in their view of life. Captain Bartholomew Roberts, for instance, wearing a "rich crimson Damask Wastcoate, and Breeches, a red Feather in his Hat, and a Gold Chain ten times around his Neck," scorned the polite practices of pulpit, pew, and counting house. His mighty men vowed that they would never be captured and hanged like Captain Kidd's crew, but would rather "put fire with one of their Pistols to their Powder and go all merrily to Hell together." Perhaps they were screwed up to that high resolve by the knowledge that, when imprisoned pirates were being prepared for the gallows, "Sermons were preached in their hearing every day . . . And nothing was left that could be done for their Good."
Ships built by American labor were, of course, mainly employed in the profitable undertakings of peaceful trade. In waters within reach was an abundant supply of whales, cod, salmon, mackerel, and other kinds of fish, which afforded the material for an immense and growing business—catching, curing, and shipping. On this basis rested an important branch of American economy, next in importance, perhaps, to tobacco planting and absolutely essential to the prosperity of the colonies. The best fish were carried to England, Spain, and Italy and the proceeds principally used to pay for manufactures bought of the mother country. Inferior grades were shipped to the West Indies to serve as food for slaves and were there exchanged for sugar and molasses, which were in turn transformed into rum.
In its extent and daring the whaling industry especially aroused the admiration of the Old World. Burke, warning his colleagues in Parliament against treating the Americans as puny children, bade them "look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced the opposite region
