The Rise of American Whaling. 27 
asking for permission to carry on “‘a fishing Design about 
the Bohames Islands and Cap florida, for sperma 
Coeti whales and Racks.’ But there is no record to 
show that the venture was ever carried out. 
Hussey’s exploit, however, worked a radical change 
in whaling methods. Up to that time whaling, wherever 
it was followed in the colonies, had been confined to the 
taking of drift whales and later the so-called shore or 
boat whaling, the operations being carried on entirely 
within sight of land. Now the Nantucket people began 
immediately to fit vessels, usually sloops, of about 
thirty tons, to whale out in the “deep” as it was called, 
to distinguish it from shore whaling. The vessels were 
fitted for cruises of about six weeks, the blubber of the 
whales taken being stored in hogsheads and brought 
back to the try works on shore where the oil was ex- 
tracted. By 1715 Nantucket had six sloops engaged 
in this new fishery, and by 1730 there were twenty-five 
vessels of from thirty to fifty tons employed in deep-sea 
whaling. 
The shore fishery was still carried on even as late as 
1760,” though Macy seems to imply that it reached its 
greatest importance about 1726. But the inevitable 
decrease in the number of whales near land soon became 
apparent. The change of whaling from a shore to a 
sea industry had already begun, the fitting of larger and 
larger vessels and the extension of voyages was only a 
question of added years. Perhaps of greatest impor- 
tance, Hussey’s adventure introduced sperm oil, which 
in its superiority over other oils was for many decades 
to be the most important and most valuable product of 
the whale fishery, while the pursuit of sperm whales was 
to be one of the most powerful factors inducing the 
28 Quoted by Starbuck, p. 15, from Mass. Col. Mss., Usurpation, VI, 
LeO: 
: 7% Macy, p. 46. 
7 Macy, p. 44. 
