We have had, during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, on an average, ninety-one vessels, of five thousand eight hundred and twenty tons, in the northern, and thirty-one of four thousand three hundred and ninety tons in the southern fishery. * * * * *
These details will enable Congress to see with what a competition we have to struggle for the continuance of this fishery, not to say its increase. Against prohibitory duties in one country, and bounties to the adventurers in both of those which are contending with each other for the same object, ours have no auxiliaries, but poverty and rigorous economy. The business, unaided, is a wretched one. The Dutch have peculiar advantages for the northern fishery, as being within six or eight days' sail of the grounds, as navigating with more economy than any other nation in Europe, their seamen content with lower wages, and their merchants with lower profit. Yet the memorial No. 13, from a committee of the whale merchants to the States General of Holland, in the year 1775, states that fourteen millions of guilders, equal to five million six hundred thousand dollars, has been lost in that fishery in forty-seven years, being about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. The States General, thereupon, gave a bounty of thirty guilders a man to the fishermen. A person immediately acquainted with the British whale fishery, and whose information merits confidence, has given assurance that the ships employed in their northern fishery, in 1788, sunk £800 each, on an average, more than the amount of the produce and bounties. An English ship of three hundred tons and forty-two seamen, in this fishery, generally brings home, after a four months' voyage, twenty-five tons of oil, worth £437 10s. sterling; but the wages of the officers and seamen will be £400; there remain but £37 10s., not worth taking into account, towards the outfit and merchants' profit. These, then, must be paid by the Government; and it is on this idea that the British bounty is calculated.
Our vessels for the northern fishery average sixty-four tons, and cost, when built, fitted out, and victualled for the first voyage, about three thousand dollars. They have taken, on an average, the three last years, according to the statement No. 12, eighteen tons of oil, worth, at our market, nine hundred dollars, which are to pay all expenses, and subsist the fishermen and merchant. Our vessels for the southern fishery average one hundred and forty tons, and cost, when built, fitted out, and victualled, for their first voyage, about six thousand five hundred dollars. They have taken on an average, the three last years, according to the same statement, thirty-two tons of oil each, worth at our market three thousand two hundred dollars, which are, in like manner, to pay all expenses, and subsist the owners and navigators. These expenses are great, as the voyages are generally of twelve months' duration. No hope can arise of their condition being bettered by an augmentation of the price of oil. This is kept down by the competition of the vegetable oils, which answer the same purposes, not quite so well, but well enough to become preferable, were the price to be raised, and so well, indeed, as to be more generally used than the fish oils for lighting houses and cities.
The American whale fishery is principally followed by the inhabitants of the island of Nantucket—a sand bar of about fifteen miles long, and three broad, capable of maintaining, by its agriculture, about twenty families; but it employed in these fisheries, before the war, between five or six thousand men and boys; and, in the only harbor it possesses, it had one hundred and forty vessels, one hundred and thirty-two of which were of the larger kind, as being employed in the southern fishery. In agriculture, then, they have no resource; and, if that of their fishery cannot be pursued from their own habitations, it is natural they should seek others from which it can be followed, and preferably those where they will find a sameness of language, religion, laws, habits, and kindred. A foreign emissary has lately been among them, for the purpose of renewing the invitations to a change of situation. But, attached to their native country, they prefer continuing in it, if their continuance there can be made supportable.
This brings us to the question, what relief does the condition of this fishery require?
1. A remission of duties on the articles used for their calling.
2. A retaliating duty on foreign oils, coming to seek a competition with them in or from our ports.
3. Free markets abroad.
1. The remission of duties will stand on nearly the same ground with that to the cod fishermen.
2. The only nation whose oil is brought hither for competition with our own, makes ours pay a duty of about eighty-two dollars the ton, in their ports. Theirs is brought here, too, to be reshipped fraudulently, under our flag, into ports where it could not be received under theirs, and ought not to be covered by ours, if we mean to preserve our own admission into them.