 Prior to the early eighteenth century , hunting was mostly by indigenous Indonesians . Legend has it that sometime in the early eighteenth century , around 1712 , Captain Christopher Hussey , while cruising for right whales near shore , was blown offshore by a northerly wind , where he encountered a sperm whale pod and killed one . Although the story may not be true , sperm whales were indeed soon exploited by American whalers . Judge Paul Dudley , in his Essay upon the Natural History of Whales ( 1725 ) , states that one Atkins , ten or twelve years in the trade , was among the first to catch sperm whales sometime around 1720 off the New England coast . 
