16 A History of the American Whale Fishery. 
toward the end of the seventeenth century mainly with 
a view to carrying on whaling in the Greenland and 
Davis Straits fields. The company was chartered for 
fourteen years with a capital of £82,000, but before 
the expiration of the charter the capital was entirely 
consumed by the heavy losses.” At the same time 
the Dutch whalers were uniformly successful. 
The same year that the South Sea Company abandoned 
whaling, 1732, Parliament granted an annual bounty of 
twenty shillings per ton on all British whaling vessels of 
200 tons or upward. But only two vessels sent out by 
private individuals benefited from it. In 1740 the 
bounty was increased to thirty shillings per ton and 
officers of fishing vessels were exempted from liability 
of impressment into the British navy. Again, in 1749, 
another ten shillings was added to the bounty, making 
a total of forty shillings per ton annually.** The effects 
of the bounty, with the other inducements, were such 
that the British whaling industry again assumed a 
respectable and hopeful appearance, and by 1755 it was 
fairly well established. 
The bounty was continued with some changes until 
1798, when it was reduced to twenty shillings per ton, 
where it remained for many years. After 1785 the 
number of British ships fitted for whaling voyages rose 
as high as 250 sail* in a single year, and for several 
years it averaged over 150 ships annually. Thus, by 
national support, in the form of bounties, the British 
whale fishery was established on a firm basis, but only 
after the lapse of almost two centuries of an intermittent, 
precarious existence. 
Among all the nations of Europe the Dutch stood 
highest as whalers. They were in early days famous 
3 Scoresby, p. 104. 
* Scoresby, p. 72-73. 
*% Scoresby, p. 75. 
* Scoresby, p. 119-120. 
