depicted a variety of maritime subjects, as well as working up on-the-spot sketches by others, particularly sailors, into finished compositions for engraving. In 1774 he made a series of watercolours of ice-bound ships, based on sketches made by Philippe d'Auvergne, a member of the British Naval North Pole Expedition of 1773.
British whaling in the Arctic began in earnest in 1750, when the bounty was increased to £2 per ton, and twenty ships sailed north. By 1753 there were 35 English and 14 Scottish whalers sailing to the Arctic, returning with some 150 whales.