"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.