Red Bay Basque Whaling Station

Established by Basque mariners in the 1530s on the Strait of Belle Isle, Red Bay, or Gran Baya as its founders called it, is the earliest, most complete and best preserved testimony of the European whaling tradition. UNESCO describes a summer base for hunting, butchering and rendering whale fat into oil shipped to Europe for lighting, with remains of rendering ovens, cooperages, wharves, living quarters and a cemetery, together with vessels and whale bone deposits underwater. It was used for some 70 years before the whales ran out.

The National Historic Site covers 600 ha on land and under water, sheltered from the Atlantic by Saddle Island; Wikipedia dates the Basque years to about 1550 to 1625 and credits the archival research of Selma Barkham from 1972, which led to the first survey in 1977 and recovered a chapter missing from Canada's history. Red Bay is about 530 km from St John's as the crow flies, on Route 510, 80 km from Blanc-Sablon, where Wikivoyage says the coast's airport, ferry, hospital and shops are found.

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