8 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



ble tradition, too. It is to the effect that one William Hamilton was 

 the first to kill these fish from that region, and he was obliged to re- 

 move from that section of country, as his fellow-citizens persecuted him 

 for his skill, attributing his success to undue familiarity with evil spir- 

 its. Hamilton is said to have removed to Rhode Island, and from thence 

 to Connecticut, where he died in 1746, aged 10a years. Several things 

 militate against this story. Neither the annals of the Cape* nor genea- 

 logical registers contain any record of him. Naturally the courts would 

 take some cognizance of an offense so heinous that the offender was 

 openly persecuted, but we do not find him noted as a criminal. The 

 people who settled on the Cape were too familiar with fishing to attrib- 

 ute success to aught but skill and natural causes, and the Cape was 

 more an asylum for the persecuted than the source of persecution. It 

 is far more probable that at the time of his birth, if he ever existed 

 there, there were people familiar with this art in that region. It had 

 certainly become a pursuit of much importance in other sections of the 

 country long before he was old enough to handle a harpoon, and the 

 product of this fishery had found its way to Boston while he was yet a 

 young man. 



In 168S Secretary Randolph writes home from Massachusetts : " New 

 Plimouth Colony have great profit by whale killing. I believe it will 

 be one of our best returnes, now beaver and peltry fayle us."t In 

 March of the same year there was pkiced on the colonial records of 

 Massachusetts Bay a memorandum embodying the universally recog- 

 nized law of whalemen that "craft claims the whale." It specifies: 

 " farst : 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 shillings ; 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 Ad- 

 mirall to Doe thaire in as he shall please; — 41y ; that no persons shall 

 I^resume to cut up any whael till she be vewed by toe persons not con- 

 sarned ; that so ye Right owners may not be Rongged of such whael or 

 whaels ; 51y, that no whael shall be needlessly or fouellishly laused be- 

 hind ye vitall to avoid stroy; Gly, that each companys harping Iron & 

 lance be Distinckly marked on ye heads & socketts with a poblick 

 mark : to ye prevention of strife ; 71y, that if a whale or whalls be found 

 & no Iron in them : then thay 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." | 



In November, 1690, the colony of New Plymouth appointed '* Inspect- 

 ors of Whale," in order to the " prevention of suits by whalers." The 



* It is scarcely probable that so careful a historian as Freeman would have omitted 

 to make mention of Hamilton, if this story of him had any foundation in fact. 

 t Hutchinson's Coll., p. 558. 

 t Mass. Col. MSS., Treasury, iii, p. 80. 



