CHAPTER VIII. 
WHALE PRODUCTS IN COMMERCE. 
It is much more difficult to trace the development of 
trade in whale products than it is to trace any other 
phase in the history of whaling activities. The chief 
source of difficulty lies in the absence of early records of 
trade movements, both domestic and foreign. It seems 
undoubted that whale products became important articles 
of commerce almost as soon as whaling began. The 
amounts of oil taken by the Nantucket, the Long Island 
and the Cape Cod fishermen must very soon have been 
much larger than necessary to supply all local demands. 
At least as early as the introduction of boat whaling there 
must have been permanent markets important enough 
to make whaling profitable when pursued as a regular 
business. And as early as 1668 a company was formed 
at Easthampton for the purpose of carrying on whaling 
from boats.? 
It seems quite reasonable to suppose that the trade in 
whale oils was, almost from the start, carried on with both 
domestic and foreign markets; not that the export trade 
grew out of a greater supply than could be disposed of in 
the colonies. Export trade to British ports was favored 
by various conditions. The New England colonists were 
familiar with the English demand for whale oils, through 
the attempts at establishing the Spitzbergen fishery. 
The colonists were in constant need of British commodi- 
ties and the exchange for colonial products directly was a 
natural outcome of this demand. Great Britain exerted 
every influence, at times little less than actual compulsion, 
? Starbuck, p. 12. 
