Midday North and South 231 



by the government but even ofRcially organized. What is more, the 

 Navy constantly harassed the whalers, as well as ordinary merchant- 

 men, despite several edicts, issued from time to time, excluding them 

 from being thus involuntarily impressed into Their Majesties' serv- 

 ices. In some cases there were even pitched battles between returning 

 whalers and naval patrol craft, one of which resulted in a popular 

 revolt. While the government officially recognized the value of the 

 whaling fleet and of whale products, especially during the war with 

 the Hollanders, who had a virtual monopoly on these essential raw 

 materials, it still persisted in this senseless persecution of the men who 

 manned the whalers. And a seaman grabbed by an armed guard from 

 a tavern in his home town only a few days after returning from a 

 hazardous two-year voyage through the Arctic Ice and forced against 

 his will to fight an enemy whom he had perhaps regarded only as a 

 friendly rival up till a month previously did not make a reliable naval 

 rating. Nor did the captains of whalers, thus robbed of their skilled 

 crews, make reliable masters even if given guns and called armed 

 merchantmen. All too many of both came to the conclusion that 

 another semiofficially sanctioned practice was a lesser evil. This was 

 privateering. 



Privateering was the second bugbear of British whaling. Piracy 

 was always dear to the hearts of the English, and when it could be 

 regarded as a patriotic duty, it became quite respectable. Almost 

 everybody indulged the pleasure, and as Britain's enemies changed so 

 rapidly and news traveled so slowly, it was almost impossible to 

 state just where privateering became legitimate naval action, on the 

 one hand, or plain piracy, on the other. To make matters worse, the 

 crews of some so-called privateers were often composed of about 

 equal numbers of the rival parties in the current war, so that ships 

 changed hands with remarkable frequency and often singular lack 

 of turmoil. Mutiny thus also became almost respectable. 



Quite apart from these ridiculous aspects, the British northern 

 whaling industry was also beset by inefficient management. None- 

 theless, a number of factors played into its hands. First, Dutch whal- 

 ing began to decline about 1770 and continued on the downgrade 

 rapidly after 1790. The Germans turned their attention more and 

 more to sealing, while the Americans suffered almost complete tem- 

 porary eclipse by the end of the war in 1783. The British were thus 



