Subsequently, Captain John Smith, after he had pocketed a profit of
$7500 on a shipment of dried Cape Cod fish to Spain, is credited with
the statement that the richest mine in Spain was not as valuable as the
Cape Cod fisheries.
Whales first were caught in these waters. When they became scarce
vessels were fitted to go out in search of them. On one voyage, Capt.
Jesse Holbrook of Wellfleet, active in the Revolutionary War period,
killed 52 sperm whales. His skill was so good a London company employed
him for 12 years to give instruction to their employees.
Franklin Atkins was a Cape Codder who had a rare experience while
whaling in West Indies waters. Leviathan’s flukes struck the small boat
he was in and sent the boat kiting from the sea. In his descent Mr.
Atkins fell directly into the whale’s gaping mouth. He was gashed and
bruised, but managed to free himself. A boat crew picked him up and he
lay in a critical condition for four weeks. In later years Mr. Atkins
would boast, “Jonah and me were the only two persons that have been in
a whale’s mouth and come out alive.”
Ambergris, a secretion found in the intestines of an occasional sperm
whale, and worth more than its weight in gold, was a prize the old
whalemen always were on the alert for. The story is told of how a Cape
Cod crew, jittery with excitement over an ambergris find in a whale
they were spading alongside the vessel, lost it. In their eagerness of
hauling up the treasure they fumbled. The ambergris chunk slipped from
the slings. The crew stared with blank dismay as they watched the prize
worth $25,000 slowly vanish in 60 fathoms of water.
It’s small boat, inshore fishing in these modern times. Yet there
is a constant yield of millions of pounds of fish taken by net or
hook. There are whiting, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, butterfish,
bluefish, squid, sea bass, pollock and many other species.