Though whaling was never as important to Cape Cod as were its fisheries, it nonetheless formed an significant chapter in the Cape’s maritime history. In the early colonial days drift whales came ashore frequently enough that they formed a portion of some Congregational ministers’ salaries. Live whales were common in Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket Sound, and a modest inshore whaling industry developed in the 17th century. In fact, in 1694 a Yarmouth captain, Ichabod Paddock, was invited to Nantucket to teach the Quaker residents the trade. He apparently did such a good job that Nantucketers soon became the preeminent New England whalers. Try yards—areas where whale blubber was boiled down, or “tried out,” to obtain the oil—were established early in the 18th century on Barnstable’s Sandy Neck, and in 1715 that town boasted some 200 inshore whalers. But such intensive exploitation soon diminished the nearby stocks, and by 1750 the inshore whaling industry was dying out. As in fishing, so in whaling, Provincetown with its unrivaled harbor became the Cape’s most important port. At its peak, in 1876, seventeen deep-sea whaling vessels sailed out of Provincetown. The last two Cape whaling vessels made their final voyages from Provincetown in 1920-21. They were the schooner _Cameo_ and the bark _Charles W Morgan_. The _Morgan_ is preserved at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. One species of cetacean has had a peculiar attachment to the Cape shores over the centuries. The pilot whale, or blackfish, is a medium-sized toothed whale, 15-22 feet in length. It tends to travel in tight groups, and large numbers of pilot whales frequently strand themselves in the tidal creeks and on the shallow flats of Cape Cod Bay, particularly in the labyrinthine channels around Wellfleet Harbor. Scientists are still trying to fathom the causes of these mass strandings, but to the early Cape Codders they were obviously a gift from God, providing both meat and high-grade whale oil from the rounded “melon” in the front of the whale’s head. [Illustration: _A humpback whale displays its tail stock and flukes off the Provincetown coast. Other species of whales are also commonly seen from spring through fall, including finback, minke, and right whales. These marine mammals, once hunted for their blubber and baleen, now support a thriving whale-watching industry._]