THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF
AMERICA--THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF LORD
NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE
THE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FISHING BANKS--TYPES
OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY
TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE
SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE
BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE
OF HUMAN LIFE.
The summer yachtsman whiling away an idle month in cruises up and down
that New England coast which, once stern and rock-bound, has come to be
the smiling home of midsummer pleasures, encounters at each little port
into which he may run, moldering and decrepit wharves, crowned with
weatherbeaten and leaky structures, waterside streets lined with shingled
fish-houses in an advanced stage of decay, and acres of those low
platforms known as flakes, on which at an earlier day the product of the
New England fisheries was spread out to dry in the sun, but which now are
rapidly disintegrating and mingling again with the soil from which the
wood of their structures sprung. Every harbor on the New England coast,
from New Bedford around to the Canadian line, bears these dumb memorials
to the gradual decadence of what was once our foremost national industry.
For the fisheries which once nursed for us a school of the hardiest
seamen, which aroused the jealousy of England and France, which built up
our seaport towns, and carried our flag to the furthest corners of the
globe, and which in the records both of diplomacy and war fill a prominent
place have been for the last twenty years appreciably tending to
disappear. Many causes are assigned for this. The growing scarcity of
certain kinds of fish, the repeal of encouraging legislation, a change in
the taste of certain peoples to whom we shipped large quantities of the
finny game, the competition of Canadians and Frenchmen, the great
development of the salmon fisheries and salmon canning on the Pacific
coast, all have contributed to this decay. It is proper, however, to note
that the decadence of the fisheries is to some extent more apparent than
real. True, there are fewer towns supported by this industry, fewer boats
and men engaged in it; but in part this is due to the fact that the steam
fishing boat carrying a large fleet of dories accomplishes in one season
with fewer hands eight or ten times the work that the old-fashioned pink
or schooner did. And, moreover, as the population of the seaport towns has
grown, the apparent prominence of the fishing industry has decreased, as
that industry has not grown in proportion to the population. Forty years
ago Marblehead and Nantucket were simply fishing villages, and nothing
else. To-day the remnants of the fishing industry attract but little
attention, in the face of the vastly more profitable and important calling
of entertaining the summer visitor. New Bedford has become a great factory
town, Lynn and Hull are great centers for the shoemaking industries.
When the Pilgrim Fathers first concluded to make their journey to the New
England coast and sought of the English king a charter, they were asked by
the thrifty James, what profit might arise. "Fishing," was the answer.
Whereupon, according to the narrative of Edward Winslow, the king replied,
"So, God have my soul; 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own
calling." The redoubtable Captain John Smith, making his way to the New
England coast from Virginia, happened to drop a fishline over what is
known now as George's Bank. The miraculous draught of fishes which
followed did not awaken in his mind the same pious reflections to which
King James gave expression. Rather was he moved to exultation over the
profit which he saw there. "Truly," he said, in a letter to his
correspondent in London, "It is a pleasant thing to drop a line and pull
up threepence, fivepence, and sixpence as fast as one may haul in." The
gallant soldier of fortune was evidently quite awake to the possibilities
of profit upon which he had stumbled. Yet, probably even he would have
been amazed could he have known that within fifty years not all the land
in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, nor in the Providence and Rhode Island
plantations produced so much of value as the annual crop the fishermen
harvested on the shallow banks off Cape Cod.
As early as 1633 fish began to be exported from Boston, and very shortly
thereafter the industry had assumed so important a position that the
general court adopted laws for its encouragement, exempting vessels, and
stock from taxation, and granting to fishermen immunity from military
duty. At the close of the seventeenth century, Massachusetts was exporting
over $400,000 worth of fish annually. From that time until well into the
middle of the last century the fisheries were so thoroughly the leading
industry of Massachusetts that the gilded codfish which crowns the dome of
the State House at Boston, only fitly typifies by its prominence above the
city the part which its natural prototypes played in building up the
commonwealth. In the Revolution and the early wars of the United States,
the fishermen suffered severely. Crowded together on the banks, they were
easy prey for the British cruisers, who, in time of peace or in time of
war, treated them about as they chose, impressing such sailors as seemed
useful, and seizing such of their cargo as the whim of the captain of the
cruiser might suggest. And even before the colonies had attained the
status of a nation, the jealousy and hostility of Great Britain bore
heavily on the fortunes of the New England fishermen. It was then, as it
has been until the present day, the policy of Great Britain to build up in
every possible way its navy, and to encourage by all imaginable devices
the development of a large body of able seamen, by whom the naval vessels
might be manned. Accordingly parliament undertook to discourage the
American fisherman by hostile legislation, so that a body of deep-sea
fishermen might be created claiming English ports for their home. At first
the effort was made to prohibit the colonies from exporting fish. The
great Roman Catholic countries of France, Spain, and Portugal took by far
the greater share of the fish sent out, though the poorer qualities were
shipped to the West Indies and there exchanged for sugar and molasses.
