High Noon on the High Seas 217 



Commonwealth of Massachusetts into offering a bounty to ships 

 registered in their state. This move, however, backfired badly, since 

 it caused a still further drop in prices. Nevertheless, the number of 

 ocean-going whalers registered in Massachusetts had again risen to 

 one hundred by 1788, and thereafter there was a steady increase until 

 1806. 



The new ships were larger and barque-rigged, and they fitted out 

 for voyages of one, two, or three years. They went farther afield and 

 they concentrated on the sperm whale. In 1791 the first American 

 whalers rounded Cape Horn and entered the South Pacific, where 

 they encountered a thriving whaling tradition maintained by the 

 Chilean Spanish. But then a serious decline set in, occasioned for the 

 most part by the general international economic strangulation which 

 was being applied to the young republic, but also in some measure to 

 the simple physical conformation of Nantucket's harbor. 



Nantucket is a low, sandy island, shaped like a quarter moon, sur- 

 rounded by reefs and sand bars, and containing a considerable but 

 shallow inland lagoon on the landward side. There is one narrow 

 channel leading into this lagoon, and the port and harbor are just 



inside this channel. While this made an ideal anchorage for small 



o 



vessels, it became very troublesome to larger ships because a shallow 

 bar lay across the entrance to the harbor and the sand kept filling in 

 the channel. The Nantucketers tried in every way to overcome the 

 difficulty. Thev unloaded cargo into lighters outside the bar; they 

 built breakwaters; later they even built huge "camels" with which to 

 float the laden ships over the bar; but all measures failed and they had 

 to resort to unloadingr and refittinor their vessels on Martha's Vine- 

 yard. They appealed to Congress for help in dredging a proper chan- 

 nel, but it was over a century before Congress got around to doing 

 anything, and by then it was too late. 



The Nantucketers had really begun to feel the economic pinch 

 when the final blow fell. The senseless, mismanaged, but nonetheless, 

 from a maritime point of view, deadly War of 1 8 1 2 broke out, and 

 within a matter of months the whole whaling fleet was virtually dis- 

 sipated. Not only did Britain wreak havoc upon them; Congress com- 

 mandeered ships as transports and for other warlike purposes. And so, 

 after almost endless vicissitudes, the second phase of American whal- 

 ing came to rather a dismal end. 



