Many whalers fell a prey to these marauders, whose operations were rather encouraged than condemned by the European nations.

Both England and France were at this period endeavoring to lure the whalemen from the United Colonies by promise of special concessions in trade, or more effective protection on the high seas than their own weakling governments could assure them.

Some Nantucket whalemen were indeed enticed to the new English whaling town at Dartmouth, near Halifax, or to the French town of Dunkirk.

But the effort to transplant the industry did not succeed, and the years that followed, until the fateful embargo of 1807, were a period of rapid growth for the whale fishery and increasing wealth for those who pursued it.

In the form of its business organization the business of whaling was the purest form of profit-sharing we have ever seen in the United States.