Long Island to Connecticut, and from there to Cape Cod.

The people on the island of Nantucket had also learned to kill the
whales that came into shallow water. They got a man to come out from
Cape Cod to show them how to go out in boats and kill whales along the
coast. After a while they built small ships in which they went to sea
to seek for whales, but they brought the fat on shore in order to get
the oil out of it.

In 1718 the people on this island began to build ships with great
kettles in them for rendering the oil on board the ships. The brave
Nantucket men, and the men on the coast near by, soon began to send
their ships into very distant seas. Some of them sailed among the
icebergs in the Arctic regions; others went to the Southern Ocean; and
some of the Nantucket and Cape Cod ships went round Cape Horn into the
Pacific Ocean. The hardy whalemen ran great risks during their long
voyages, but, if they were fortunate in killing whales, they made a
good deal of money.

There are still whaling vessels in our times, but not so many as there
used to be. We do not need whale oil so much, because we have
kerosene, gaslights, and electric lights. There are not so many whales
to be found as there used to be.

When the men on a whale ship in the old times discovered a whale, they
fitted out their boats and rowed toward it. The whale would go down
out of sight. Each officer would place his boat where he thought the
whale would come up. When the whale came up to get breath, the men in
the nearest boat would row toward it. The officer who stood in the bow
of the boat would then throw a harpoon, which would stick fast in the
whale. As soon as the whale was struck with the harpoon, he would go
down into the water. There was a line fast to the harpoon, which was
coiled in a tub standing in the whaleboat. Sometimes the whale would
run down so far, that it would take more line than the boat carried,
to keep hold of him. When this was likely to happen, another whaling
boat would come alongside, and tie its line to the line of the harpoon
that was fast to the whale. In some cases nearly five thousand feet of
line were drawn out of the boats before the whale came to the top
again. Whales breathe air as we do, so the whale that had been
harpooned would have to come up again. Then the whaling boat would run
close to him, and the officer would try to kill him with a sharp
lance. When a whale was killed, the men drew him alongside