Early Days on Nantucket 69 



verance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the 

 dextrous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever 

 carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the 

 extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; 

 a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and 

 not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. 



The market was sometimes swamped, for a 

 time, by the flood of oil poured upon it by the 

 successful whalers; but where others might be 

 embarrassed, the people of Nantucket prospered 

 steadily. In 1730 they began building their own 

 ships. Captain Isaac Myrick launched a "snow" 

 of 118 tons during that year, a snow being a vessel 

 having one square-rigged mast set at the midship 

 section and another much shorter farther aft. 

 Sloops and schooners of from 30 to 60 tons only 

 had satisfied the Nantucket men theretofore. 



In 1743 these whalers began to carry try-pots in 

 furnaces built on their ships to try out the blubber 

 as fast as it was saved, and larger ships were then 

 needed for the longer voyages that this practice 

 made possible. Yet the reader is not to think of 

 any ship of the day as being large by any modern 

 standard. An Erie canal boat carries 240 tons; 



