160 



ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



fishing as before. 1 Of the whaling, however, there was little left to 'enjoy.' The Reverend Mr. 

 Mellen, who in 1794 wrote a Topographical Description of the Town of Barnstable, 2 said in 

 retrospect, that "seventy or eighty years ago, [i. e., about 1714-1724] the whale bay fishery 

 was carried on in boats from the shore, to great advantage : This business employed near two 

 hundred men, for three months of the year, in the fall and beginning of winter. But few 

 whales now come into the bay, and this kind of fishery has for a long time (by this town at 

 least) been given up." Freeman, likewise, recalls that "the shores of the Cape were, within 

 the remembrance of persons now [1862] living, strewed in places with huge bones of whales, 

 these remaining unwasted many years. Fifty years back [about 1810], rib-bones set for posts 

 in fencing, was no unusual sight." 3 



In 1774, ships from Nantucket first crossed the equator in pursuit of whales, and in 1791, 

 the first American whaler rounded Cape Horn into the untried whaling 'grounds' of the Pacific. 

 The pursuit of Right Whales on the New England coast was never again taken jup in a regular 

 manner. At intervals even to the present day, an occasional solitary specimen or even a 

 small school appears off the shores of Nantucket or the outer portion of Cape Cod, and not 

 infrequently have the fishermen of these coasts given successful pursuit in their small boats 

 with harpoon or bomb-lance. But such occurrences are now the exception, and the people have 

 long since passed to other pursuits. 



Methods of whaling. While at first whales were pursued in small boats from the shore, 

 the 1662 citation above given in which reference is made to the cutting up of whales at sea, 

 implies that already at that date small vessels were used to pursue the quarry offshore in addi- 

 tion to the whale boats kept in readiness for launching from the beach. Cutting up the whale 

 at sea in calm weather was probably quite as easy a process as towing the great carcass to land. 

 For the Right Whale nearly always floats when dead, and with block and tackle the stripping 

 off of the sheets of blubber must have been comparatively easy. Then too the great body could 

 more readily be rolled over as it floated in the water. The shore whaling was thus supple- 

 mented by the use of sailing vessels of small burthen. The method of stationing watchers 

 along the coast during the whaling season, to give notice to the boat-whalers was much 

 employed on Cape Cod. Thus at Yarmouth, from the earliest period of its history, "a tract 

 of land has been reserved for the use of the inhabitants, and known as the Whaling Grounds. 

 It is situated in the northwesterly part of the town of Dennis, and is still [1884] held in common 

 by the two towns. There is no record of the laying out of these lands, but by the references 

 made to them in various documents, it appears that they were undoubtedly laid out by the 

 early proprietors of the town, for a look-out for those watching for whales. In 1713, the 



1 Freeman, F. History of Cape Cod, 1862, vol. 2, p. 361. 



2 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1794, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 12-17. 



3 Freeman, F. History of Cape Cod, 1862, vol. 2, p. 623. 



