IN THE DOLDRUMS 91 



reversal of our usual experience with regard to immigration. 

 Tempted by the offer of religious freedom, land, no import duty 

 on their whaling products and food supplies, all the bounties 

 and other privileges of native fishermen, besides a special 

 premium awarded in proportion to the tonnage of those of their 

 vessels that engaged in whaling, exemption from military 

 service, the right to command their own ships and choose 

 their own crews, and the assurance that the French Govern- 

 ment would exact increased duty on all oil that might come 

 into France from other countries, nine families, comprising 

 thirty-three persons, sailed from Nantucket to France. 



When Rotch had refused to bargain and had left England for 

 the Continent, the British Government had sent straight to 

 Nantucket and had succeeded in persuading two families to 

 remove to Nova Scotia. Of course, they tried to persuade 

 others, but the more cautious were kept back by an appeal from 

 Lalayette that they wait for further word from France. Later 

 a number of these other families followed the first two, and 

 founded the village of Dartmouth on Halifax Bay, and still 

 others moved across the Atlantic to Milford Haven. 



Thus, under the embargo of 1807, it came to pass that there 

 was a period between our Revolution and the War of 1812, when 

 one hundred and forty-nine Nantucket captains commanded 

 British whaling vessels and eighty-one Nantucket captains com- 

 manded French whaling vessels. 



The experiences of the emigrants were various. British 

 cruisers, presumably by order of the chagrined Lord Hawks- 

 bury, intercepted at least one of Rotch's vessels on the way to 

 France, and when in 1793 Rotch himself, knowing that war 

 between France and England was inevitable, hurried to 

 England, he got there in time to recover two more of his vessels 

 laden with oil, that the English had captured and condemned. 

 Other members of the family remained in France and carried on 

 a whaling business there until 1855, but William Rotch, when, 

 after eight years on the Continent and another in England, he 

 returned to Nantucket, was so ill received there, because of 

 stigma incurred by his first leaving the Island, that he moved 