Against this trade Lord North leveled some of his most offensive measures,
proposing bills, indeed, so unjust and tyrannical that outcries were
raised against them even in the British House of Lords. To cut off
intercourse with the foreign peoples who took the fish of the Yankees by
hundreds and thousands of quintals, and gave in return rum, molasses, and
bills of exchange on England, to destroy the calling in which every little
New England seacoast village was interested above all things, Lord North
first proposed to prohibit the colonies trading in fish with any country
save the "mother" country, and secondly, to refuse to the people of New
England the right to fish on the Great Banks of Newfoundland, thus
confining them to the off-shore banks, which already began to show signs
of being fished out. Even a hostile parliament was shocked by these
measures. Every witness who appeared before the House of Commons testified
that they would work irreparable injury to New England, would rob six
thousand of her able-bodied men of their means of livelihood, and would
drive ten thousand more into other vocations. But the power of the
ministry forced the bills through, though twenty-one peers joined in a
solemn protest. "We dissent," said they, "because the attempt to coerce,
by famine, the whole body of the inhabitants of great and populous
provinces, is without example in the history of this, or, perhaps, of any
civilized nations." This was in 1775, and the revolution in America had
already begun. It was the policy of Lord North to force the colonists to
stop their opposition to unjust and offensive laws by imposing upon them
other laws more unjust and more offensive still--a sort of homeopathic
treatment, not infrequently applied by tyrants, but which seldom proves
effective. In this case it aligned the New England fishermen to a man with
the Revolutionists. A Tory fisherman would have fared as hard as
"Old Floyd Ireson for his hard heart
Tarr'd and feathered and carried in a cart,
By the woman of Marblehead."
Nor was this any inconsiderable or puny element which Lord North had
deliberately forced into revolt. Massachusetts alone had at the outbreak
of the Revolution five hundred fishing vessels, and the town of Marblehead
one hundred and fifty sea-going fishing schooners. Gloucester had nearly
as many, and all along the coast, from Maine to New York, there were
thrifty settlers, farmers and fishermen, by turns, as the season served.
New England was preeminently a maritime state. Its people had early
discovered that a livelihood could more easily be plucked from the green
surges of ocean, white-capped as they sometimes were, than wrested from
the green and boulder-crowned hills. Upon the fisheries rested practically
all the foreign commerce. They were the foundation upon which were built
the superstructure of comfort and even luxury, the evidences of which are
impressive even in the richer New England of to-day. Therefore, when the
British ministry attacked this calling, it roused against the crown not
merely the fisherman and the sailor, but the merchants as well--not only
the denizens of the stuffy forecastles of pinks and schooners, but the
owners of the fair great houses in Boston and New Bedford. Lord North's
edicts stopped some thousands of sturdy sailors from catching cod and
selling them to foreign peoples. They accordingly became privateers, and
preyed upon British commerce until it became easier for a mackerel to slip
through the meshes of a seine than for a British ship to make its usual
voyages. The edicts touched the commercial Bostonians in their pockets,
and stimulated them to give to the Revolution that countenance and support
of the "business classes" which revolutionary movements are apt to lack,
and lacking which, are apt to fail.
The war, of course, left the fisheries crippled and almost destroyed. It
had been a struggle between the greatest naval power of the world, and a
loose coalition of independent colonies, without a navy and without a
centralized power to build and maintain one. Massachusetts did, indeed,
equip an armed ship to protect her fishermen, but partly because the
protection was inadequate, and partly as a result of the superior
attractions of privateering, the fishing boats were gradually laid up,
until scarcely enough remained in commission to supply the demands of the
home merchant for fish. Where there had been prosperity and bustle about
wharves, and fish-houses, there succeeded idleness and squalor.
Shipbuilding was prostrate, commerce was dead. The sailors returned to the
farms, shipped on the privateers, or went into Washington's army. But when
peace was declared, they flocked to their boats, and began to rebuild
their shattered industry. Marblehead, which went into the war with 12,000
tons of shipping, came out with 1500. Her able-bodied male citizens had
decreased in numbers from 1200 to 500. Six hundred of her sons, used to
hauling the seine and baiting the trawl, were in British prisons. How many
from this and other fishing ports were pressed against their will into
service on British men-of-war, history has no figures to show; but there
were hundreds. Yet, prostrate as the industry was, it quickly revived, and
soon again attained those noble proportions that had enabled Edmund Burke
to say of it, in defending the colonies before the House of Commons:
"No ocean but what is vexed with their fisheries; no climate that is not
witness of their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the
activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm sagacity of English
enterprise ever carried this perilous mode of hardy enterprise to the
extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people--a people who are
still, as it were, in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of
manhood."
