IO2 The Story of the New England Whalers 



even supposing them reduced to the necessity of 

 emigration." * 



When, after the War of the Revolution, the 

 one industry of Nantucket became depressed to 

 a point where even such thrift as that of these 

 islanders was not able to make a whale ship profit- 

 able, some of the inhabitants remembered the 

 British attempts to establish whaling communities, 

 and began to look abroad for opportunities that 

 seemed to be denied them at home. With Eng- 

 land and France paying bounties to their whale- 

 men, these Nantucket men thought they might 

 do better to migrate to Europe. Chief among 

 those who thus determined to abandon their old 

 home was William Rotch. Leaving the island 



1 It is related that a young whaleman named Greene, mate 

 of a Nantucket whale ship that had put into Halifax, had the 

 audacity to interfere for the protection of a girl to whom the 

 Duke of Clarence, admiral of the British fleet, was giving un- 

 welcome attention, and when nothing else would protect the girl 

 he took the officer by the coat collar and the seat of the trousers 

 and threw him down a flight of stairs. The admiral (he was 

 afterward William IV of England), on picking himself up, 

 sent for the young whaler, intending to offer him a commission 

 in the Royal Navy, but Greene had gone on board ship and 

 would answer no summons from any naval man. 



