22 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



38 to 50 tons burden each, and the returns were about 3,700 barrels of 

 oil, worth, at £7 per ton, £3,200. Holmes says:* "The whale-fishery 

 on the North American coasts must, at this time" (1730), "have been very 

 considerable; for there arrived in England from these coasts, about the 

 month of July, 154 tons of train and whale oil, and 9,200 of whale bone." 

 At this time there were nearly five hundred ships, manned by four thou- 

 sand sailors, engaged in foreign traflic from Massachusetts.t 



The culminating point of shore-whaling at Nantucket was probably 

 reached in 172G. During that year there were 86 whales taken by boats, 

 and the Coffins and Gardners, the Folgers, the Husseys, the Swains 

 and Paddacks, the progenitors of that race of men who carried the 

 name and fame of the little island of Nantucket to every accessible port 

 on the globe, are chief among those who gathered this harvest.^ 



The first recorded loss of a whaling-vessel from the island occurred 

 in 1724, when a sloop, of which Elisha Coffin was master, was lost at sea 

 with all on board.§ The second loss was that of another sloop, Thomas 



of the spring, to sail for the Greenlaad whaling-ground, promising to them both pro- 

 tection and monopoly, " by which it will be prohibited, under severe penalties, to bring 

 for the future any Oil or Whalebone into any Part of His Majesty's Dominions from For- 

 eign Countries." Early in 1725 the directors of the English South Sea Company ordered 

 12 more ships for whaling in these seas. (The inference is that as early at least as the 

 previous year, 1724, the company had vessels there.) Under date of Loudon, July 24, 

 1725, the ships are reported all returned. The Knglish ships took 25 whales, producing 

 1,000 puncheons of blubber and oil and 26 tons of fins, worth £450 per ton. In the 

 Dutch fishery, the Hollanders, with 144 ships took 240 whales ; the Hamburghers with 

 43 ships took 463 whales ; the Bremenese with 23 ships took 21) whales ; the IJergenese 

 with 2 ships took none, and two other ships returned empty. In the spring of 172G, 

 Sweden also looked with longing eyes upon this pursuit, and designed sending twelve 

 ships in the summer of that year to Greenland. 



* American Annals, i, p. 126. 



\Ibid. 



tThe names of the parties (probably captains of boats or vessels), with the number 

 of whales taken by each, may be of interest in this connection : John Swain took 4, 

 Andrew Gardner 4, Jonathan Coffin 4, Paul Paddack 4, Jas. Johnston 5, Clothier Pierce 

 3, Sylvauus Hussey 2, Nathan Coffin 4, Peter Gardner 4, Wm. Gardner 2, Abishai Folger 

 6, Nathan Folger 4, John Bunker 1, Shaubael Folger 5, Shubael Coffin 3, Nath'l Allen 3, 

 Edw'd Heath 4, Geo. Hussey 3, Benj. Gardner .3, Geo. Coffin 1, Rich'd Coffin 1, Nath'l 

 Paddack 2, Jos. Gardner 1, Matthew Jenkins 3, Bartlett Coffin 4, Daniel Gould 1, Eb- 



enezer Gardner 4, Staples 1 ; total 86. The largest number of whales taken in 



one day was eleven. In the New England Weekly Journal of December 21, 1730, appears 

 an advertisement, informing the public that there has been " Just Repritjted, The Won- 

 derful Providence of God, Exemplified in the Preservation of William Walling who 

 was drove out to Sea from Sandy Hook near New York in a leaky Boat, and was taken 

 up by a Whaling Sloop & brought to Nantucket after he had floated on the Sea eight 

 Days without Victuals or Drink." In 1732, according to a petition in the Mass. Col. 

 MSS. (Maritime, iv, p. 510), a vessel of 118 tons burden was built at Nantucket, the 

 ruling price being then £8 58. per ton. 



^ Zaccheus Macy, in a brief sketch of Nantucket, i^ublished in vol. iii of the Mass. 

 Hist. Soc.'s Coll., says (p. 157) that up to 1760 no man had been killed or drowned while 

 whaling, and this error Obed Macy, in his History of Nantucket, perpetuates. It must 

 have been intended by the former to include only shore-whaling, since prior to the 