In 1789, immediately upon the formation of the Government under which we
now live, the system of giving bounties to the deep-sea fishermen was
inaugurated and was continued down to the middle of the last century,
when a treaty with England led to its discontinuance. The wisest
statesmen and publicists differ sharply concerning the effect of bounties
and special governmental favors, like tariffs and rebates, upon the
favored industry, and so, as long as the fishing bounty was continued, its
needfulness was sharply questioned by one school, while ever since its
withdrawal the opposing school has ascribed to that act all the later ills
of the industry. Indeed, as this chapter is being written, a subsidy
measure before Congress for the encouragement of American shipping,
contains a proviso for a direct payment from the national treasury to
fishing vessels, proportioned to their size and the numbers of their
crews. It is not my purpose to discuss the merits, either of the measure
now pending, or of the many which have, from time to time, encouraged or
depressed our fishermen. It would be hard, however, for any one to read
the history of the fisheries without being impressed by the fact that the
hardy and gallant men who have risked their lives in this most arduous of
pursuits, have suffered from too much government, often being sorely
injured by a measure intended solely for their good, as in the case of the
Treaty of 1818. That instrument was negotiated for the purpose of
maintaining the rights of American fishermen on the banks off
Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia. The American commissioners failed
to insist upon the right of the fishermen to land for bait, and this
omission, together with an ambiguity in defining the "three-mile limit,"
enabled the British government to harass, harry, and even confiscate
American fishermen for years. American fleets were sent into the disputed
waters, and two nations were brought to the point of war over the question
which should control the taking of fish in waters that belonged to
neither, and that held more than enough for all peoples. To settle the
dispute the United States finally entered into another treaty which
secured the fishermen the rights ignored in the treaty of 1818, but threw
American markets open to Canadian fishermen. This the men of Gloucester
and Marblehead, nurtured in the school of protection, declared made their
last state worse than the first. So the tinkering of statutes and treaties
went on, even to the present day, the fisheries languishing meanwhile, not
in our country alone, but in all engaged in the effort to get special
privileges on the fishing grounds. Whenever man tries thus to monopolize,
by sharp practise or exclusive laws, the bounty which God has provided in
abundance for all, the end is confusion, distress, disaster, and too often
war.
But the story of what the politicians, and those postgraduates of
politics, the statesmen, have done for and against the fishermen of New
England, is not that which I have to tell. Rather, it is my purpose to
tell something of the lives of the fishermen, the style of their vessels,
the portions of the rolling Atlantic which they visit in search of their
prey, their dire perils, their rough pleasures, and their puny profits.
First, then, as to their prey, and its haunts.
The New England fishermen, in the main, seek three sorts of fish--the
mackerel, the cod, and the halibut. These they find on the shallow banks
which border the coast from the southern end of Delaware to the very
entrance of Baffin's Bay. The mackerel is a summer fish, coming and going
with the regularity of the equinoxes themselves. Early in March, they
appear off the coast, and all summer work their way northward, until, in
early November, they disappear off the coast of Labrador, as suddenly as
though some titanic seine had swept the ocean clear of them. What becomes
of the mackerel in winter, neither the inquisitive fisherman nor the
investigating scientist has ever been able to determine. They do not, like
migratory birds, reappear in more temperate southern climes, but vanish
utterly from sight. Eight months, therefore, is the term of the mackerel
fishing, and the men engaged in it escape the bitterest rigors of the
winter fisheries on the Newfoundland Banks, where the cod is taken from
January to January. Yet it has dangers of its own--dangers of a sort that,
to the sailor, are more menacing than the icebergs or even the
swift-rushing ocean liners of the Great Banks. For mackerel fishing is
pursued close in shore, in shallow water, where the sand lies a scant two
fathoms below the surface, and a north-east wind will, in a few minutes,
raise, a roaring sea that will pound the stoutest vessel to bits against
the bottom. With plenty of sea-room, and water enough under the keel, the
sailor cares little for wind or waves; but in the shallows, with the beach
only a few miles to the leeward, and the breakers showing white through
the darkness, like the fangs of a beast of prey, the captain of a fishing
schooner on George's banks has need of every resource of the sailor, if he
is to beat his way off, and not feed the fishes that he came to take.
Nowhere is the barometer watched more carefully than on the boats cruising
about on George's. When its warning column falls, the whole fleet makes
for the open sea, however good the fishing may be. But, with all possible
caution, the losses are so many that George's, early in its history, came
to have the ghoulish nickname of "Dead Men's Bank."
North of George's Bank--which lies directly east of Cape Cod--are found,
in order, Brown's Bank, La Have, Western Bank--in the center of which lies
Sable Island, famed as an ocean graveyard, whose shifting sands are as
thickly strewn with the bleaching ribs of stout ships as an old green
churchyard is set with mossy marbles--St. Peter's Bank, and the Grand Bank
of Newfoundland. All of these lie further out to sea than George's, and
are tenanted only by cod and halibut, though in the waters near the shore
the fishermen pursue the mackerel, the herring--which, in cottonseed oil
masquerades as American sardines--and the menhaden, used chiefly for
fertilizer. The boats used in the fisheries are virtually of the same
model, whatever the fish they may seek--except in the case of the menhaden
fishery, which more and more is being prosecuted in slow-going steamers,
with machines for hauling seines, and trawl nets. But the typical fishing
boat engaged in the food fisheries is a trim, swift schooner, built almost
on the lines of a yacht, and modeled after a type designed by Edward
Burgess, one of New England's most famous yacht designers. Seaworthy and
speedy both are these fishing boats of to-day, fit almost to sail for the
"America's" cup, modeled, as they are, from a craft built by the designer
of a successful cup defender. That the fishermen ply their calling in
vessels so perfectly fitted to their needs is due to a notable exhibition
of common sense and enterprise on the part of the United States Fish
Commission. Some years ago almost anything that would float was thought
good enough for the bank fishermen. In the earliest days of the industry,
small sloops were used. These gave way to the "Chebacco boat," a boat
taking its name from the town of Chebacco, Massachusetts, where its rig
was first tested. This was a fifteen to twenty ton boat almost as sharp at
the stern as in the bow, carrying two masts, both cat-rigged. A perfect
marvel of crankiness a boat so rigged would seem; but the New England
seamen became so expert in handling them that they took them to all of the
fishing banks, and even made cruises to the West Indies with cargoes of
fish, bringing back molasses and rum. A development of the Chebacco boat
was the pink, differing only in its rig, which was of the schooner model.
