162 



ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



Food for Gulls, and other Sea-Fowl, as well as Sharks, for they are not very nice." The use 

 of "Drugs" or drags made of heavy plank and attached so as to be pulled broadside through 

 the water, must have materially aided in tiring out the whale so as to allow of approaching 

 near enough to lance. William Douglass, in his Summary, Historical and Political, .... of 

 the British Settlements in North America (London, 1760, vol. 1, p. 296-298) further describes 

 this "drudge or stop-water" as a "plank of about two feet square, with a stick through its 

 center; to the further end of this stick, is fastened a tow-rope, called the drudge rope, of about 

 fifteen fathom; they lance, after having fastened her by the harpoon, till dead." 



For the harpoon line, hempen cord was used. This line or "fast," according to Douglass, 

 "is a rope of about twenty-five fathom." In the Boston News-Letter of December 5, 1723, 

 Mr. Peter Butler advertises for sale, at that place, "lately imported from London, extraordi- 

 nary good Whale Warps at 16 d a Pound, which are made of the finest Hemp, either by the 

 Quoile or less Quantity" (Starbuck, 1878, p. 34). 



Early Whaling at Cape Ann. To the historian J. B. Felt, we are chiefly indebted for what 

 fragmentary references there are as to the early whaling industry at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, 

 and the adjacent waters. He mentions 2 in his History of Salem, that James Loper of that 

 town, in 1688, petitioned the colonial government of Massachusetts for a patent for making 

 oil. In his petition Loper sets forth that he has been engaged in whale-fishing for twenty- 

 two years, but whether from Salem or elsewhere does not appear. Starbuck, who quotes this 

 incident, is at some pains to show that this is probably not the James Lopar of Long Island 

 whom the people of Nantucket, in 1672, invited to undertake "a design of Whale Citching" 

 from their shores. 



As elsewhere mentioned, whaling was carried on in Massachusetts Bay with the aid of 

 small sailing vessels, at least as early as 1662, and it seems certain that these vessels pursued 

 Right Whales in the waters off Cape Ann, and southward. For John Josselyn, 3 writing in 

 1675, describes the Ipswich River, how it "issueth forth into a large Bay, (where they fish for 

 Whales) due East over against the Islands of Sholes." 



Somewhat later, it appears that vessels cruised from Salem to Cape Cod after these whales, 

 for on March 12, 1692, John Higginson and Timothy Lindall, of Salem, wrote to Nathaniel 

 Thomas: "We have been jointly concerned in severall whale voyages at Cape Cod, and have 

 sustained greate wrong and injury by the unjust dealing of the inhabitants of those parts, 

 especially in two instances: ye first was when Woodbury and company, in our boates, in the 

 winter of 1690, killed a large whale in Cape Cod harbour. She sank and after rose, went to 

 sea with a harpoon, warp, etc. of ours, which have been in the hands of Nicholas Eldredge. 



1 Dudley, P. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, Abridged, 1734, vol. 7, pt. 3, p. 429. 



2 Felt, J. B. History of Salem, 1845, vol. 2, p. 224. 



3 Josselyn, J. Two Voyages to New England, 1675, reprinted in Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1833, ser. 3, vol. 3, p. 323. 



