On the whole, in a financial point of view, the pirates benefited the young merchant marine more than they damaged it. In anticipation of attacks by pirates, all ships in deep-water trade carried cannon, and some coasters did so, especially in the longer voyages. In the trade with Spain and Portugal and the Canary Islands the American vessels were often chased, and sometimes captured, by Barbary pirates who had learned their trade from European renegades. New England ships in the West Indies were always obliged to keep a sharp lookout for piratical cruisers under French and Spanish flags. But these aggressions were not an unmixed evil. For such conditions increased freight rates and the profits on cargoes carried on owners' account. Thus the freight rate from Boston to Barbados, in 1762, was "14 per ton or four times former rates," and all because of pirates. Sure fortune came to the ship captain who was equal to the emergencies of the trade. Dangers cultivated the courage and enterprise of the crews. In a still broader view the habits of a people soon to become an independent nation were forming, and it was well worth while for some of them to learn how to swim in rough water. CHAPTER IV BEFORE THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION Two of the trades in which the ships of the American colonies were largely engaged during the seventeenth century are of special interest here--the whale fishery and the slave trade. It was in 1712 that Captain Christopher Hussey, while off Nantucket, in an open boat, looking for whales, was blown away to sea, where he killed a sperm whale, the profitable sale of which led the people of his famous home island to go cruising in deep water for more whales of the kind. The growth of the fishery that followed was swift. In 1730 Nantucket alone had twenty-five deep-water whalers, and they brought home oil and bone that sold for £3200. In the meantime the islanders had begun sending their products directly to London, thus establishing a new line of trade. With the increase of profits came an extension of the territory where the search for whales was made. In 1751 they went to Disco Island in the mouth of Baffin's Bay. In 1763 they were found on the coast of Guinea (looking for whales and ignoring the slave trade), and that, too, in spite of the wars that had covered the seas with pirates. In 1767 no less than fifty whalers crossed the equator "by way of experiment." That statement is perhaps the most significant of any that can be made of the fishery. Nantucket alone owned 125 whalers in 1770; they were, on the average, 93 tons' burden in size, and in the course of the year they brought home 14,331 barrels of oil worth $358,200 as soon as landed.