The Rise of American Whaling. 23 
whaling.’’* The Indians were to be paid three shillings 
per day, the craft and necessary tackle being furnished 
by the partners. Howell says that boat whaling soon 
came to be of so much importance in the community 
- that every able man in the town (Southampton) was 
obliged to take his turn in watching for whales from 
some prominent place on the shore, and to give the 
alarm as soon as one was seen near'the coast. It was not 
unusual for expeditions of several boats each to be 
fitted out for whaling along the coast, the voyages 
generally lasting about two weeks. The boats were 
so small, however, that they never ventured far from 
land, the men usually camping out on shore during the 
night. Indians, under the command of one or two 
white men, were largely employed in these early opera- 
tions of boat whaling.® 
The whaling business of Eastern Long Island had 
become important enough in the last two decades of 
the seventeenth century to be the cause of more or less 
conflict with the authorities of the main New York 
colony. The trouble arose largely from the practice of 
the whalers in making Boston or some Connecticut port 
their trading center, instead of taking their oil to New 
York. As early as 1684 an act was passed laying a duty 
of ro per cent on all oil and bone exported from New 
York ports to any outside ports except directly to Eng- 
land or to the West Indies.* But the act accomplished 
very little in the way of forcing the Long Island whalers 
to send their products to New York to be exported. 
These records are chiefly valuable, however, because 
they furnish about the only suggestion of the early trade 
movements of whale products. 
The only other place to engage in whaling previous 
to 1700 was Nantucket, or Sherburne as it was called, 
M4 Starbuck, p. 12. 
18 Starbuck, p. ro. 
16 Starbuck, p. 15. 
