THE WHALE FISHERY. 27 



the smoke of a chimney, and making the sea about them white and hoary, as is said in Job, of 

 such incredible bigness that I will never wonder that the/body of Jonas could be in the belly of a 

 whale." 



As early as 1661, Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, and Eastham were included in a proposition 

 Hoarding the distribution of drift whales, submitted by the general court of Plymouth Colony,* 

 and in 1G90, the people of Nantucket, finding that the people of Cape Cod had made greater profi- 

 ciency in the art of catching whales than themselves, sent thither for an instructor, t 



The Cape Cod \\hule fishery in the seventeenth century, and perhaps later, was prosecuted no 

 doubt nearly exclusively from the shore, as was also done in Nantucket, and as to the present day 

 tlic sperm-whale fishery is carried on about the Bermudas. A lookout was kept by watchmen on 

 the shore, who gave .signals when a whale appeared and indicated his movements from their lofty 

 .stations. One of these stations was on Great Island, at the mouth of Wellfleet Harbor, where, tra- 

 dition says, there were at one time ten or twelve houses and the first tavern built in Wellfleet. 

 Wellfleet was then included in the town of Eastham, and it was doubtless by the people of this 

 settlement that the petition was presented in 1706, which states, " all or most of us are concerned in 

 fitting out Boats to Catch and take Whales when ye season of ye year Serves; and whereas when we 

 have taken any whale or whales, our Custom is to Cutt them up and to take away ye fatt and ye 

 Bone of such Whales as are brought in and afterwards to let ye Best of ye Boddy of ye Lean of 

 whales Lye on shoar in lowe water to be washt away by ye sea, being of noe vallue nor worth any 

 Thing to us," and begs that Thomas Houghton or his assigns be permitted to take away this waste.f 



Another of these stations was in what is now the town of Dennis, and is the present site of 

 the hotel called the " Bay House." This tract was the joint property of Dennis and Yarmouth, 

 and was reserved until March, 1877, when it was sold by the mutual vote of the two towns at the 

 yearly town meeting. 



Starbuck relates that in 1724 and 1726, in the prosecution of the wars between the Indians 

 and the colonists, some of the friendly Indians from the county of Barnstable were enlisted with 

 the express understanding that that they were to be discharged in time to take part in the fall 

 and winter whale fishery. 



This would indicate that the boat fishery was still at that time profitable and actively prose- 

 cuted. 



In 1737, a paragraph in the Boston News Letter stated, a dozen whaling vessels were fitting in 

 Provincetown, for Davis Strait, and that so many people were going that not over a dozen or 

 fourteen men would be left. Eastham also had a vessel in Davis Strait this year, and the Davis 

 Strait fleet from Massachusetts alone is estimated by Starbuck to have consisted of from fifty to 

 sixty vessels. Four years later Barustable had at least one whaling vessel which was captured 

 by the Spanish, and in 1770 this port still had two whalers in the Arctic. 



The size of the Arctic fleet of Massachusetts in 1737 would indicate that the shore-fishery was 

 falling off in importance. Indeed a statement to this effect occurs in Felt's Annals of Salem, 

 under date of 1748, where it is said, " whales formerly for many successive years set in alongshore 

 by Cape Cod. There was good whaling in boats * * * . After some years they left this 

 ground and passed farther off upon the banks at some distance from the shore. The whalers 

 then used sloops witii whale-boats aboard, and this fishery turned to good account. At present 

 the whales take their course in deep water, whereupon a peace our whalers design to follow 

 them." || 



STARBUCK: in Eep. U. S. Fish. Com., Part IV, 1875-76, p. 7. t STARBUCK: I.e., p. 17. 



t Mass. Col. MSS. maritime, IV, pp. 72-73, quoted by Starbuck, I. c., p. 30. $ I. o., p. 31. || STARBUCK: I. o., p. 33. 



