18 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



In 1G92 came the inevitable dispute of proprietorship. A whale was 

 cast on shore at Edgartown by the proprietors, " seized by Benjamin 

 Smith and Mr. Joseph Norton in their behalf," which was also claimed 

 by "John Steel, harpooner, on a whale design, as being killed by him." 

 It was settled by placing the whale in the custody of Eichard Sarson, 

 esq., and Mr. Benjamin Smith, as agents of the proprietors, to save by 

 trying out and securing the oil ; " and that no distribution be made of 

 the said whale, or effects, till after flf'teen days are expired after the date 

 hereof, that so such persons who may pretend an interest or claim, in 

 the whale, may make their challenge; and in case such challenge appear 

 sufficient to them, then they may deliver the said whale or oyl to the 

 challenger; otherwise to give notice to the proprietors, who may do as 

 the matter may require." 



Mr. Felt, in his History of Salem,* says that James Loper, of that 

 town, in 1688, petitioned the colonial government of Massachusetts for 

 a patent for making oil. In his petition Loper represents that he has 

 been engaged in whale-fishing for twenty-two years. 



On the 12th of March, 1G92, John Higginson and Timothy Lindall, of 

 Salem, wrote to !N"athaniel Thomas: "We have been jointly concerned 

 in severall whale voyages at Cape Cod, and have sustained greate wrong 

 and injury hy the unjust dealing of the inhabitants of those parts, 

 especially in two instances: ye first was when Woodbury and company, 

 in our boates, in the winter of 1G90, killed a large whale in Cape Cod 

 harbour. She sank and after rose, went to sea with a harpoon, warp, 

 etc. of ours, which have been in the hands of Nicholas Eldredge. The 

 second case is this last winter, 1691. William Edds and company, in 

 one of our boates, struck a whale, which came ashore dead, and by ye 

 evidence of the people of Cape Cod was the very whale they killed. 

 The whale was taken away by Thomas Smith, of Eastham, and unjustly 

 detained."! 



Nor was the art of whaling unknown or unpracticed by our Canadian 

 neighbors in these early years, for M. de Denonville writes to M. de 

 Seignelay, in 1690, that the Canadians are adroit in whaling, and that 

 the "last ships have brought to Quebec, from Bayouue, some harpoon- 

 ers for Sieur Riverin."| 



* Vol. ii, p. 224. 



t Ibid. 



t Memoir on Acadia, &,c., N. Y. Col. Rec, ix, pp. 444-5. Holmes, in Lis "American 

 Anuals" (vol. i, p. 133), says: "Other English ships went this year (1593) to Cape 

 Breton. This is the tirst mention, that we find, of the whale-fishery by the English. 

 Although they found no whales in this instance, yet they discovered on an island eight 

 hundred whale fins where a Biscay ship had been three years before; and this is the 

 first account we have of whale fins or whale bone by the English." So it appears thut 

 for a long term of years Canadian waters were the whaleman's garden. 



