The Rise of American Whaling. 35 
their exportation to any other market. At the same 
time the residents of Great Britain were benefiting from 
a bounty in which the colonists were not allowed to 
share.** These measures were evidently a part of Eng- 
land’s policy in their rivalry with the Dutch for supremacy 
in the whale fishery. But their efforts were in vain. 
The American fishery was destined, in the face of every 
difficulty, to far outrival either the English or the Dutch 
interests. 
One of the best indications of the state of the colonial 
whale fishery at that time is found in the statements of a 
petition to Parliament asking for the abolition of the 
import duty on whale products from the colonies. It 
says “‘in the year 1761 the province of Massachusetts 
Bay fitted out from Boston and other ports ten vessels 
of from seventy to ninety tons burden for this purpose. 
That the success of these was such as to encourage the 
sending out of fifty vessels in the year 1762 for the same 
trade. That in the year 1763 more than eighty vessels 
were employed in the same manner.’ This reference 
to the number of vessels employed must refer solely to 
the towns in the original Massachusetts Bay and Ply- 
mouth colony, for in 1762 Nantucket alone had seventy- 
eight vessels engaged in whaling.” 
The colonial whalers who tried to take advantage of 
the newly opened St. Lawrence and Belle Isle fisheries, 
were subject to many irksome restrictions, such as to 
remove all waste at least three leagues from shore, not 
to winter on the coast and not to have any intercourse 
with the French. A few whalemen visited these grounds 
in spite of the restrictions, but even though they offered 
convenient and profitable fisheries, the majority of the 
fleet cruised along the gulf stream and other regions 
farther south. 
54 Starbuck, p. 39. 
5 Quoted by Starbuck, p. 40. 
5 Macy, p. 58. 
