80 WHALING 



nations Holland at that time was preeminent in whaling; so the 

 Dutch refused the Long Island whalemen permission to buy 

 tackle and gear from the English Colonies. 



With the return of an English government, other annoyances 

 arose or persisted. The Long Islanders were obliged to clear 

 through New York all oil that they exported; many defied the 

 law and some obeyed it, but at least one merchant, Benjamin 

 Alford of Boston, got written permission to clear a large quan- 

 tity of oil directly from Southampton to London, upon his pay- 

 ing all duties that the law required, and thus saved the time, 

 hazard, and leakage of the voyage to New York. Some gover- 

 nors took pious pride in the taxes that they laid on the Long 

 Islanders, and so matters went, in spite of the act of 1708 for the 

 ''Encouragement of Whahng" — largely concerned with keeping 

 the Indians sober and out of jail when they were hired to go after 

 whales — until in 1716 Samuel Mulford of Easthampton, a stout- 

 hearted, energetic, and resourceful, if eccentric, man summed 

 up his grievances in a petition to the King. He pointed out 

 that it had been the old practice to lay a duty on drift whales 

 and to exempt from duty whales killed at sea; but that in 1696 

 the Government had declared that a whale was a "royal fish" 

 and belonged to the Crown; therefore all whales must be 

 licensed and one fourteenth of all oil and bone must be delivered 

 in New York, a hundred miles away. Also, although the 

 Government had formerly made every effort, solely with the 

 desire of furthering the industry, to keep the Indians in a state 

 of sobriety appropriate to whaling, it had now begun legal 

 action against Mulford for hiring Indians to serve in his whaling 

 crews. 



Mulford fought the matter out with Governor Hunter of 

 New York, was downed by legal proceedings in the colony, 

 slipped away secretly to London, read his mem.orial in the 

 House of Commons, attracted vast attention by fish hooks 

 sewed inside his pockets to catch a pickpocket — a novel scheme 

 which proved surprisingly successful — and prevailed upon the 

 authorities there to intervene with the Governor in behalf of 

 the whalemen. 