But in time the regular schooner crowded out all other types of fishing
vessels. In 1882, the members of the Fish Commission, studying the
frightful record of wrecks and drownings among the Gloucester and
Marblehead fishermen, reached the conclusion that an improved model
fishing boat might be the means of saving scores of lives. The old model
was seen to be too heavily rigged, with too square a counter, and
insufficient draught. Accordingly, a model boat, the "Grampus," was
designed, the style of which has been pretty generally followed in the
fishing fleet.
[Illustration: ON THE BANKS.]
Such a typical craft is a schooner of about eighty tons, clean-cut about
the bows, and with a long overhang at the stern that would give her a
rakish, yacht-like air, except for the evidences of her trade, with which
her deck is piled. Her hull is of the cutter model, sharp and deep,
affording ample storage room. She has a cabin aft, and a roomy forecastle,
though such are the democratic conditions of the fishing trade that part
of the crew bunks aft with the skipper. The galley, a little box of a
place, is directly abaft the foremast, and back of it to the cabin, are
the fishbins for storing fish, after they are cleaned and salted or iced.
Nowadays, when the great cities, within a few hours' sail of the banks,
offer a quick market for fresh fish, many of the fishing boats bring in
their catch alive--a deep well, always filled with sea-water, taking the
place of the fishbins. The deck, forward of the trunk cabin, is flush, and
provided with "knockdown" partitions, so that hundreds of flapping fish
may be confined to any desired portion. Amidships of the bankers rises a
pile of five or six dories, the presence of which tells the story of the
schooner's purpose, for fishing on the Grand Banks for cod is mainly done
with trawls which must be tended from dories--a method which has resulted
in countless cruel tragedies.
The lives of the men who go down to the sea in ships are always full of
romance, the literary value of which has been fully exploited by such
writers of sea stories as Cooper and Clark Russell. But the romance of
the typical sailor's life is that which grows out of a ceaseless
struggle with the winds and waves, out of world-wide wanderings, and
encounters with savages and pirates. It is the romance which makes up
melodrama, rather than that of the normal life. The early New England
fishermen, however, were something more than vagrants on the surface of
the seas. In their lives were often combined the peaceful vocations of
the farmer or woodsman, with the adventurous calling of the sailor. For
months out of the year, the Maine fisherman would be working in the
forests, felling great trees, guiding the tugging ox-teams to the frozen
rivers, which with spring would float the timber down to tidewater. When
winter's grip was loosened, he, like the sturdy logs his axe had shaped,
would find his way to where the air was full of salt, and the owners of
pinks and schooners were painting their craft, running over the rigging,
and bargaining with the outfitters for stores for the spring cruise.
From Massachusetts and Rhode Island farms men would flock to the little
ports, leaving behind the wife and younger boys to take care of the
homestead, until the husband and father returned from the banks in the
fall, with his summer's earnings. His luck at fishing, her luck with
corn and calves and pigs, determined the scale of the winter's living.
Some of the fishermen were not only farmers, as well, but ship-builders
and ship-owners, too. If the farm happened to front on some little cove,
the frame of a schooner would be set up there on the beach, and all
winter long the fisherman-farmer-builder would work away with adze and
saw and hammer, putting together the stout hull that would defend him in
time against the shock of the north-east sea. His own forest land
supplied the oak trees, keelson, ribs, and stem. The neighboring sawmill
shaped his planks. One lucky cruise as a hand on a fishing boat owned by
a friend would earn him enough to pay for the paint and cordage. With
Yankee ingenuity he shaped the iron work at his own forge--evading in
its time the stupid British law that forbade the colonists to make
nails or bolts. Two winters' labor would often give the thrifty builder
a staunch boat of his own, to be christened the "Polly Ann," or the
"Mary Jane"--more loyal to family ties than to poetic euphony were the
Yankee fishermen--with which he would drive into the teeth of the
north-east gale, breaking through the waves as calmly as in early spring
at home he forced his plough through the stubble.
