54 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OP FISH AND FISHERIES. 



mouth vessels, which were carried into St. Domingo, 100 barrels. These 

 captures were made on the llth of February.* 



But it did not always happen that whalemen fell so easy a prey to 

 predatory vessels. A little strategy sometimes availed them when a 

 forcible resistance would have been out of the question, and it may be 

 easily believed that men to whom danger and hairbreadth escapes were 

 part of their every-day life would scarcely submit supinely when there 

 was any chance in their favor. A notable instance of this kind occurred 

 in April, 1771. Two Nantucket whaling-sloops, commanded respectively 

 by Isaiah Chadwick and Obed Bunker, were lying at anchor in the har- 

 bor of Abaco, when a ship appeared off the mouth of the harbor with 

 her signals set for assistance. With that readiness to aid distressed 

 shipmates which has ever been a distinguishing trait of American 

 whalemen, one of the captains with a boat's crew made up of men from 

 each sloop hastened to render such help as was in their power. The 

 vessel's sidereached, the captain immediately boarded her to find what 

 was desired, and much to his surprise had a pistol presented to his head 

 by the officer in command with a peremptory demand that he should 

 pilot the ship into the harbor. He assured the commander that he was 

 a stranger there, but that then was a man in his boat who was acquainted 

 with the port. The man was called and persuaded in the same manner 

 in which the captain had been. The argument used to demonstrate the 

 prudence of his compliance with the request being so entirely unan- 

 swerable the man performed the service, anchoring the ship where a 

 point of land lay between her and the sloops. This being done the boat 

 was dismissed and the men returned to their vessels. The Nantucket 

 captains now held a consultation as to what course should be pursued. 

 Those who had been on board the ship noticed that the men seemed to 

 be all armed. They also observed, walking alone in the cabin, a man. 

 The conclusion arrived at was that the ship was in the hands of pirates 

 and that the man in the cabin was the former captain, and measures 

 were immediately inaugurated to secure the vessel and crew. To this 

 end an invitation was extended to the usurping captain, his officers and 

 passengers to dine on board one of the sloops. The courtesy was ac- 

 cepted, and the pirate captain and his boatswain, with the displaced 

 captain as representative of the passengers, repaired on board the 

 sloop. After a short time he became uneasy and proposed to return to 

 his own vessel, but he was seized by the whalemen and bound fast and 

 his intentions frustrated. The actual captain now explained the situa- 

 tion, which was, that the'ship sailed from Bristol (R. I.?) to the coast of 

 Africa, from thence carried a cargo of slaves to the West Indies, and 

 was on her return home with a cargo of sugar when the mutiny occurred, 

 it being the intention of the mutineers to become pirates, a business 

 at that time quite thrifty and promising. Our fishermen now told the 

 boatswain that if he would go on board the ship and bring the former 



* The men who came home with Captain Nixon were Oliver Price, Pardon Slocum, 

 and Philip Harkins. — (Boston News-Letter.) 



