settlements for their
prisoners, the plan would have been carried out.

When his Majesty's ship _Guardian_ under the command of Nelson's "brave
captain, Riou," was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, and her cargo of
stores, badly needed by the starving colonists of New South Wales, were
lying at Cape Town without means of transport, an American merchant
skipper saw his chance and offered to convey them to Sydney Cove. But
the English officers, although they knew that the colony was starving,
were afraid to take the responsibility of chartering a "foreign"
ship. Lieutenant King--afterwards to become famous in Australian
history--wrote to the almost heartbroken and expectant Governor Phillip
from the Cape as follows: "There is here a Whitehaven man who, on his
own head, intends going immediately to America and carrying out two
vessels, one of 100 or 120 tons--a Marble Head schooner--and the other a
brig of 150 tons, both of which he means to load with salt beef and
pork which he can afford to sell in the colony at 7d. a pound. He wished
encouragement from me, but anything of that kind being out of my power
to give him, he has taken a decided part and means to run the risque. I
mention this so that you may know what is meant."

This "risque," undertaken by the adventurous "Whitehaven man" was the
genesis of the American trading and whaling industry in the Southern
Seas, and American enterprise had much to do with the development of the
infant colony of New South Wales, inasmuch as American ships not only
brought cargoes of food to the starving colonists, but American whalemen
showed the unskilled British seamen (in this respect) how to kill the
sperm whale and make a profit of the pursuit of the leviathan of the
Southern Seas.

In 1791 some returning convict transports, whose captains had provided
themselves with whaling gear, engaged in the whale fishing in the South
Pacific on their way home to England. Whales in plenty were seen, but
the men who manned the boats were not the right sort of men to kill
them--they knew nothing of sperm-whaling, although some of them had had
experience of right whaling in the Arctic Seas--a very different
and tame business indeed to the capture of the mighty cachalot.
Consequently, they were not very successful, but the Enderby Brothers,
a firm of London shipowners, were not to be easily discouraged, and
they sent out vessel after vessel, taking care to engage some skilled
American whal