54 NIMBOD OF THE SEA; OR, 



ness it was enacted ' that no harpooner, line-manager, boat- 

 steerer, or seaman in that service should be impressed into 

 the naval service.' Such immunity from the odious tyran- 

 ny of the press-gang, we should think, would have flooded 

 the whaling service with seamen ; but no ! the perils of this 

 fishery were more terrible to the English imagination than 

 forced service under the thunder of great guns. Eight years 

 later, the bounty was increased to 2 per ton on the ships 

 employed, and the foreigner was invited to do for England 

 that which British seamen failed to do. The following was 

 enacted : ' Foreign Protestants who shall serve three years 

 on board British whale-fishery ships, and shall take the usu- 

 al qualification oaths, shall be deemed natural born subjects 

 of Great Britain to all intents and purposes, as far as other 

 foreign Protestants can so be.' Such is the evidence that 

 the 'jolly British sea-dogs,' the f hearts of oak,' had no hank- 

 ering for the whale fight, and that Britannia could not rule 

 that wave at least. Now the hand of the American whale- 

 man is first felt in the markets of the world. Nantucket, 

 in the year 1761, employed ten vessels of one hundred tons 

 each; in 1762, fifteen vessels; in 1763, above eighty vessels; 

 1 whereupon,' says M'Pherson's Annals, ' the increase of the 

 quantity of whalebone imported from New England to Brit- 

 ain reduced the price of whalebone from 500 to 350 per 

 ton.' From these annals we also learn that in the thirty- 

 nine years to 1788 the whaling voyages made from Britain 

 numbered 2874, and the sum expended from the treasury in 

 bounties amounted to 1,687,902. 



" The British Government continued to manifest the live- 

 liest solicitude in the development of the fishery, and in 

 1795 the following additional bounties were granted: 'To 

 the vessel proceeding to the Pacific Ocean, continuing foul- 

 months upon the fishing -ground, and, after being sixteen 

 months out, having the greatest quantity of clear sperm-oil, 



