all sinne and prophainesse let bee Surpressed.”  In the Revolution the fisheries suffered severely from the British cruisers, and when, after peace was declared, the whalemen began coming back from the privateers, in which they had sought service, and the wharves of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London began again to show signs of life, the Americans were confronted by the closing of their English markets.  “The whale fisheries and the Newfoundland fisheries were the nurseries of British seamen,” said the British ministry to John Adams, who went to London to remonstrate.  “If we let Americans bring oil to London, and sell fish to our West India colonies, the British marine will decline.”  For a long time, therefore, the whalers had to look elsewhere than to England for a market.  Nevertheless the trade grew.  New Bedford, which by the middle of the nineteenth century held three-fourths of the business, took it up with great vigor.  For a time Massachusetts gave bounties to encourage the industry, but it was soon strong enough to dispense with them.  By 1789 the whalers found their way to the Pacific—­destined in later years to be their chief fishing-ground.  In that year the total whaling tonnage of Massachusetts was 10,210, with 1611 men and an annual product of 7880 barrels sperm and 13,130 barrels whale oil.  Fifteen years earlier—­before the war—­the figures were thrice as great.

[Illustration:  “SENDING BOAT AND MEN FLYING INTO THE AIR”]

Before this period, however, whaling had taken on a new form.  Deep-sea whaling, as it was called, to distinguish it from the shore fisheries, had begun long ago.  Capt.  Christopher Hursey, a stout Nantucket whaleman, cruising about after right whales, ran into a stiff northwest gale and was carried far out to sea.  He struck a school of sperm-whales, killed one, and brought blubber home.  It was not a new discovery, for the sperm-whale or cachalot, had been known for years, but the great numbers of right whales and the ease with which they were taken, had made pursuit of this nobler game uncommon.  But now the fact, growing yearly more apparent, that right whales were being driven to more inaccessible haunts, made whalers turn readily to this new prey.  Moreover, the sperm-whale had in him qualities of value that made him a richer prize than his Greenland cousin.  True, he lacked the useful bone.  His feeding habits did not necessitate a sieve, for, as beseems a giant, he devoured stout victuals, pieces of great squids—­the fabled devil-fish—­as big as a man’s body being found in his stomach.  Such a diet develops his fighting qualities, and while the right whale usually takes the steel sullenly, and dies like an overgrown seal, the cachalot fights fiercely, now diving with such a rush that he has been known to break his jaw by the fury with which he strikes the bottom at the depth of 200 fathoms; now raising his enormous bulk in air, to fall with an all-obliterating crash upon the boat which holds