'LONG SHORE 73 



thus carry it to more distant try-houses that they maintained 

 for rendering it. Later, as in their small vessels they worked 

 farther from home, they would ''cut in'' at sea and, leaving the 

 carcass behind them, would bring home the bone and oil. 



Of the years when whales came inshore along Cape Cod, and 

 the whale-men boiled out the blubber in ''try-houses," there is a 

 vivid reminder in a newspaper note dated at Truro, July 14, 

 1741, which tells that an old man, Nath Harding by name, who 

 was watching the work of boiling the oil, fainted and fell into a 

 try-pot "and was scalded in a most miserable Manner." 



The growth of shore whaling had one unfortunate effect on 

 the simple and profitable industry of hunting for whales that 

 had died natural deaths and drifted on to the beaches. Enter- 

 prising hunters who had struck whales at sea and lost them, 

 laid claim to those that washed ashore, and bitter controversies 

 were waged, which led the Colonial Government of Massachu- 

 setts Bay to place on its records a memorandum to the effect 

 that the owner of a dead whale must pay any person who found 

 it afloat and brought it to shore, twenty shillings; that if the 

 whale was likely to be lost, and the finder saved blubber and 

 bone, the owner must pay him thirty shillings; and that if no 

 man had killed it, the "Admirall to Doe thaire in as he please." 

 In order that the owners of any whale should have their rights, it 

 was further specified that no persons should cut up a whale until 

 two disinterested persons had viewed it; that no whale should 

 be "needlessly or fouellishly lansed behind ye vital to avoid 

 stroy"; that irons and lances should be distinctly marked on 

 head and socket, by which it "would be possible to prove the 

 ownership of whales"; that the ownership of those whales in 

 which there were no irons should be decided "by thaire strokes 

 & ye natoral markes"; and that in case of equal claims to a 

 whale, the claimants should share equally. 



The office of "whale- viewers," which the foregoing paragraph 

 suggests, was more definitely defined when the General Court of 

 the Plymouth Colony, on November 4, 1690, issued the following 

 decree to prevent contests and suits by the whalers i'^ 



iQlover M. Allen. The Whalebone Whales of New England, p. 152. 



