HISTORICAL REFERENCES: MASSACHUSETTS. 699 



FISH AND OIL IN 16b7. Under date of 1687 was written a letter of a commercial character, iuteresting as showing 

 the valuable commodities at that time, by a Mr. Hollingworth, then a merchant in Barbailoes, to his mother at Salem. 

 The letter is directed on the outside, "For Mrs. Elanor Holliugworth, Att Sallem, In New England," and reads: 



" DEAR AND HONOURED MOTHER: My Duty be presented to you with my kind love to my brother and sister and 

 to ye children. Yours by Mr. Prance I Recieved; fish now att present bares A good rate by Reason ye Newfoundland 

 men are not yet Come in but I believe itt will be low anuffe about three mouths hence ; bread and peiece [pease] hath 

 been A good Commodity and Coutenues, loumber is lowe still, oyle will be ye principle Commodity but in good Cusko 

 wee are in great likelihood of A bravo cropp; this latter part of ye year hath proved very Seasonable, ye lord be 

 praised for itt, pray lett my brother see this letter I cannot tell what to advise him to send as yett besides oyle but in 

 A short tyino wee shall see what these Newfoundland men will doe what quantityes of fish they bring in and then I 

 will advice farther. I will slip noe opportunity in advising him, soe with my serviss to all my friuds I subscribe my 

 Selfe your obedient Son to Command. 



"WM. HOLLINCWORTH. 



"pray fail not my dear Mother in sending me half kentle of Cuske and some aples and some barberyes and ye 

 lott of Cuske. 



"Barbadoes, Soptem. 19, 1G67, Bridgeton. 



" My Serviss to Mr. Croade, Mr. Andrews, and to Mr. Adams, and to Mr. Benj. Allin." 



[NOTE. The oil mentioned in this letter may, in part, Lave been whale oil from the Cape Cod whale fisheries, or 

 taken, perhaps, by Salem whaling-boats in Massachusetts Bay.] ' 



Mr. Felt, in his History of Salem, says that James Loper, of that town, in 1688, petitioned the colonial government 

 (if Massachusetts for a patent for making oil. In his petition Loper represents that he has been engaged in whale- 

 lishing for twenty-two years. 



PIRATES AND OTHER ENEMIES. The interests of the fisheries being in danger by reason of pirates and other 

 enemies, the following item appeared June, 1689 : 



" 1689, June 13: Our government orders a vessel to scour our coast of pirates, then carry soldiers on the Eastern 

 expedition, and protect our fishing- vessels on the coast of Acadie." 2 



Certain vessels from Salem were captured by French frigates in the summer of the same year. This fact and its 

 consequences upon owners of vessels are recorded by Felt as follows: 



"16S9, September 17: The ketches John and Eliza, commanded by Ezra Lambert; Margaret, by Daniel Gyles; 

 Diligence, by Gilbert Peters; Thomas and Mary, by Joshua Conant; and, 18th, Dolphin, by Isaac Woodbury, all of 

 Salem, are taken by two French frigates. Soon after this our merchants send a petition to the council, elating that 

 several of their vessels had not returned with their last fares; that six of them, with thirty men, had been captured 

 and carried into Port Royal. They also remark that they are discouraged from fitting out their fishing craft next 

 spring, and desire that an agent may be despatched to see about those detained by the French." 



These acts of piracy, as Sabine says, tended to check the prosperity of Salem, and in 1693 the French war caused 

 a great loss of ketches to that port, for upwards of fifty of her fishing ketches were taken by the French and Indians. 



A British frigate next appears to vex (he fishing vessels from Salem, for we learn that Joseph Sibley, George 

 Harvey, aged 46, and Henry Harvey, 43, in 1693 were on their homeward passage from a fishing voyage to Cape Sable, 

 and were impressed on board of a British frigate. After seven weeks' service in this vessel, the captain forced Sibley 

 to go 011 board of another ship. "Susannah, wife of the latter, having four children, petitions the governor to redress 

 the wrongs of her husband." 



The province expressed their willingness to assist those endeavoring to recover from a French privateer the per- 

 sons who had been captured, and Felt records this entry made on the town records in 1694 : 



" 1694, Juno 12 : ' Whereas some gentlemen of Salem are sending out a ketch to St. John's river and parts adjacent 

 for fetching off some of their people, lately taken by a French privateer and carried thither,' and 'his excellency is to 

 dispatch an express by said ketch to the captain of the frigate Nonesuch, it is voted that if the ketch miscar r y by 

 reason of this express the province will bear the loss of her.'" 



The terrible lass siiil'ered by Salem on account of the French war may be gathered from the following extract from 

 a letter written in 161)7 by John Higginson to his brother Nathaniel : 



"In the year 1689, when the war first broke out, I had obtained a comfortable estate, being as much concerned 

 in the fishing trade as most of my neighbours. But, since that time, I have met with considerable losses ; and trade 

 has much decayed. Of sixty odd fishing catches belonging to this towne, but about six are left. I believe that m> 

 towne in this Province has suffered more by the war than Salem." 3 



[Dated, Salem, 20, 6, '97.] 



1 Essex lost Hist. Coll., vol i, pp. 84-85. Coll. Mass. Hisl, Son., vol. vii, 3d series, p. 202. 



'Felt, op cit., vol. ii, 2 ed., p. 214. 



