Whale Products in Commerce. IOI 
of its success and bone was an increasingly valuable 
product. 
As the whaling industry, grew the increased quantities 
of oil and bone far exceeded the limited colonial demand. 
Boston had for many years served as the chief colonial 
market, especially for the important Nantucket interests. 
The whalers sold their oil there and secured their supplies 
from that port. But the markets were occasionally 
glutted as the business was overdone and the prices were 
too low to make the fishery profitable.? Export trade 
in whale products as in other commodities was practically 
limited to British and British West Indian ports. 
“Tt was found,’’ says Macy,® “that Nantucket had in 
many places become famed for whaling, and particularly 
so in England, where partial supplies of the oil had been 
received through the medium of the Boston trade. The 
people finding that merchants in Boston were making a 
good profit by purchasing oil in Nantucket . . or- 
dering it to Boston and thence shipping it to London, 
determined to secure the advantage of the trade to 
themselves, by exporting their oil in their own vessels. 
. . . They, therefore, loaded and sent out one vessel 
about 1745. The result of this small beginning proved 
profitable and encouraged them to increase their ship- 
ment by sending out other vessels. They found, in addi- 
tion to the profits on the sales, that the articles in return 
were such as their business required, viz., iron, hardware, 
hemp, sailcloth and many other goods, and at a much 
cheaper rate than they had hitherto been subjected to.” 
Nantucket was at that time the chief center of the 
whale fishery and this new phase of trade activity gave 
new life to the business and promoted new ventures. 
At all times, in fact, the market conditions have been of 
vital importance to the success and prosperity of whal- 
ing enterprises. 
Starbuck, p. 23. 
“Macy, p.. 5r- 
