CHAPTER II. 
TIIE AMERICAN WHALE-FISHERY. 
The American Whale-fishery began as early as 1614. According to Captain 
John Smith, the enterprise was prosecuted by the colonists along the New England 
coast prior to that date, and it was among the first pursuits of the colonial inhab- 
itants of New York and Delaware.* The right of whale-fishing "was guaranteed 
by the Royal Charter of 1629 to the proprietors of Massachusetts, as being within 
their waters." f Yet, according to Cheever, "the first person that is recorded to 
have killed a whale, among the people of New England, was one William Hamil- 
ton, somewhere between 1660 and 1670;" J and as early as 1700 they began to 
fit out vessels from Cape Cod and Nantucket, to "whale out" in the deep sea for 
sperm whales. These treasures of the ocean were of great value to the early settlers, 
both commercially and in a domestic point of view. One John Higginson, of Cape 
Cod, writes: "We have a considerable quantity of whale-oil and bone for exporta- 
tion." Even in those primitive times, among the few inhabitants of the coast who 
were engaged in the exciting adventure, it was not without its strifes, for, in 1692, 
Mr. Higginson, one of the spiritual advisers of those days, and Timothy Lindall, 
wrote to Nathaniel Thomas : § 
"Sir, we have been jointly concerned in seuerall whale voyages at Cape Cod, 
and have sustained greate wrong and injury by the unjust dealing of the inhabitants 
of those parts, especially in two instances ; y e first was when Woodbury and com- 
pany, in our boates, in the winter of 1690, 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 found in the hands of Nicholas Eldridge. 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 y e 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." 
* Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. \Wliale and his Captors, p. 23. 
t Vide Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. § Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. 
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