"In 1715, there were six vessels engaged in the whaling business, (all sloops, from thirty to forty tons burden each,) and which produced an income of nearly five thousand dollars."[G]
As the enterprise increased, more capital was invested, larger vessels were built, longer voyages were undertaken, and new localities or grounds for whales were discovered.
Fifty years later,—viz., from 1771 to 1775,—Massachusetts alone employed annually one hundred and eighty-three vessels in the North Atlantic Ocean, and one hundred and twenty-one vessels of larger burden in the South Atlantic Ocean.
"Look at the manner," says Burke, (1774,) "in which the New England people carry on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits; while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold—that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seems too remote and too romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place to their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We learn that, while some draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game, along the coast of Brazil."
Such was the eloquent commendation given to the energy and perseverance of New England whalers by one of the most distinguished of British statesmen.
"The first attempt to establish the sperm whale fishery from Great Britain was made in 1775. Nine years later, the French undertook to revive the prosecution of this business. The king, Louis XVI., fitted out six ships himself from Dunkirk, and procured his experienced harpooners from Nantucket; others emulated the example of that monarch; so that, before the French revolution, that nation had forty ships in the service.
"The revolutionary war of the American colonies, and the wars of the French revolution, nearly destroyed this flourishing branch of marine enterprise in both countries. Just previous to the war, Massachusetts employed in this service three hundred vessels and four thousand seamen, about half of whom were from Nantucket alone. During that war, fifteen vessels belonging to this island were lost at sea, and one hundred and thirty-four were captured by the enemy. The loss of life in prison ships and elsewhere, and the immense loss of property, show that Nantucket paid as dearly in the struggle for liberty as any portion of our country.
"It was not until the year 1792, many years after the commencement of the enterprise in Nantucket, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and other places on the sound, that the attention of the people of New Bedford was turned towards the whale fishery."[H]
From this date until the present time, no permanent obstruction, with the exception of the war of 1812–1815, has occurred to impede the gradual and increasing interest given to this enterprise, and which now assumes commanding commercial importance, and develops unrivaled energy in its prosecution.
The number of vessels in this country employed in the whale fishery far exceeds that of all others engaged in the same pursuit.