HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WHALE FISHERY. 25 



province were numerous and tyrannical, and the people had no redress. 

 The boast of one of them that he would tax them so high that they 

 would have no time to think of anything else but paying these duties, 

 seemed to be resolved into a motto adopted by the majority, and the 

 groanings and writhiugs of the people only seemed to serve as the^ ex- 

 cuse for another turn of the screws of executive tyranny. 



In June, 1703, Lord Conbury, iu a letter to the lords of trade,* 

 speaking of the difficulties the commerce of New York had to contend 

 with from the position of some parts of its territory in relation to Con- 

 necticut and Massachusetts, writes that Connecticut fills that part of 

 Loug Island with European goods cheaper than New York can, since 

 New York pays a duty which is not assessed by Connecticut; "nor 

 will they" (the inhabitants of the east end of Long Island) " be subject 

 to the Laws of Trade nor to the Acts of Navigation, by which means there 

 has for some time been no Trade between the City of New Yorke and the 

 East end of Long Island, from whence the greater quantity of Whaleoyle 

 comes.'' He adds that the people are full of New England principles, 

 and would rather trade with Boston, Connecticut, and Rhode Island 

 than with New York. 



In 1708, however, under Lord Cornbury, an act was passed for the 

 "Encouragement of Whaling," in which it was provided, 1st, that any 

 Indian, who was bound to go to sea whale- fishing, should not "at any 

 time or times between the First Day of November and the Fifteenth Day of 

 April following, yearly, be sued arrested, molested, detained or kept 

 out of that Imployment by any person or persons whatsoever, pre- 

 tending aoy Contract, Bargain Debt or Dues unto him or them ex- 

 cept and only for or concerning any Contract, Debt or Bargain relating 

 to the Undertaking and Design of the Whale-fishing and uot other- 

 wise under the penalty of paying treble Costs to the Master of any such 

 Indian or Indians so to be sued, arrested, molested or detained." Sec- 

 tion 2 provided that " if any person or persons shall purchase, take to 

 pawn or anyways get or receive any Cloathiug, Gun or other Necessa- 

 ries that his Master shall let him, from any such Indian or Indians or 

 suffer any such Indian to be drinking or drunk in or about their 

 Houses, when they should be at Sea, or other business belonging to that 



this Year, for several vessels are come in already, deeply laden, and others expected." This 

 is not mentioned as by any means an extraordinary circumstance, and when it is re- 

 membered that the Euglish had already pursued the whale in those seas for fifteen 

 years, and at that time had some forty or fifty ships there engaged in this pursuit, it 

 ■would scarcely be likely to excite surprise. 



In 1744, a whale 40 feet long was found ashore on Nantucket, by three men, who, 

 for lack of more proper instruments, killed it with their jack-knives. (News-Letter 

 October 4.) 



* N. Y. Col. Rec. iv, p. 1058. An order was passed in the New York Council, March 

 2, 1702, directing Thomas Clark and John Crosier, of Suffolk County, to secure three 

 drift whales ashore in said county, they to have one-third of the oil and bone and to 

 deliver the remaining two-thirds to the New York custom-house clear of charge. 

 (Council Minutes, viii, p. 323.) 



