THE BOUNTY SYSTEM 187 



the ships from Greenland with a catch of five whales 

 valued at two thousand pounds, " which with the 

 bounty money of forty shillings per ton makes their 

 voyage a very successful one." This cargo was also 

 landed at the Sea Mills Dock. A third ship, the 

 St Andrew, was sent out in 1755 and 1756, so 

 encouraging were the results. In March, 1757, an 

 advertisement for men to sail in the ships puffed the 

 healthiness of the voyage, stating that of ninety men 

 in the Bristol and Adventure only one had died a 

 natural death in six voyages, two others being acci- 

 dentally killed. Perhaps the fact that the Adventure 

 had been held in the ice for over ten weeks in 1756 

 was better known in the port than the Company 

 imagined. At any rate the trade soon began to 

 fall off, and in March, 1761, the Company was 

 wound up. 



The first participation of Liverpool in the Green- 

 land and Davis Straits whale fishery is unrecorded. 

 In 1764 three vessels were engaged in the trade, but 

 it was not until 1775 that the first Greenland ship was 

 built in Liverpool in Mr Sutton's yard. 1 This year 

 sixty-five vessels sailed from English ports for the 

 whale fishing. In 1786 thirteen vessels were sent 

 out from Liverpool. In 1788 twenty-one vessels 

 with a total tonnage of six thousand four hundred and 

 eighty-five tons were employed in the trade, the 

 tonnage ranging from two hundred and twenty to 



1 " Liverpool, its Commerce, Statistics, and Institutions, with 

 a history of the Cotton Trade," by Henry Smithers, Liverpool, 

 1825. 



