ners in the success of the voyage. It
was the most practical communism that industry has ever seen, and it
worked to the satisfaction of all concerned as long as the whaling trade
continued profitable.

The wars in which the American people engaged during the active days of
the whale fishery--the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil
War--were disastrous to that industry, and from the depredations committed
by the Confederate cruisers in the last conflict it never fully recovered.
The nature of their calling made the whalemen peculiarly vulnerable to the
evils of war. Cruising in distant seas, always away from home for many
months, often for years, a war might be declared and fought to a finish
before they knew of it. In the disordered Napoleonic days they never could
tell whether the flag floating at the peak of some armed vessel
encountered at the antipodes was that of friend or foe. During both the
wars with England they were the special objects of the enemy's malignant
attention. From the earliest days American progress in maritime enterprise
was viewed by the British with apprehension and dislike. Particularly did
the growth of the cod fisheries and the chase of the whale arouse
transatlantic jealousy, the value of these callings as nurseries for
seamen being only too plainly apparent. Accordingly the most was made of
the opportunities afforded by war for crushing the whaling industry.
Whalers were chased to their favorite fishing-grounds, captured, and
burned. With cynical disregard of all the rules of civilized
warfare--supposing war ever to be civilized--the British gave to the
captured whalers only the choice of serving in British men-of-war against
their own countrymen, or re-entering the whaling trade on British ships,
thus building up the British whale fishery at the expense of the American.
The American response to these tactics was to abandon the business during
war time. In 1775 Nantucket alone had had 150 vessels, aggregating 15,000
tons, afloat in pursuit of the whale. The trade was pushed with such
daring and enterprise that Edmund Burke was moved to eulogize its
followers in an eloquent speech in the British House of Commons. "Neither
the perseverance of Holland," he said, "nor the activity of France, nor
the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this
most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been
pushed by this most recent people." But the eloque