The Rise of American Whaling. 21 
it uncertain when the actual pursuit and capture of 
whales began to be practiced by the inhabitants of 
Massachusetts. 
The first unmistakable indications that whaling had 
become a regular business in Massachusetts appear in 
1688 when Secretary Randolph wrote home to England: 
“New Plimouth colony have great profit by whale 
killing. I believe it will be one of our best returns, now 
beaver and peltry fayle us.’* The records of the Massa- 
chusetts colony for the same year show a memorandum 
setting forth the principle that “each company’s harping 
iron and lance be distinctly marked on ye heads and 
socketts with a poblick mark.’’’? This principle is essen- 
tially the long recognized law of whalemen that ‘“‘the 
craft claims the whale.’”’ The Plymouth colony records 
for 1690 show the appointment of ‘‘inspectors of whales”’ 
as a means of preventing suits by whalers.® 
In 1688 an inhabitant of Salem, Mass., claiming that 
he had been engaged*in whaling for twenty-two years, 
petitioned the colonial authorities for a patent for 
making oil. And four years later a number of Salem. 
whalers complained that whales struck by them and 
bearing their irons had been taken by Cape Cod whalers.® 
From these facts it appears that whaling had come to 
be a regular and plainly important business from several 
towns in the Massachusetts colonies before the end of 
the seventeenth century. 
Whaling was early recognized as a regular pursuit in 
the Connecticut and the New York colonies. In 1647 
the general court at Hartford granted a sort of mono- 
poly of whaling in Connecticut to one Whiting.” This 
is the first record of whaling in that colony, and the 
* Starbuck, p. 8. 
Mass. Col. Mss., Treas., III, p. 80. 
* Plymouth Col. Records, VI, p. 253. 
* Starbuck, p. 18. 
* Quoted by Starbuck, p. 9, from Conn. Col. Record, I, p. 14. 
