CHAPTER 11. 

 THE AMEllICAN WHALE-FISHERY. 



The American Whale -fishery began as early as 1614. According to Captain 

 John Smith, the enterprise was prosecuted by the colonists along the New England 

 coast prior to that date, and it was among the first pursuits of the colonial inhab- 

 itants of New York and Delaware.* The right of whale-fishing "was guaranteed 

 by the Royal Charter of 1629 to the proprietors of Massachusetts, as being within 

 their waters." f Yet, according to Cheever, "the first person that is recorded to 

 have killed a whale, among the people of New England, was one William Hamil- 

 ton, somewhere between 1660 and 1670;" J and as early as 1700 they began to 

 fit out vessels from Cape Cod and Nantucket, to "whale out" in the deep sea for 

 sperm whales. These treasures of the ocean were of great value to the early settlers, 

 both commercially and in a domestic point of view. One John Higginson, of Cape 

 Cod, writes: "We have a considerable quantity of whale-oil and bone for exporta- 

 tion." Even in those primitive times, among the few inhabitants of the coast who 

 were engaged in the exciting adventure, it was not without its strifes, for, in 1692, 

 Mr. Higginson, one of the spiritual advisers of those days, and Timothy Lindall, 

 wrote to Nathaniel Thomas : § 



"Sir, we have been jointly concerned in seuerall whale voyages at Cape Cod, 

 and have sustained greate wrong and injury by the unjust dealing of the inhabitants 

 of those parts, especially in two instances ; y® first was when Woodbury and com- 

 pany, in our hoates, in the winter of 1690, killed a large whale in Cape Cod harbour. 

 She sank, and after rose, went to sea with a harpoon, warp, etc., of ours, which have 

 been found in the hands of Nicholas Eldridge. The second case is this : Last 

 winter, 1691, William Edds and company, in one of our loates^ struck a whale, 

 which came ashore dead, and by y^ evidence of the people of Cape Cod was the 

 very whale they killed. The whale was taken away by Thomas Smith, of Eastham, 

 and unjustly detained." 



"^ Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. XWhale and his Captors, p. 23. 



fVide Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. ^Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 223. 



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