154 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



overside while the boat was held in readiness for a chance to lance the whale when it again 

 came to the surface. There is little, however, to support this view. Probably the whales 

 themselves were so abundant that a great many were struck and it was often deemed better 

 to cut loose from one that gave promise of a long chase, in order to attack others near at hand 

 that perchance, would prove easier prey. In testimony of their abundance, Edward Randolph, 

 in October, 1676, tells the Lords of Trade concerning the resources of the colony at New 

 Plymouth, that "here is made a good quantity of whale oil, which fish they take upon the 

 coasts." l Again, in 1688, he writes home from Massachusetts: "New Plimouth Colony have 

 great profit by whale killing. I believe it will be one of our best returnes, now beaver and 

 peltry fayle us" (Hutchinson's Coll., p. 588, quoted by Starbuck, 1878, p. 8). So, too, Cotton 

 Mather, writing in 1697 of the colonists at Plymouth, says: "They have since passed on to 

 the catching of whales, whose oil is become a staple commodity of the country; whales, I 

 say, which living and moving islands do find way to this coast, where, notwithstanding the 

 desperate hazards run by the whale-catchers in their whale boats, often torn to pieces by 

 the strokes of the enraged monsters, yet it has rarely been known that any of them have 

 miscarried." 



Whaling Accidents. Fatalities did, however, occasionally overtake the whalemen. What 

 was evidently an accident to a boat's crew of Indians in the pursuit of a whale off the Connecti- 

 cut coasts, is thus referred to by Wait Winthrop of Boston, in a letter to his brother Fitz-John 

 at New London, dated 29 Apl., 1700: "I am sorry for the accident about the two Indians, 

 who I suppose to be lost tho' you do not say so, and tis well the others escaped. If there should 

 be any difference about the pumme [i. e. possession] of the whale, I doubt I must com and hold 

 a court of admiralty about it." 3 



In the diary of Rev. Simon Bradstreet, of New London, Conn., is a brief mention of the 

 death of one Jonathan Webbe who, in October, 1668, was drowned in Boston Harbor while 

 "catching a whale below the Castle. In coiling vp ye line vnadvisedly he did it about his 

 middle thinking the whale to bee dead, but suddenly shee gave a Spring and drew him out 

 of the boat, he being in ye midst of the line, but could not be recovered while he had any life." 

 Probably the unfortunate man became caught in the harpoon line, though it is unlikely that 

 he "did it about his middle," for the diarist adds in a parenthesis: "Mr. Webb's death, as 

 after I was better informed, was not altogether so as related." 



In the Boston News-Letter for December 8, 1712, is an item from Marshfield, Mass., dated 

 November 28: "On Tuesday, the 25th currant, six men going off the Gurnet Beach in a whale 

 boat at Duxberry after a whale, by reason of the Boisterousness of the sea, oversetting the Boat, 



1 Crapo, W. W. Centennial in New Bedford, 1876, p. 27. 



2 Freeman, F. History of Cape Cod, 1862, vol. 2, p. 631, footnote. 



3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1892, ser. 6, vol. 5, p. 61 (Winthrop Papers). 



4 New England Hist, and Geneal. Register, 1855, vol. 9, p. 44. 



