Red Bay National Historic Site
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How it came to be
Red Bay is a harbour in south-eastern Labrador on the Strait of Belle Isle. In the 1530s Basque mariners named it Gran Baya and set up a whaling station used only in summer. Each season about 15 ships and 600 men crossed the Atlantic to hunt right and bowhead whales.
The blubber was rendered into oil in ovens on the shore, packed in barrels and shipped to Europe for lighting. Remains of ovens, cooperages, wharves and temporary quarters survive. The station was used for about 70 years, until the local whales were gone. A cemetery on Saddle Island holds the remains of 140 whalers.
This history was almost unknown until the historian Selma Barkham began her archival work in 1972. In 1978 divers found a wreck off Saddle Island, later judged most likely to be the San Juan, lost in 1565. After recording, its timbers were reburied on the seabed in 1985. Red Bay became a National Historic Site in 1979 and a World Heritage site in 2013.
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