There was, too, in those early days of the fisheries, a certain
patriarchal relation maintained between owner and crew that finds no
parallel in modern times. The first step upward of the fisherman was to
the quarter-deck. As captain, he had a larger responsibility, and received
a somewhat larger share of the catch, than any of his crew. Then, if
thrifty, or if possessed of a shipyard at home, such as I have described,
he soon became an owner. In time, perhaps, he would add one or two
schooners to his fleet, and then stay ashore as owner and outfitter,
sending out his boats on shares. Fishermen who had attained to this
dignity, built those fine, old, great houses, which we see on the
water-front in some parts of New England--square, simple, shingled to the
ground, a deck perched on the ridge-pole of the hipped roof, the frame
built of oak shaped like a ship's timbers, with axe and adze. The lawns
before the houses sloped down to the water where, in the days of the old
prosperity, the owner's schooner might be seen, resting lightly at anchor,
or tied up to one of the long, frail wharves, discharging cargo--wharves
black and rotting now, and long unused to the sailor's cheery cry. There,
too, would be the flakes for drying fish, the houses on the wharves for
storing supplies, and the packed product, and the little store in which
the outfitter kept the simple stock of necessaries from which all who
shipped on his fleet were welcome to draw for themselves and their
families, until their "ship came in." To such a fishing port would flock
the men from farm and forest, as the season for mackerel drew nigh. The
first order at the store would include a pair of buck (red leather) or
rubber boots, ten or fifteen pounds of tobacco, clay pipe, sou'-westers, a
jack-knife, and oil-clothes. If the sailor was single, the account would
stop there, until his schooner came back to port. If he had a family, a
long list of groceries, pork and beans, molasses, coffee, flour, and
coarse cloth, would be bought on credit, for the folks at home. It came
about naturally that these folks preferred to be near the store at which
the family had credit, and so the sailors would, in time, buy little plots
of land in the neighborhood, and build thereon their snug shingled
cottages. So sprung up the fishing villages of New England.
The boys who grew up in these villages were able to swim as soon as they
could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could
give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and
the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every
brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two
syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls
and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in
the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful
ditties of castaways on George's Bank. Often they were shipped as early as
their tenth year, going as a rule in schooners owned or commanded by
relatives. It was no easy life that the youngster entered upon when first
he attained the dignity of being a "cut-tail," but such as it was, it was
the life he had looked forward to ever since he was old enough to consider
the future. He lived in a little forecastle, heated by a stuffy stove,
which it was his business to keep supplied with fuel. The bunks on either
side held rough men, not over nice of language or of act, smoking and
playing cards through most of their hours of leisure. From time immemorial
it has been a maxim of the forecastle that the way to educate a boy is to
"harden" him, and the hardening process has usually taken the form of
persistent brutality of usage--the rope's end, the heavy hand, the
hard-flung boot followed swift upon transgression of the laws or customs
of ship or forecastle. The "cut-tail" was everybody's drudge, yet gloried
in it, and a boy of Gloucester or Marblehead, who had lived his twelve
years without at least one voyage to his credit, was in as sorry a state
among his fellow urchins as a "Little Lord Fauntleroy" would be in the
company of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
The intimacies of the village streets were continued on the ocean. Fish
supplanted marbles as objects of prime importance in the urchin's mind.
The smallest fishing village would have two or three boats out on the
banks, and the larger town several hundred. Between the crews of these
vessels existed always the keenest rivalry, which had abundant opportunity
for its exhibition, since the conditions of the fishery were such that the
schooners cruised for weeks, perhaps, in fleets of several hundred. Every
maneuver was made under the eyes of the whole fleet, and each captain and
sailor felt that among the critics were probably some of his near
neighbors at home. Charles Nordhoff, who followed a youth spent at sea
with a long life of honorable and brilliant activity in journalism,
describes the watchfulness of the fleet as he had often seen it:
"The fleet is the aggregate of all the vessels engaged in the mackerel
fishery. Experience has taught fishermen that the surest way to find
mackerel is to cruise in one vast body, whose line of search will then
extend over an area of many miles. When, as sometimes happens, a single
vessel falls in with a large 'school,' the catch is, of course, much
greater. But vessels cruising separately or in small squads are much less
likely to fall in with fish than is the large fleet. 'The fleet' is
therefore the aim of every mackerel fisherman. The best vessels generally
maintain a position to the windward. Mackerel mostly work to windward
slowly, and those vessels furthest to windward in the fleet are therefore
most likely to fall in with fish first, while from their position they can
quickly run down should mackerel be raised to leeward.
"Thus, in a collection of from six hundred to a thousand vessels, cruising
in one vast body, and spreading over many miles of water, is kept up a
constant, though silent and imperceptible communication, by means of
incessant watching with good spy-glasses. This is so thorough that a
vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel 'alongside,'
technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the
diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every
man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading
to the wind every available stitch of canvas to force each little bark as
quickly as possible into close proximity to the coveted prize."
