30 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



long and persistent struggle the tax was at length repealed 

 in 1720. 



Nor did the colonial whalemen receive any better treatment 

 at the hands of the English governors of the newly-conquered 

 French provinces at the close of the French and Indian Wars; 

 for here, too, they were hampered and hindered in many ways. 

 In these cases, however, the governors insisted that the annoy- 

 ing regulations had been necessitated by the whalemen's brutal 

 treatment of the natives along the shores of Newfoundland 

 and of Labrador. At the same time the British Government 

 discriminated against colonial whaling by requiring that oil and 

 bone be exported only to English ports, where it was charge- 

 able with a duty. This order seemed peculiarly discrimina- 

 tory because it came at a time when British whalers, under 

 rather lax stipulations, were entitled to a handsome bounty. 



Other losses were caused both by man and by nature. For 

 a decade or more French and Spanish privateers formed a 

 constant menace to the small and unarmed whaling vessels, 

 and an appreciable number were actually captured and de- 

 spoiled. Nature, too, exacted her toll. With longer voyages 

 and protracted periods of continuous cruising, often in unfa- 

 miliar waters, came a steadily mounting number of ships that 

 never returned. In 1755, and again in 1756, Nantucket alone 

 lost three sloops, with all hands, near the Grand Banks. And 

 other ports were by no means immune. 



Price fluctuations constituted another prolific source of un- 

 certainty. The relatively small yearly fleets were subject to 

 so many vicissitudes that it was impossible to calculate in ad- 

 vance the size of the season's catch. If good fortune presided 

 over the whaling grounds, and if the losses to vessels and 

 cargoes chanced to be small, the resulting large stock of oil 

 depressed the price. If, on the other hand, a poor season 

 was accompanied by many sinkings and by depredations of 

 privateers, unsatisfied demand would place a heavy premium 

 upon the small catch which was brought to port. In the later 

 years of large and scattered fleets the law of probability served 

 in some degree to equalize losses and bonanza voyages, so that 

 the percentage of variation in the catches of succeeding sea- 

 sons was not as great as the hazardous nature of the industry 



