10 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



In February, 1C45, tlie town ordered tbat if any whale was cast ashore 

 within the limits of the town no man should take or carry away any 

 part thereof without order from a magistrate, under penalty of twenty 

 shillings. Whoever should find any whale or part of a whale, upon 

 giving notice to a magistrate, should have allowed him five shillings, or 

 if the portion found should not be worth five shillings the finder should 

 have the whole. "And yt is further ordered that yf any shall finde a 

 whale or any peece thereof upon the Lord's day then the aforesaid shil- 

 lings shall not be due or payable."* "This last clause" saj^s Howell, 

 "appears to be a very shrewd thrust at 'mooning' on the beach on 

 Sundays." 



It was customary a few years later to fit out expeditions of several 

 boats each for whaling along the coast, the parties engaged camping 

 out on shore during the night. These expeditions were usually gone 

 about one or two weeks.t Indians were usually employed by the En- 

 glish, the whites furnishing all the necessary implements, and the 

 Indians receiving a stipulated jjroportion of oil in payment. 



In Easthamptou on the 6th of November, 1051, " It was Ordered that 

 Goodman Mulford shall call out ye Town by succession to loke out for 

 whale."! Easthampton, however, like every other town where whales 

 were obtainable, seems to have had its little unpleasantnesses on the 

 subject, for in 1053 the town " Ordered that the share of whale now in 

 controversie between the Widow Talmage and Thomas Talmage" (alas 

 for the old-time Ohesterfieldian gallantry) " shall be divided among them 

 as the lot is."§ In the early deeds of the town the Indian grantors were 

 to be allowed the fins and tails of all drift- whales; and in the deed of 

 Montauk Island and Point, the Indians and whites were to be equal 

 sharers in these prizes. |1 In 1072 the towns of Easthampton, South- 

 ampton, and South wold presented a memorial to the court at Whitehall 

 " setting forth that they have spent much time and paines, and the 

 greatest part of their Estates, in settling the trade of whale-fishing in 

 the adjacent seas, having endeavoured it above these twenty yeares, but 

 could not bring it to any perfection till within these 2 or 3 yeares last 

 past. And it now being a hopefull trade at New Yorke, in America, the 

 Governor and the Dutch there do require ye Petitioners to come under 

 their patent, and lay very heavy taxes upon them beyond any of his 

 Ma*"'^' subjects in New England, and will not permit the petitioners to 

 have any deputys in Court,'^ but being chiefe, do impose what Laws they 

 j)leaseupon them, and insulting very much over the Petitioners threaten 

 to cut down their timber which is but little they have to Casks for oyle, 

 altho' the Pet^^ i^urchased their landes of the Lord Sterling's deputy, 

 above 30 yeares since, and have till now under the Government and Pat- 



* Ibid., p. 184. Ubid., p. 183^ 



t Bi-Centennial Address at Easthampton, 1850, by Henry P. Hedges, p. 8. 

 $ Ibid., p. 8. II Ibid. 



H In this petition is an early assertion of the twiusLip of taxation and repreaenta" 

 tion, for which Massachusetts and her offshoots were ever strenuous. 



