Les, your "Polynia" -> "Balaena" suggestion is supported on this site with a Polish Version of "Balaena" - fortunately the commemnts are in English. I'll try an on-line translation of the words sometime, just to see what happens.

Your mention of Basil Lubbock's The Arctic Whalers led me to The Whalers' Heritage Project. They're set up to help folk with whaling forebears, and have a list of ship/captain/homeport mentioned in Lubbock. I assume you have a copy? If so, I may get you to do some look-ups for me, if any of the Enderby vessels I'm interested appear there.

I've sung sealing/whaling songs, and followed up their backgrounds, since the 60s. You can imagine my reaction a couple of years back to discover one g-g-g'dad, James Hindsley Bromley, was seaman/butcher the Enderby Settlement, Port Ross, Auckland Islands $1649-52). My first excited phone call to a mate who was OC NZ Subantarctic Islands produced Enderby Settlement Diaries, two day by day accounts of the whole life of the Settlement. Totally fascinating. First thing I did was check who ha put it together. Among others, Chris Robertson, who I did my Fairmile trips to White Ialnnd with - we'd be there for a couple of weeks at a time, banding gannets. Also, one "Ferg" Allen, who wrote Wake of the Invercauld. We'd been corresponding by e-mail for years about general southern ocean Maritime History. Despite being a Canadian, she's had more access to 'proper' NZ archives than I have, and has been able to fill in more details on g-g-g'dad than are in the 'Diaries' or on the web (His later life as a publican in NZ).

He must've been a bit of a lad. One of the diarists describes a five week trip from Auckland Is to Dunedin to collect sheep for the settlement in 1650. They didn't have much luck with the sheep, but James picked up a 17 year old Scots lass, married her (in a pub, with her brother and the barmaid as witnesses) and carted her back to Port Ross. She had a son about four months before the Settlement wound up and they all left in 1852. They didn't just walk out, leaving everything behind, as they did in South Georgia a century later.

I mentioned Fairmiles and South Georgia, so I guess I'm slmost on-topic.

Cheers - Sam