The English endeavored also to participate of it. In 1672, they offered to their own fishermen a bounty of six shillings a ton, on the oil they should bring home, and instituted, at different times, different exclusive companies, all of which failed of success. They raised their bounty, in 1733, to twenty shillings a ton, on the admeasurement of the vessel. In 1740, to thirty shillings, with a privilege to the fishermen against being impressed. The Basque fishery, supported by poverty alone, had maintained but a feeble existence, before competitors aided by the bounties of their nation, and was, in fine, annihilated by the war of 1745, at the close of which the English bounty was raised to forty shillings. From this epoch, their whale fishery went on between the limits of twenty-eight and sixty-seven vessels, till the commencement of the last war.
The Dutch, in the meantime, had declined gradually to about one hundred and thirty ships, and have, since that, fallen down to less than half that number. So that their fishery, notwithstanding a bounty of thirty florins a man, as well as that of Hamburg, is now nearly out of competition.
In 1715, the Americans began their whale fishery. They were led to it at first by the whales which presented themselves on their coasts. They attacked them there in small vessels of forty tons. As the whale, being infested, retired from the coast, they followed him farther and farther into the ocean, still enlarging their vessels with their adventures, to sixty, one hundred, and two hundred tons. Having extended their pursuit to the Western Islands, they fell in, accidentally, with the spermaceti whale, of a different species from that of Greenland, which alone had hitherto been known in commerce: more fierce and active, and whose oil and head matter was found to be more valuable, as it might be used in the interior of houses without offending the smell. The distinction now first arose between the Northern and Southern fisheries: the object of the former being the Greenland whale, which frequents the Northern coasts and seas of Europe and America; that of the latter being the spermaceti whale, which was found in the Southern seas, from the Western Islands and coast of Africa, to that of Brazil, and still on to the Falkland Islands. Here, again, within soundings, on the coast of Brazil, they found a third species of whale, which they called the black or Brazil whale, smaller than the Greenland, yielding a still less valuable oil, fit only for summer use, as it becomes opaque at 50 degrees of Fahrenheit's termometer, while that of the spermaceti whale is limpid to 41, and of the Greenland whale to 36, of the same thermometer. It is only worth taking, therefore, when it falls in the way of the fishermen, but not worth seeking, except when they have failed of success against the spermaceti whale, in which case, this kind, easily found and taken, serves to moderate their loss.
In 1771 the Americans had one hundred and eighty-three vessels, of thirteen thousand eight hundred and twenty tons, in the Northern fishery, and one hundred and twenty-one vessels, of fourteen thousand and twenty tons, in the Southern, navigated by four thousand and fifty-nine men. At the beginning of the late war, they had one hundred and seventy-seven vessels in the Northern, and one hundred and thirty-two in the Southern fishery. At that period, our fishery being suspended, the English seized the opportunity of pushing theirs. They gave additional bounties of £500, £400, £300, £200, £100 sterling, annually, to the five ships which should take the greatest quantities of oil. The effect of which was such, as, by the year 1786, to double the quantity of common oil necessary for their own consumption. Finding, on a review of the subject, at that time, that their bounties had cost the Government £13 10s. sterling a man, annually, or sixty per cent. on the cargoes, a part of which went consequently to ease the purchases of this article made by foreign nations, they reduced the northern bounty from forty to thirty shillings the ton of admeasurement.
They had, some little time before, turned their attention to the Southern fishery, and given very great bounties in it, and had invited the fishermen of the United States to conduct their enterprises. Under their guidance, and with such encouragement, this fishery, which had only begun with them in 1784 or 1785, was rising into value. In 1788 they increased their bounties, and the temptations to our fishermen, under the general description of foreigners who had been employed in the whale fishery, to pass over with their families and vessels to the British dominions, either in America or Europe, but preferably to the latter. The effect of these measures had been prepared, by our whale oils becoming subject, in their market, to the foreign duty of £18 5s. sterling the ton, which, being more than equal to the price of the common oil, operated as a prohibition on that, and gave to their spermaceti oil a preference over ours to that amount.
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The fishermen of the United States, left without resource, by the loss of their market, began to think of accepting the British invitation, and of removing, some to Nova Scotia, preferring smaller advantages in the neighborhood of their ancient country and friends, others to Great Britain, postponing country and friends to high premiums.
The Government of France could not be inattentive to these proceedings. They saw the danger of letting four or five thousand seamen, of the best in the world, be transferred to the marine strength of another nation, and carry over with them an art, which they possessed almost exclusively. To give time for a counterplan, the Marquis de Lafayette, the valuable friend and citizen of this, as well as that country, wrote to a gentleman in Boston, to dissuade the fishermen from accepting the British proposals, and to assure them that their friends in France would endeavor to do something for them. A vessel was then arrived from Halifax at Nantucket, to take off those who had proposed to remove. Two families had gone abroad, and others were going. In this moment, the letter arriving, suspended their designs. Not another went abroad, and the vessel returned to Halifax with only the two families.
The plan adopted by the French ministry, very different from that of the first mover, was to give a counter invitation to the Nantucket men to remove and settle in Dunkirk, offering them a bounty of fifty livres (between nine and ten dollars) a ton on the admeasurement of the vessels they should equip for the whale fishery, with some other advantages. Nine families only, of thirty-three persons, accepted the invitation. This was in 1785. In 1786, the ministry were led to see that their invitation would produce but little effect, and that the true means of preventing the emigration of our fishermen to the British dominions would be to enable them still to follow their calling from their native country, by giving them a new market for their oils, instead of the old one they had lost. The duties were, therefore, abated on American whale oil immediately, and a further abatement promised by the letter No. 8, and, in December, 1787, the arrêt No. 9 was passed.
The rival fishermen immediately endeavored to turn this measure to their own advantage, by pouring their whale oils into the markets of France, where they were enabled, by the great premiums received from their Government, perhaps, too, by extraordinary indemnifications, to undersell both the French and American fishermen. To repel this measure, France shut her ports to all foreign fish oils whatever, by the arrêt No. 10. The British whale fishery fell, in consequence, the ensuing year from two hundred and twenty-two to one hundred and seventy-eight ships. But this general exclusion has palsied our fishery also. On the 7th of December, 1788, therefore, by the arrêt No. 11, the ports of France still remaining shut to all other nations, were again opened to the produce of the whale fisheries of the United States, continuing, however, their endeavors to recover a share in this fishery themselves, by the aid of our fishermen. In 1784, 1785, 1786, they had had four ships. In 1787, three. In 1788, seventeen in the two fisheries of four thousand five hundred tons. These cost them in bounty 225,000 livres, which divided on one thousand five hundred and fifty tons of oil, the quantity they took, amounted to 145 livres (near twenty-seven dollars) the ton, and, on about one hundred natives on board the seventeen ships, (for there were one hundred and fifty Americans engaged by the voyage) came to 2,225 livres, or about 416⅔ dollars a man.