The Rise of American Whaling. 31 
The Rhode Island colonists had been carrying on a 
whale fishery in a small way within the colony, probably 
as a shore or boat fishery, for a number of years previous 
to 1731,% when the colonial assembly passed an act 
providing a bounty of five shillings a barrel for oil and 
a penny a pound for bone.” Starbuck, however, states 
that deep-sea whaling was carried on from Rhode Island 
ports as early as 1723. To support his statement he 
quotes the ‘‘Boston News Letter” of ‘that year, which 
records the arrival of a whaling vessel at Newport “with 
the largest sperm whale ever seen up to that time in 
that region.”’ 
The reports of Rhode Island whaling during later 
years are as unsatisfactory as the question about when 
it really began. Occasional records are to be found of 
the arrivals of whaling vessels,“ and during some years 
quite a thriving business seems to have been done. 
Before the war with England began, Newport, Provi- 
dence, Warren and Tiverton, together with Swanzey, 
across the line in Massachusetts, made Narragansett Bay 
an active whaling locality. 
In addition to the places already mentioned, New 
London, Conn., entered the list toward the middle of 
the century. At Williamsburg, Virginia, the stimulus 
of whaling success was felt, and in 1751, a sloop was 
fitted out for whaling along the southern coast. The 
venture was successful, but there is ‘no record to show 
how long the business was followed at that place.” At 
Martha’s Vineyard deep-sea whaling appears to have 
begun about 1738, when a Nantucket whaleman removed 
there and began the fishery with his sloop. But for 
some reason the fishery from the Vineyard never thrived 
%® Arnold: ‘‘ History of Rhode Island,”’ II, p. rro. 
5° Arnold, p. 103. 
“ Starbuck, note, p. 35. 
“| Starbuck, p. 43. 
* loc. cit. 
