Barents, the Dutch held the record), Great Britain's flag was always waving nearest the top of the globe.
The same year that Jamestown was founded, Henry Hudson (1607), also seeking the route to the Indies, discovered Jan Mayen, circumnavigated Spitzbergen, and advanced the eye of man to 80 deg.

23'.

Most valuable of all, Hudson brought back accounts of great multitudes of whales and walruses, with the result that for the succeeding years these new waters were thronged with fleets of whaling ships from every maritime nation.
The Dutch specially profited by Hudson's discovery.

During the 17th and 18th centuries they sent no less than 300 ships and 15,000 men each summer to these arctic fisheries and established on Spitzbergen, within the Arctic Circle, one of the most remarkable summer towns the world has ever known, where stores and warehouses and reducing stations and cooperages and many kindred industries flourished during the fishing season.

With the approach of winter all buildings were shut up and the population, numbering several thousand, all returned home.
Hudson's record remained unequaled for 165 years, or until 1773, when J.
C.Phipps surpassed his farthest north by twenty-five miles.