File:Cape Cod and the Old colony (1920) (14742544586).jpg

Identifier: capecodoldcolony00inbrig (find matches)
Title: Cape Cod and the Old colony
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Brigham, Albert Perry, 1855-1932. cn
Subjects: Pilgrim fathers
Publisher: New York and London, G. P. Putnam's sons
Contributing Library: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
Digitizing Sponsor: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center

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utes. This was true even while the Old Colonykept its identity, and shortly after the unionwith Massachusetts, or in 1694, the GeneralCourt made laws concerning the mackerel andother fisheries. There was a duty prescribedof twelve pence per barrel, recognizing theprovidence of God which hath made Cape Codcommodious to us for fishing with seines.The proceeds were turned over for the supportof a free school at Plymouth. Barrels of fish in no way measure the im-portance of fishing in the Old Colony. Linesof worldwide trade began to shoot out fromthe coasts of Barnstable and Plymouth, andit was fishing that was behind them. This wasthe large factor in starting the round of com-mercial exchanges. Cape ships earned thefish to the West Indies, and brought backmolasses and spirits, which the Cape wantedand Boston wanted. Here too, was the sailors schooling. Sea-men by the hundreds, rather by the thousands,got the stem training which enabled themwith small change of habit to pour their experi-
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PROVINCETOWN DOCKS WHEN THE TIDE ISOUT The Harvest of the Waters 183 ence and their daring into the early navies ofAmerica. Whale fishing came in at an early date, alongwith the mackerel and the cod, and was inlike fashion subject to the restrictions of Co-lonial law. The first voyagers regretfully sawfortunes slip away from them as the whalesfrolicked in the Bay and their ships were asinnocent of harpoons as they were of smallboats, and small hooks for the lesser game ofthe sea. But they atoned for early unpre-paredness, and the history of New Englandwhaling in its later thrills and greatness, beganin Truro, developed in Wellfleet and then cen-tered in Provincetown. Thence it extendedacross Nantucket Sound and Buzzards Bay toNantucket and New Bedford. It was a public duty in Plymouth, an obli-gation resting on every citizen, to watch oft-shore for whales. If a whale was sighted aboat was at once launched to attack. Awhaling ground, or reservation for watching,was set apart on the Nor

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