The enforced idleness of the Revolutionary days was not easily forgotten by the whalemen, and their discontent and complainings were great when the nation was again embroiled in war with Great Britain in 1812.  It can not be said that their attitude in the early days of that conflict was patriotic.  They had suffered—­both at the hands of France and England—­wrongs which might well rouse their resentment.  They had been continually impressed by England, and the warships of both nations had seized American whalers for real or alleged violations of the Orders in Council or the Ostend Manifesto; but the whalemen were more eager for peace, even with the incidental perils due to war in Europe, than for war, with its enforced idleness.  When Congress ordered the embargo the whalers were at first explicitly freed from its operations; but this provision being seized upon to cover evasions of the embargo, they were ultimately included.  When war was finally declared, the protests of the Nantucket people almost reached the point of threatening secession.  A solemn memorial was first addressed to Congress, relating the exceedingly exposed condition of the island and its favorite calling to the perils of war, and begging that the actual declaration of war might be averted.  When this had availed nothing, and the young nation had rushed into battle with a courage that must seem to us now foolhardy, the Nantucketers adopted the doubtful expedient of seeking special favor from the enemy.  An appeal for immunity from the ordinary acts of war was addressed to the British Admiral Cochrane, and a special envoy was sent to the British naval officer commanding the North American station, to announce the neutrality of the island and to beg immunity from assault and pillage, and assurance that one vessel would be permitted to ply unmolested between the island and the mainland.  As a result of these negotiations, Nantucket formally declared her neutrality, and by town meeting voted to accede to the British demand that her people pay no taxes for the support of the United States.  In all essential things the island ceased to be a part of the United States, its people neither rendering military service nor contributing to the revenues.  But their submission to the British demands did not save the whale-trade, for repeated efforts to get the whalers declared neutral and exempt from capture failed.

Half a century of peace followed, during which the whaling industry rose to its highest point; but was again on the wane when the Civil War let loose upon the remaining whalemen the Confederate cruisers, the “Shenandoah” alone burning thirty-four of them.  From this last stroke the industry, enfeebled by the lessened demand for its chief product, and by the greater cost and length of voyages resulting from the growing scarcity of whales, never recovered.  To-day its old-time ports are deserted by traffic.  Stripped of all that had salable value, its ships rot on mud-banks or at moldering wharves.  The New England boy, whose ambition half a century ago was to ship on a whaler, with a boy’s lay and a straight path to the quarter-deck, now goes into a city office, or makes for the West as a miner or a railroad man.  The whale bids fair to become as extinct as the dodo, and the whaleman is already as rare as the buffalo.