Brought ashore, this noisome mass was boiled in huge kettles, and the resulting oil sent to lighten the night in all civilized lands.

England was a good customer of the colonies, and Boston shipowners did a thriving trade with oil from New Bedford or Nantucket to London.

The sloops and ketches engaged in this commerce brought back, as an old letter of directions from shipowner to skipper shows, "course wicker flasketts, Allom, Copress, drum rims, head snares, shod shovells, window-glass." The trade was conducted with the same piety that we find manifested in the direction of slave-ships and privateers.

In order that the oil may fetch a good price, and the voyage be speedy, the captain is commended to God, and "That hee may please to take the Conduct of you, we pray you look carefully that hee bee worshipped dayly in yor shippe, his Sabbaths Sanctifiede, and 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.