HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WHALE FISHERY. 37 



pitch, aud turpeutiue, and on British-made sail-cloth were to continue, 

 and the duties on foreign-made sail-cloth were remitted to vessels en- 

 gaged in this pursuit. A bounty was also granted on all ships engaged 

 in whaling during the then existing war; harpooners and others em- 

 ployed in the Greenland fishery were exempted from impressment. 

 The commissioners of customs were, under the required certificate, to 

 pay the second twenty shillings per ton bounty granted by Parliament 

 over the first twenty previously granted.* The ships which had sailed 

 during the previous March or April were to be equal sharers in this 

 bounty with those whose sailing had been delayed. All ships built or 

 fitted out for this pursuit from the American colonies conforming to 

 this act were to be licensed to whale, and in order to receive the boun- 

 ties must remain in Davis Straits or vicinity from May (sailing about 

 May 1) until the 20th of August, unless sooner full or obliged to return 

 by accident. Foreign Protestants serving in this fishery for two years, 

 and qualifying themselves for its prosecution, were to be treated as 

 though they were natives.t The cause of this concession to the colonies 

 was a part of Lord Shirley's scheme to rid Acadia of the French. It 

 was his desire that George II should cause them to be removed to some 

 other English colony, and settle Nova Scotia with Protestauts,t and to 

 this end invitations were sent throughout Europe to induce Protestants 

 to remove thither. " The Moravian Brethren were attracted by the 

 promise of exemption from oaths and military service. The good will 

 of jSTew England was encouraged by care for its fisheries ; aud American 

 whalemen, stimulated by the promise of enjoying an equal bounty with 

 the British, learned to follow their game among the icebergs of the 

 Greenland seas."§ "The New Englanders of this period," says Ban- 

 croft,|l " were of homogeneous origin, nearly all tracing their descent to 

 the English emigrants of the reigns of Charles the First and Charles 

 the Second. They were a frugal and industrious race. Along the sea- 

 side, wherever there was a good harbor, fishermen, familiar with the 

 ocean, gathered in hamlets ; and each returning season saw them with 

 an ever-increasing number of mariners aud vessels, taking the cod and 

 mackerel, and sometimes pursuing the whale into the icy labyrinths of 

 the Northern seas ; yet loving home, and dearly attached to their modest 

 freeholds." 



Of this period Hutchinson says : |f " The increase of the consumption 

 of oil by lamps as well as by divers manufactures in Europe has been 

 no small encouragement to our whale-fishery. The flourishing state of 

 the island of Nantucket must be attributed to it. The cod and whale 



* lu 6tb year of the reigQ of George II. 

 t Mass. Col. MSS., Maritime, vi, p. 31(). 



I The carrying out of this scheme and the destruction of the colony of Acadiaua 

 justly receives execration. 



§ Bancroft's Hist. U. S., v, p. 45. 



Wlbid., iv,p. 149. 



U Hist, of Massachusetts, ii, p. 400. 



