The redoubtable Nantucketers resumed their whaling at the close of the Revolution, and their energy and skill were again yielding rich profits when the War of 1812 almost annihilated the island’s fleet. But as it was another case of whale or starve, Nantucket continued to send out a few whalers, and was the only American port during the war that dared to brave the risks of British capture. [Illustration: A “camel” floating a whaler to sea over the Nantucket bar. The “camel” was used from 1842 to 1849, enabling the Nantucketers for a time to keep pace with the New Bedfordites.] About this time, in one of the Pacific ports, an incident occurred which showed in an amusing light the ready wit and intrepid courage of an American whaleman. He had in some way displeased an English naval officer, who, feeling himself highly insulted, promptly challenged the Yankee, who accepted and, being the challenged party, had the choice of weapons. He selected, of course, the weapon with which he was most skilful and took his stand with a poised harpoon. It had altogether too dangerous an appearance for the irate Englishman, particularly as the whaleman was evidently an expert in the manual of thrust and parry, and so with as good grace as he could command, the Englishman withdrew from the fight. At a very early day in the fishery, whaling vessels, which were at first long rowboats and later small sloops, began to increase in size, and about 1820 ships of three hundred tons were found profitable. The increase in profit producing capacity, strange as it may appear, actually sounded the death-knell of the Nantucket whaling, for across the mouth of the harbour ran a bar, over which it soon became impossible for whaling vessels of large size to pass. The difficulty was for a time overcome by the true Yankee ingenuity of some inventive Nantucketer, who devised the “camel,” a veritable dry-dock barge in which the larger whaleships, lightened often of oil and bone, were floated over the bar into the forest of masts which in those days characterized a harbour now frequented only by a few schooners and sloops, the small pleasure crafts of the summer residents, and an occasional steamer. As whaleships still continued to increase in size, the “camel” expedient was only a temporary success; for the time came when vessels were of too great tonnage to be thus floated over the bar, and the daring and skilful Nantucketer, who had taught the civilized world not only how, but where, to whale, had to admit defeat and gradually give up the industry to more fortunately situated ports. At this time, about 1830, Nantucket was commercially the third largest city in Massachusetts, Boston being first and Salem second.