CHAPTER XII

journey to London and then to Paris in 1855, where he chartered to the French Government the ship Great Republic, then the largest vessel in the world, to be used as a transport in the Crimean war. The ship took at one voyage 3,300 horses, with officers and artillery, and earned $184,000 for her owners in fourteen months.

"I dare say you never knew that the history of this Island is linked with that of the famous tea party in Boston Harbor," he remarked one evening as we drew our chairs before a fire of glowing red coal in his library. "It was in this way. In the June of 1779 William Rotch had two stanch vessels — the Beaver and Dartmouth, old whalers lying idle at his. docks, and one day, closeted in his counting-room, he chartered them to a stranger from Boston to proceed to England for a cargo of the East India Company’s tea. That company bad just been granted a monopoly of the tea trade of the colonies, and having decided on sending consignments to the four principal colonial ports, needed quite a fleet for the purpose. Perhaps, too, they thought the tea would be received with better grace coming in American bottoms. At least an agent of the Boston consignees was despatched to Mr. Rotch at Nantucket. Naturally, he was glad to charter to so powerful a corporation, and the Beaver and Dartmouth were speedily

The Nantucket whale fishery had, as has been shown, a small beginning. Her sailors were among the first to venture into the icy waters of Baffin’s Bay and Davis Straits. In 1745 a vessel was loaded with oil by Nantucket merchants and sent direct to England. Several years before the Revolution her hardy seamen had ventured into the South Atlantic. In 1775 the port had a fleet of 150 vessels, manned by 2,025 seamen, which brought to her warehouses 30,000 barrels of sperm and 4,000 barrels of whale oil annually. During the Revolution few vessels were sent to the cruising grounds, and for a whole generation succeeding there was little revival of the old spirit of enterprise. In 1818, however, without any special predisposing cause, the business all at once assumed its old vigor. In 1821 this little island, with a population of barely 7,000, had seventy-two whale ships in commission, aggregating 22,000 tons burden, besides quite a fleet of brigs, schooners, and sloops. In 1842 the business culminated, eighty-six ships and two brigs and schooners then

forming its whaling marine. It is to this period that most of the tales told in the captain’s room relate. Half a score of ice-battered, oil-blackened old hulks unloading on its piers at once was no uncommon sight in those days. As many more would be taking in stores. In eight long candle factories the snow-white spermaceti was fashioned. Eight hundred coopers, blacksmiths, riggers, and stevedores went down to the docks every morning. When a vessel out at sea making the harbor was sighted there was commotion in the little port. In the rear of the post-office was a tall flagstaff, on which a blue flag, bearing the word "Ship," in large letters, was displayed. Owners, captains, seamen, women, and children — every one who had a venture on the deep — then gathered to speculate as to which of the port’s eighty-two vessels the incoming ship might be, the extent and value of her catch, and whether her crew was as complete and sound in limb as when she left the harbor. Meantime the "camels" were steaming out to the harbor bar. This contrivance was in reality a floating dry-dock, used for lifting vessels over the bar, at the entrance of the harbor. It was moved by steam, and, when signaled, proceeded to the bar, was sunk, the vessel was towed within, and the water being pumped from the camel, the latter rose with the ship in its embrace, and propelled itself and its burden over the bar.