To come upon the mackerel fleet suddenly, perhaps with the lifting of the
fog's gray curtain, or just as the faint dawn above the tossing horizon
line to the east began to drive away the dark, was a sight to stir the
blood of a lad born to the sea. Sometimes nearly a thousand vessels would
be huddled together in a space hardly more than a mile square. At night,
their red and green lights would swing rhythmically up and down as the
little craft were tossed by the long rollers of old Atlantic, in whose
black bosom the gay colors were reflected in subdued hues. From this
floating city, with a population of perhaps ten thousand souls, no sound
arises except the occasional roar of a breaking swell, the creaking of
cordage, and the "chug-chug" of the vessel's bows as they drop into the
trough of the sea. All sails are furled, the bare poles showing black
against the starlit sky, and, with one man on watch on the deck, each
drifts idly before the breeze. Below, in stuffy cabins and fetid
forecastles, the men are sleeping the deep and dreamless sleep that hard
work in the open air brings as one of its rewards. All is as quiet as
though a mystic spell were laid on all the fleet. But when the sky to the
eastward begins to turn gray, signs of life reappear. Here and there in
the fleet a sail will be seen climbing jerkily to the masthead, and hoarse
voices sound across the waters. It is only a minute or two after the first
evidence of activity before the whole fleet is tensely active. Blocks and
cordage are creaking, captains and mates shouting. Where there was a
forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the
first rays of the rising sun. The schooners that have been drifting idly,
are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other's bows, slipping
out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical
miracles. From a thousand galleys rise a thousand slender wreaths of
smoke, and the odors of coffee and of the bean dear to New England
fishermen, mingle with the saline zephyrs of the sea. The fleet is awake.
They who have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the
fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels
in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike--a group of somewhat
dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the
trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the
waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name of
captain, and bits of gossip about the craft. As the mountaineer identifies
the most distant peak, or the plainsman picks his way by the trail
indistinguishable to the untrained eye, so the fisherman, raised from
boyhood among the vessels that make up the fleet, finds in each
characteristics so striking, so individual, as to identify the vessel
displaying them as far as a keen eye can reach.
[Illustration: "THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CUTTING OFF THEIR TAILS"]
The fishing schooners, like the whalers, were managed upon principles of
profit-sharing. The methods of dividing the proceeds of the catch
differed, but in no sense did the wage system exist, except for one man on
board--the cook, who was paid from $40 to $60 a month, besides being
allowed to fish in return for caring for the vessel when all the men were
out in dories. Sometimes the gross catch of the boat was divided into two
parts, the owners who outfitted the boat, supplying all provisions,
equipment, and salt, taking one part, the other being divided among the
fishermen in proportion to the catch of each. Every fish caught was
carefully tallied, the customary method being to cut the tongues, which
at the lose of the day's work were counted by the captain, and each man's
catch credited. The boys, of whom each schooner carried one or two, marked
their fish by cutting off the tails, wherefore these hardy urchins, who
generally took the sea at the age of ten, were called "cut-tails." The
captain, for his more responsible part in the management of the boat, was
not always expected to keep tally of his fish, but was allowed an average
catch, plus from three to five per cent. of the gross value of the cargo.
Not infrequently the captain was owner of the boat, and his crew, thrifty
neighbors of his, owning their own houses by the waterside, and able to
outfit the craft and provide for the sustenance of their wives and
children at home without calling upon the capitalist for aid. In such a
case, the whole value of the catch was divided among the men who made it.
At best, these shares were not of a sort to open the doors of a financial
paradise to the men. The fisheries have always afforded impressive
illustrations of the iron rule of the business world that the more arduous
and more dangerous an occupation is, the less it pays. It was for the
merest pittance that the fishermen risked their lives, and those who had
families at home drawing their weekly provender from the outfitter were
lucky if, at the end of the cruise they found themselves with the bill at
the store paid, and a few dollars over for necessaries during the winter.
In 1799, when the spokesmen of the fishery interests appeared before
Congress to plead for aid, they brought papers from the town of Marblehead
showing that the average earnings of the fishing vessels hailing from that
port were, in 1787, $483; in 1788, $456; and in 1789, $273. The expenses
of each vessel averaged $275. In the best of the three years, then, there
was a scant $200 to be divided among the captain, the crew, and the
owner. This was, of course, one of the leanest of the lean years that the
fishermen encountered; but with all the encouragement in the way of
bounties and protected markets that Congress could give them, they never
were able to earn in a life, as much as a successful promoter of trusts
nowadays will make in half an hour. The census figures of 1890--the latest
complete figures on occupations and earnings--give the total value of
American fisheries as $44,500,000; the number of men employed in them,
132,000, and the average earnings $337 a man. The New England fisheries
alone were then valued at $14,270,000. In the gross total of the value of
American fisheries are included many methods foreign to the subject of
this book, as for example, the system of fishing from shore with pound
nets, the salmon fisheries of the Columbia River, and the fisheries of the
Great Lakes.
