114 The Story of the New England Whalers 



State Papers, pp. 526-527. In it the story of the 

 Nantucket fishery is told briefly; reference is 

 made to the large bounties which were then paid 

 by the British and French governments to sustain 

 their whalers, and then, with these facts for an ar- 

 gument, the Nantucket whalers asked "that Con- 

 gress would grant them the nett revenue collected in 

 Nantucket as a fund to enable them to extend piers 

 into the sea, so as to form a narrow channel which 

 might be deepened and would, (as they conceive,) be 

 kept deep, when so confined, by the rapidity of the 

 tide flowing in and out." 



A more modest or a more worthy petition for 

 national aid cannot be found in the archives of 

 the nation. They asked only that they might 

 retain for a time their own contributions toward 

 the support of the general government and use 

 the money to increase their facilities for doing 

 their peculiar business, and thus increase their 

 ability to make greater contributions to the sup- 

 port of the government. 



Further than that, here were a number of plain 

 but observing sailors, men without scientific 

 training, proposing the very means for cutting 



