Engelskbukta (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

: ''English Bay'') is a 1.5 km wide bay on the eastern side of the northern reaches of

Forlandsundet Forlandsundet is an 88 km long sound separating Prins Karls Forland and Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzber ...

, the sound that separates

Prins Karls Forland Prins Karls Forland or Forlandet, occasionally anglicized as Prince Charles Foreland, is an island off the west coast of Oscar II Land on Spitsbergen in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. The entire island and the surrounding sea area c ...

and

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

. It derives its name from the fact that

whalers resorted to the bay in the first half of the 17th century. Here they first established a temporary

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

station in 1611, and later (perhaps as early as 1613) established a semi-permanent one. In or near this bay two English ships, the 150-ton ship ''Mary Margaret'', and the 60-ton bark ''Elizabeth'', were wrecked in 1611. This event led the English to call the bay ''Cove Comfortless'' for the next five decades.

References

*Conway, W. M. 1906. No Man's Land: A History of Spitsbergen from Its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country. Cambridge: At the University Press. * Norwegian Polar Institut
Place Names of Svalbard Database
Bays of Spitsbergen Whaling stations in Norway {{spitsbergen-geo-stub