Mackerel are taken both with the hook and in nets--taken in such
prodigious numbers that the dories which go out to draw the seine are
loaded until their gunwales are almost flush with the sea, and each haul
seems indeed a miraculous draught of fishes. It is the safest and
pleasantest form of fishing known to the New Englander, for its season is
in summer only; the most frequented banks are out of the foggy latitude,
and the habit of the fish of going about in monster schools keeps the
fishing fleet together, conducing thus to safety and sociability both. In
one respect, too, it is the most picturesque form of fishing. The mackerel
is not unlike his enemy, man, in his curiosity concerning the significance
of a bright light in the dark. Shrewd shopkeepers, who are after gudgeons
of the human sort, have worked on this failing of the human family so that
by night some of our city streets blaze with every variety of electric
fire. The mackerel fisherman gets after his prey in much the same
fashion. When at night the lookout catches sight of the phosphorescent
gleams in the water that tells of the restless activity beneath of a great
school of fish the schooner is headed straightway for the spot. Perhaps
forty or fifty other schooners will be turning their prows the same way,
their red and green lights glimmering through the black night on either
side, the white waves under the bows showing faintly, and the creaking of
the cordage sounding over the waters. It is a race for first chance at the
school, and a race conducted with all the dash and desperation of a
steeple-chase. The skipper of each craft is at his own helm, roaring out
orders, and eagerly watchful of the lights of his encroaching neighbors.
With the schooner heeled over to leeward, and rushing along through the
blackness, the boats are launched, and the men tumble over the side into
them, until perhaps the cook, the boy, and the skipper are alone on deck.
One big boat, propelled by ten stout oarsmen, carries the seine, and with
one dory is towed astern the schooner until the school is overhauled, then
casts off and leaps through the water under the vigorous tugs of its
oarsmen. In the stern a man stands throwing over the seine by armsful. It
is the plan of campaign for the long boat and the dory, each carrying one
end of the net, to make a circuit of the school, and envelope as much of
it as possible in the folds of the seine. Perhaps at one time boats from
twenty or thirty schooners will be undertaking the same task, their
torches blazing, their helmsmen shouting, the oars tossing phosphorescent
spray into the air. In and out among the boats the schooners pick their
way--a delicate task, for each skipper wishes to keep as near as possible
to his men, yet must run over neither boats or nets belonging to his
rival. Wonderfully expert helmsmen they become after years of this sort
of work--more trying to the nerves and exacting quite as much skill as the
"jockeying" for place at the start of an international yacht race.
When the slow task of drawing together the ends of the seine until the
fish are fairly enclosed in a sort of marine canal, a signal brings the
schooner down to the side of the boats. The mackerel are fairly trapped,
but the glare of the torches blinds them to their situation, and they
would scarcely escape if they could. One side of the net is taken up on
the schooner's deck, and there clamped firmly, the fish thus lying in the
bunt, or pocket between the schooners, and the two boats which lie off
eight or ten feet, rising and falling with the sea. There, huddled
together in the shallow water, growing ever shallower as the net is
raised, the shining fish, hundreds and thousands of them, bushels,
barrels, hogsheads of them, flash and flap, as the men prepare to swing
them aboard in the dip net. This great pocket of cord, fit to hold perhaps
a bushel or more, is swung from the boom above, and lowered into the midst
of the catch. Two men in the boat seize its iron rim, and with a twist and
shove scoop it full of mackerel. "Yo-heave-oh" sing out the men at the
halliards, and the net rises into the air, and swings over the deck of the
schooner. Two men perched on the rail seize the collar and, turning it
inside out, drop the whole finny load upon the deck. "Fine, fat,
fi-i-ish!" cry out the crew in unison, and the net dips back again into
the corral for another load. So, by the light of smoky torches, fastened
to the rigging, the work goes on, the men singing and shouting, the tackle
creaking, the waves splashing, the wind singing in the shrouds, the boat's
bow bumping dully on the waves as she falls. To all these sounds of the
sea comes soon to be added one that is peculiar to the banks, a sound
rising from the deck of the vessel, a multitude of little taps,
rhythmical, muffled, soft as though a corps of clog-dancers were dancing a
lively jig in rubber-soled shoes. It is the dance of death of the hapless
mackerel. All about the deck they flap and beat their little lives away.
Scales fly in every direction, and the rigging, almost to the masthead, is
plastered with them.
When the deck is nearly full--and sometimes a single haul of the seine
will more than fill it twice--the labor of dipping is interrupted and all
hands turn to with a will to dress and pack the fish. Not pretty work,
this, and as little pleasing to perform. Barrels, boards, and sharp knives
are in requisition. Torches are set up about the deck. The men divide up
into gangs of four each and group themselves about the "keelers," or
square, shallow boxes into which the fish to be dressed are bailed from
the deck. Two men in each gang are "splitters"; two "gibbers." The first,
with a dextrous slash of a sharp knife splits the fish down the back, and
throws it to the "gibber," who, with a twist of his thumb--armed with a
mitt--extracts the entrails and throws the fish into a barrel of brine. By
long practise the men become exceedingly expert in the work, and rivalry
among the gangs keeps the pace of all up to the highest possible point.
