emen for each ship. Sealing parties were formed and landed
upon islands in Bass's Straits, and regular whaling and sealing stations
were formed at several points on the Australian coast, and by 1797 the
whale fishing had become of such importance that a minute was issued by
the Board of Trade, dated December 26th, setting forth that the merchant
adventurers of the southern whale fishery had memoralised the Board to
the effect that the restrictions of the East India company and the war
with Spain prevented the said whalers from successfully carrying on
their business, and that the Board had requested the East India Company,
while protecting its own trading rights, to do something towards
admitting other people to trade. The effect of the Board's
minute--worded of course in much more "high falutin" language as should
be the case when a mere Board of Trade addressed such a high and mighty
corporation as the Honourable East India Company--was that directors
permitted whaling to be carried on at Kerguelen's Land (in the Indian
Ocean), off the coasts of New Holland, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia,
New Zealand, the Philippines and Formosa, but they restrained trading
further north than the Equator and further east than 51 deg. of east
longitude, and that restraint remained for a long time to come.

For the Spanish war trouble the whalers took another remedy: they
obtained letters of marque and pretty soon added successful privateering
to their whaling ventures, and the Spaniards on the coast of Peru and
on the Spanish Pacific Islands before a year had passed found that an
English whaler was a vessel armed with other weapons besides harpoons
and lances, and was a good ship to keep clear of.

By this time the Americans were taking a share in the whaling and
sealing industries--rather more than their share the Englishmen thought,
for in 1804 Governor King issued a proclamation which sets forth that:
"Whereas it has been represented to me that the commanders of some
American vessels have, without any permission or authority whatever,
not only greatly incommoded his Majesty's subjects in resorting to and
continuing among the different islands in Bass's Straits for skins and
oil, but have also in violation of the law of nations and in contempt of
the local regulations of this Territory and its dependencies, proceeded
to build vessels on these islands and in other places... to the
prejudice and infringements of his Majesty's rights