A- voyage to Greenland is four months, the outfit of which
is covered by the tonage bounty and, if wholly unfuccefsful, the
fame ihip can make a fecond voyage the fame year to fome of
the ports of the Baltic. A voyage to the South Sea is from
twelve to eighteen months, and mull: depend, folely on the fuc-
cefs in fiflung. A Greenland ihip fets out on a fmall capital,
and builds on a quick return ; but a South Sea whaler muft expend
a very confiderable capital in making his outfit, for which
he can reckon on no returns for at leaft eighteen months.
Hence the ufual praitice of fending them out in the double capacity
of filhers and contraband: traders» in order that the: Ioffes
they may fuftain by ill fuqcefc in fiihing may be-made good by
fmuggling.
I f by extending the filhery we fhould be enabled to fupply the
continent of Europe, two objeCts Ihould never be out of the
view of the Legiflature— the exemption from duty of all the
produce of the filheries, and particularly fparmaceti, which, if
manufactured into candles, and fubjeCt only to the fame duty as
tallow candles, would produce much more to the revenue than
when taxed as. it now is, as wax.— I have heard it afferted that
the extenfion o f the premium fyftem, by doubling its prefent
Amount, which never could exceed 30,000 /. a year, would be
adequate encouragement to fupply the home market with fper-
maceti and black whale oil, and that the bonding of foreign oil
in Great Britain would throw the whole agency of American
fiftiery on England with greater advantage to both countries
than by any other fyftem.
But
But when we confider that the home market is neceffarily fe-
eured to Britiih lubjeCts by high duties on foreign oil, we ihoulcf
alfo confider that every means to leflen the charges of outfit
fhould ftrengthen our adventure in this lucrative branch of trade.
Among others that would feem to have this tendency, are the
facilities that might be afforded by the happy pcfition of the
Cape of Good Hope. If at this ftation was eftabliihed a kind
of central'dépôt for the Southern Whale Fiihery, it might, in
time, be the means of throwing into our hands exclufively the
fupplying of Europe with fpermaceti oil. To the protection of
the filheries on the eaft and weft coafts of Southern Africa, the
Capè is fully competent, and the filheries on thefe coafts would
be equally undifturbed in war as in peate. From hence they
would, at all times, have an opportunity of acquiring a fupply
of refrelhments for their crews, and of laying in a flock of fait
provifions ait one-fourth part of the expence of carrying them
out from England.
- In the wide range which, of late years, they have been ac-
euftomed to take, from the eaft, round Cape Horn, to the weft
eoaft of America, partly for the fake, of carrying on a contraband
trade with the Spanilh colonies, and partly for fiihing, they
are deftitute, in time of war, of all protection. Hitherto they
have fuffered little inconvenience from this circumftance, be-
caufe the Cape of Good Hope gave us the complete and: ua.
diftürbed poffeffion of the Southern Ocean j but will this be the
cafe in the prefent war, when the French and Dutch are in
poffeffion of the bays and harbours of the Cape ? Whilft, from
Europe