82 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



thoroughly imbued with New England principles, but of sufficient 

 statesmanship to realize of how much national importance this matter 

 was. None knew better than John Adams that the secret of the com- 

 mercial greatness which should be developed lay in the codevelopment 

 of the fisheries; that herein was the nursery for seamen who would be a 

 source of wealth in peace and of power in war. It was desirable to make 

 duties aud courtesies more reciprocal, arid one of the first duties in- 

 trusted to Mr. Adams on his appointment to the Court of St. James in 

 1785, was the arrangement of some treaty which should be mutually 

 satisfactory. Naturally one of the principal points was the importation 

 of the products of our fishermen, since that industry perhaps more than 

 any other was in danger of serious injury from the existing condition of 

 things. 



In a letter to the Marquis of Carmarthen, dated July 29, 1785, Mr. 

 Adams refers to the trouble accruing from the alien duties laid by En- 

 gland in these words : " The course of commerce, since the peace, be- 

 tween Great Britain and the United States of America, has been such as 

 to have produced many inconveniences to the persons concerned in it on 

 both sides, which become every day more and more sensible. The zeal 

 of Americans to make remittances to British merchants, has been such 

 as to raise the interest of money to double its usual standard, to increase 

 the price of bills of exchange to 8 or 10 per centum above par, and to 

 advance the price of the produce of the couutry to almost double the 



pense usually practised and paid by the natif subjects for their admittance to master- 

 ship. 



" 11th. They shall have liberty to command their own vessels, and have the choice 

 of their own people to navigate them. 



" 12th. They shall be free from all military and naval service, as well in war as in peace, 

 in the samo manner and extent as expressed by the king's ordinance of the ICth of 

 February, 1759." (Macy, 257, 258.) 



These were probably essentially the same concessions made to Mr. Rotch in person. 

 How many American captains pursued the fishery from the various British and French 

 ports subsequently to the Revolution, it would be difficult to determine. Nantucket 

 alone furnished 83 captains for the French and 149 captains for the English fishery ; 

 probably the bulk of the total number came from this one port, though in the course 

 of the prosecution of whaling by these nations, New Bedford furnished a very con- 

 siderable number. In a " Journal of a Voyage to Greenland" from Dunkirk in the 

 ship Penelope, Capt. Tristram Gardner (a Nantucket man,) he records under the head 

 of Friday, June G, 1788, in latitude 70° north, " 100 ships in sight." On the 22d of 

 the same month he states, as a mere matter of fact not worthy of extended comment, 

 " Wind at South ; A Ruged sea ; Plenty of Snow. Later Part Saw Ise to ye S. W. of 

 ns a 4 ye wind Shifted to ye Northward, but Still thick weather. Saw A Number of 

 ships, but No whale. So ends this 24 hours. Lat. 79. 02." And yet this is within about 

 175 miles of the highest northern point attained by any of our splendidly equipped 

 expeditions undertaken with the express purpose of pushing as far north as possible 

 in vessels armored and strengthened and equipped in the most complete manner, while 

 the whaling voyages were pursued in small, not uncommonly strong ships, not even 

 having the feeble protection of coppered bottoms. As early as 1753, a schooneT waa 

 fitted from Boston for the discovery of the northwest passage. She sailed in the spring 

 aud returned in October of the same year. 



