Belle Isle

Belle Isle lies off the northern tip of Newfoundland, at the Atlantic entrance to the strait that separates the island from Labrador. The passage leads into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, through waters visited by drifting ice as well as ships. Breton and Basque fishermen were coming to the strait for cod by the 1520s, and Basque whalers also hunted there in the sixteenth century. Their seasonal voyages made these northern shores part of a far-reaching Atlantic fishery.