152 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



with him in cutting-up the whales, shall have that part they have already cut and secured, 

 on paying £6 silver money to the town." ^ This imphes of course, that the regulation was still 

 effective making drift whales the town property, with the exception, however, of the barrel of 

 oil from each whale due the Colony. In the following year, December 8, 1682, it was ordered 

 by the town, "that whales that come ashore, and other great fish that yield any quantity of oil, 

 be given to Thomas Tupper, Geo. Allen, Caleb Allen, and Sam'l Briggs, for ten years, for one 

 half the oil delivered at the dock in good casks — they to pay a barrel of oil out of every whale, 

 to the country according to the order of court" (see antea, 1662)." No doubt much of the 

 oil received by the Crown from such drift whales was sent to England for home consumption. 

 At all events. Treasurer Samuel Sewall's accounts (in the Sewall papers of the Massachusetts 

 Historical Society's Collections) show that in 1681 and thereabouts, he was regularly sending 

 whale oil by packet boat to London. As elsewhere noted, the Nantucket whalers seem not 

 to have made such shipments on their own account for nearly forty years after. 



The Whale-viewer. — Strife as to the rights of ownership of whales seems to have continued 

 unabated, so that in March of 1688, the colony of Massachusetts Bay established the following 

 regulations, quaintly worded and misspelled : ' ' f urst : if aney pursons shall find a Dead whael 

 on the streem And have the opportunity to toss herr on shoure; then ye owners to alow them 

 twenty shilUngs; 21y: if thay cast hur out & secure ye blubber & bone then ye owners to pay 

 them for it 30s (that is if ye whael ware lickly to be loast;) Sly, if it proves a floate son not 

 killed by men then ye Admirall to Doe thaire in as he shall please; — 41y; that no persons 

 shall presume to cut up any whael till she be vewed by toe persons not consarned; that so ye 

 Right owners may not be Rongged of such whael or whaels; 51y, that no whael shall be need- 

 lessly or fouellishly lansed behind ye vitall to avoid stroy; 61y, that each companys harping 

 Iron & lance be Distinckly marked on ye heads & socketts with a poblick mark : to ye preven- 

 tion of strife; 71y, that if a whale or whalls be found & no Iron in them: then they that lay ye 

 neerest claime to them by thaire strokes & ye natoral markes to haue them; Sly, if 2 or 3 

 companyes lay equal claimes, then thay equelly to shear." ^ By these regulations, were es- 

 tablished legal rates for salvage of 'drift' whales, a system of marking harpoons and lances 

 for their future identification by the rightful owners of the dead whales, and the appointment 

 of two persons to act in some measure as referees in all cases of dispute. 



Two years later, the people of Cape Cod adopted a somewhat similar set of regulations, 

 and at a General Court of the Plymouth Colony, November 4, 1690, we find it "ordered, that 

 for the prevention of contests and suits by whale killers, — 



"1. This Court doth order, that all whales killed or wounded by any man & left at sea, 



» Freeman, F. History of Cape Cod, 1S62, vol. 1, p. 73. 



' Ibid., p. 75. 



' Mass. Colonial MSS., Treasury, vol. 3, p. 80; quoted by Starlnifk, Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish and Fisheries, 1878, p. 8. 



