168 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



who had actually killed them and might thus rightly claim the blubber. Starbuck (1878, p. 

 18) finds, thus, in 1692 a case of "the inevitable dispute of proprietorship. A whale was cast 

 on shore at Edgartown by the proprietors, 'seized by Benjamin Smith and Mr. Joseph Norton 

 in their behalf,' which was also claimed by 'John Steel, harpooner, on a whale design, as being 

 killed by him.' It was settled by placing the whale in the custody of Richard Sarson, esq., 

 and Mr. Benjamin Smith, as agents of the proprietors, to save by trying out and securing the 

 oil; 'and that no distribution be made of the said whale, or effects, till after fifteen days are 

 expired after the date hereof, that so such persons who may pretend an interest or claim, in 

 the whale, may make their challenge; and in case such challenge appear sufficient to them, 

 then they may deliver the said whale or oyl to the challenger; otherwise to give notice to the 

 proprietors, who may do as the matter may require.'" From these meager references we are 

 to infer that whales were regularly hunted in the waters about Martha's Vineyard, and that 

 they not infrequently drifted, dead, to the shores, usually no doubt, victims of a previous 

 encounter with the whalemen. It became customary, in the event of the quarry escaping, 

 for the whalers at once to put on record with the town clerk, the wounds 'of the whale and the 

 marks of the harpoons that so it might be identified in case it drifted to land. Such an entry 

 is quoted by Starbuck (1878, p. 35) from the Court records of Martha's Vineyard for the year 

 1702-03: "The marks of the whales killed by John Butler and Thomas Lothrop. One whale 

 lanced near or over the shoulder blade, near the left shoulder blade only; another killed with 

 an iron forward in the left side, marked W; and upon the right side marked with a pocket- 

 knife T. L. ; and the other had an iron hole over the right shoulder-blade, with two lance holes 

 in the same side, one in the belly. These whales were all killed about the middle of February 

 last past; all great whales, betwixt six and seven and eight foot bone, which are all gone from 

 us. A true account given by John Butler from us, and recorded Per me, Thomas Trapp, 

 Clerk." 



Martha's Vineyard seems never to have been very prominent in whaling, and the few 

 references that apply to the industry there after 1700 have to do mainly with deep-sea voyages, 

 for the Right Whales were nearly exterminated in the adjacent waters by the first quarter of 

 the eighteenth century, and by its close they were so scarce that a writer l in 1807 says: "But 

 the whale, which was formerly so abundant on the coast, has almost disappeared. . . .Two 

 have been taken during the course of the last twenty years." 



Early Whaling in Rhode Island. In 1663, King Charles II granted a charter to the Rhode 

 Island and Providence Plantations, which among other privileges, provides: "ffurther, for 

 the encouragement of the inhabitants of our sayd Collony of Providence Plantations to sett 

 vpon the business of takeing whales, itt shall bee lawefull ffor them, or any of them, having 

 struck whale, dubertus [i. e., Finback Whales], or other greate ffish, itt or them, to pursue unto 



1 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1846, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 55. 



