44 The Story of the New England Whalers 



The Nantucket method of undertaking the 

 whaling business was characteristic and memo- 

 rable. They sent in 1690 to Cape Cod, where, 

 as they knew, "the people had made greater pro- 

 ficiency in the art of whale catching than them- 

 selves," and hired Ichabod Paddock, an expert, 

 to come to the island and teach them how to do 

 the work. 



Comparisons may be odious, but they are none 

 the less instructive. In the period when the Nan- 

 tucket people sent to Cape Cod for a teacher of 

 the arts of whaling, the French Canadians were 

 also thinking about engaging in the same enter- 

 prise. As early as 1636 (Thwaites's Jesuit Rela- 

 tions, IX, 169), the Basque whalers worked in the 

 St. Lawrence River "up as far as Tadousac, or 

 farther," and schools of whales were seen at 

 "Kebec." But when seeing these whales finally 

 turned the thoughts of the French Canadians to 

 the whale fishery, they did not hire a Basque to 

 teach them the arts; they applied to their king 

 for a subsidy with which to hire Basque whalers 

 to do the work for them. The king gave them the 

 "encouragement" they said they needed to estab- 



