WHALE FISHERY OF NEW ENGLAND 23 



choice of weapons. He selected, of course, the weapon with which he 

 was most skilful and took his stand with a poised harpoon. It had 

 altogether too dangerous an appearance for the irate Englishman, 

 particularly as the whaleman was evidently an expert in the manual 

 of thrust and parry, and so with as good grace as he could command, 

 the Englishman withdrew from the fight. 



At a very early day in the fishery, whaling vessels, which were at 

 first long rowboats and later small sloops, began to increase in size, 

 and about 1820 ships of three hundred tons were found profitable. 

 The increase in profit producing capacity, strange as it may appear, 

 actually sounded the death-knell of the Nantucket whaling, for across 

 the mouth of the harbour ran a bar, over which it soon became 

 impossible for whaling vessels of large size to pass. The difficulty was 

 for a time overcome by the true Yankee ingenuity of some inventive 

 Nantucketer, who devised the "camel," a veritable dry-dock barge 

 in which the larger whaleships, lightened often of oil and bone, were 

 floated over the bar into the forest of masts which in those days 

 characterized a harbour now frequented only by a few schooners and 

 sloops, the small pleasure crafts of the summer residents, and an oc- 

 casional steamer. 



As whaleships still continued to increase in size, the "camel" ex- 

 pedient was only a temporary success; for the time came when vessels 

 were of too great tonnage to be thus floated over the bar, and the daring 

 and skilful Nantucketer, who had taught the civilized world not only 

 how, but where, to whale, had to admit defeat and gradually give up the 

 industry to more fortunately situated ports. At this time, about 1830, 

 Nantucket was commercially the third largest city in Massachusetts, 

 Boston being first and Salem second. 



In 1843 Nantucket owned its record number of ships, eighty-eight. 

 In 1846, which is referred to as the "boom" year in American whaling, 

 sixteen vessels cleared from Nantucket and sixty-nine from her near-by 

 rival New Bedford. In 1869 Nantucket sent her last ship and 

 disappeared from the list of whaling ports. The great fire of 1846 

 also contributed to the downfall of the industry. 



A new era in whaling was to be born, with New Bedford as the centre, 

 and Nantucket was to become only a health resort and mecca for 

 sight-seers, more than ten thousand persons visiting the island in 1914. 



NEW BEDFORD 



New Bedford undoubtedly owed its whaling success to its prox- 

 imity to Nantucket, to its wonderful harbour, and to the honesty, 

 thrift, and good business ability of its citizens, most of whom were 

 Quakers. 



As in Nantucket, the whole city lived to go whaling, and as each 

 inhabitant made more money, he moved his residence higher up on the 

 Hill. It is said that there was an inn called the "Crossed Harpoons," 

 and another called "Spouter Inn," and there is a Whaleman's Chapel 



