HI^MPBACK ^YHALE. 311 



is a factor, but probably an indirect one, in liaving an influence on the food supply. Not 

 unlikely, too, is the supposition that the warmer southern waters are more tolerable for the 

 newly born young. 



Of the return movement in fall there is very little actual knowledge. Verrill speaks of a 

 large school, presumably of Humpbacks, seen on October 23, 1879, off the Bermudas, and sup- 

 poses they were in passage southward. 



Humpback Whale Fishery in New England. 



The first recorded capture of the Humpback Whale in New England seems to have been 

 in 1608, according to Clark ^ "when a party of Indians killed a humpback whale which got 

 stranded on a part of Nantucket, called Caton, in the inner harbor." For the first century 

 or more during which our forefathers pursued the shore fishery on these coasts, the Right Whale 

 was the chief object of the industry. Occasionally an attempt was made to kill a Finback 

 if some favorable chance offered, but the Hmnpback Whale being somewhat more sluggish and 

 less powerful than the swift Finback Whales, and yielding more oil in proportion, was undoubt- 

 edly killed in small numbers. Of this, however, there is little actual record. Freeman in his 

 History of Cape Cod (1862, \-ol. 2, p. 218) mentions the following entry by the Town Clerk of 

 Yarmouth in the town records: "I, Jasher Taylor, Nov. .5, 1757, struck a hump-back whale 

 on the back, about two yards past the fin, — the iron, with a thick head and short warp, not 

 marked." This record was of course made in accordance with a regulation passed a number 

 of years previously, requiring persons who struck and lost a whale, to make this form of affi- 

 davit immediately thereafter, so as to avoid contro\'ersy concerning ownership, should the 

 whale subsequently drift ashore dead. "Craft [i. e., whahng implements] claims the whale" 

 has ever been an unwritten law among whalemen. 



With the decrease in numbers of the Right Wliale on our coasts, the Humpback seems to 

 have been more frequently pursued during the eigtheenth century by vessels making short 

 cruises from Nantucket or the Cape Cod towns. The Nantucket Shoals and George's Banks 

 were favorite 'grounds' for this fishery, which seems often to have been combined with cod- 

 fishing. 



The American Revolution placed a temporary check upon the progress of offshore whaling, 

 as our vessels were ever liable to capture by the English privateers and men-o'-war. To the 

 Nantucketers, then largely dependent on this means of livelihood, it became therefore a serious 

 matter, and in 1781, we find them approaching Admiral Arbuthnot, at that time in command 

 of the EngUsh navy in American waters, with a petition to be allowed to carry on their whaling 

 operations unmolested. This request was generously granted, but so impoverished had the 



' Clark, A. Howard, in Goode's Fisheries and Fishery Industries of U. S., 1887, sect. 5, vol. 2, p. 30. 