All through the night they work until the deck is cleaned of fish, and
slimy with blood and scales. The men, themselves, are ghastly, besmeared
as they are from top to toe with the gore of the mackerel. From time to
time, full barrels are rolled away, and lowered into the hold, and fresh
fish raised from the slowly emptying seine alongside. Until the last fish
has been sliced, cleaned, plunged into brine, and packed away there can be
little respite from the muscle grinding work. From time to time, the pail
of tepid water is passed about; once at least during the night, the cook
goes from gang to gang with steaming coffee, and now and then some man
whose wrist is wearied beyond endurance, knocks off, and with contortions
of pain, rubs his arm from wrist to elbow. But save for these momentary
interruptions, there is little break in the work. Meanwhile the boat is
plunging along through the water, the helm lashed or in beckets, and the
skipper hard at work with a knife or gibbing mitt. A score of other boats
in a radius of half a mile or so, will be in like case, so there is always
danger of collision. Many narrow escapes and not a few accidents have
resulted from the practice of cleaning up while under sail.
[Illustration: FISHING FROM THE RAIL]
The mackerel, however, is not caught solely in nets, but readily takes
that oldest of man's predatory instruments, the hook. To attract them to
the side of the vessel, a mixture of clams and little fish called
"porgies," ground together in a mill, is thrown into the sea, which,
sinking to the depths at which the fish commonly lie, attract them to the
surface and among the enticing hooks. Every fisherman handles two lines,
and when the fishing is good he is kept busy hauling in and striking off
the fish until his arms ache, and the tough skin on his hands is nearly
chafed through. Sometimes the hooks are baited with bits of clam or porgy,
though usually the mackerel, when biting at all, will snap with avidity at
a naked hook, if tinned so as to shine in the water. Mr. Nordhoff, whose
reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes
this method of fishing and its results graphically:
"At midnight, when I am called up out of my warm bed to stand an hour's
watch, I find the vessel pitching uneasily, and hear the breeze blowing
fretfully through the naked rigging. Going on deck, I perceive that both
wind and sea have 'got up' since we retired to rest. The sky looks
lowering, and the clouds are evidently surcharged with rain. In fine the
weather, as my predecessor on watch informs me, bears every sign of an
excellent fishday on the morrow. I accordingly grind some bait, sharpen up
my hooks once more, see my lines clear, and my heaviest jigs (the
technical term for hooks with pewter on them) on the rail ready for use,
and at one o'clock return to my comfortable bunk. I am soon again asleep,
and dreaming of hearing fire-bells ringing, and seeing men rush to the
fire, and just as I see 'the machine' round the corner of the street, am
startled out of my propriety, my dream, sleep, and all by the loud cry of
'Fish!'
"I start up desperately in my narrow bunk, bringing my cranium in violent
contact with a beam overhead, which has the effect of knocking me flat
down in my berth again. After recovering as much consciousness as is
necessary to appreciate my position, I roll out of bed, jerk savagely at
my boots, and snatching up my cap and pea-jacket, make a rush _at_ the
companion-way, _up_ which I manage to fall in my haste, and then spring
into the hold for a strike-barrel.
"And now the mainsail is up, the jib down, and the captain is throwing
bait. It is not yet quite light, but we hear other mainsails going up all
round us. A cool drizzle makes the morning unmistakably uncomfortable, and
we stand around half asleep, with our sore hands in our pockets, wishing
we were at home. The skipper, however, is holding his lines over the rail
with an air which clearly intimates that the slightest kind of a nibble
will be quite sufficient this morning to seal the doom of a mackerel.
"'There, by Jove!' the captain hauls back--'there, I told you so!
Skipper's got him--no--aha, captain, you haul back too savagely!'
"With the first movement of the captain's arm, indicating the presence of
fish, everybody rushes madly to the rail. Jigs are heard on all sides
plashing into the water, and eager hands and arms are stretched at their
full length over the side, feeling anxiously for a nibble.
"'Sh--hish--there's something just passed my fly--I felt him,' says an old
man standing alongside of me.
"'Yes, and I've got him,' triumphantly shouts out the next man on the
other side of him, hauling in as he speaks, a fine mackerel, and striking
him off into his barrel in the most approved style.
"Z-z-zip goes my line through and deep into my poor fingers, as a huge
mackerel rushes savagely away with what he finds not so great a prize as
he thought it was. I get confoundedly flurried, miss stroke half a dozen
times in hauling in as many fathoms of line, and at length succeed in
landing my first fish safely in my barrel, where he flounders away 'most
melodiously,' as my neighbor says.
"And now it is fairly daylight, and the rain, which has been threatening
all night, begins to pour down in right earnest. As the heavy drops patter
on the sea the fish begin to bite fast and furiously.
"'Shorten up,' says the skipper, and we shorten in our lines to about
eight feet from the rail to the hooks, when we can jerk them in just as
fast as we can move our hands and arms. 'Keep your lines clear,' is now
the word, as the doomed fish slip faster and faster into the barrels
standing to receive them. Here is one greedy fellow already casting
furtive glances behind him, and calculating in his mind how many fish he
will have to lose in the operation of getting his second strike-barrel.
"Now you hear no sound except the steady flip of fish into the barrels.
Every face wears an expression of anxious determination; everybody moves
as though by springs; every heart beats loud with excitement, and every
hand hauls in fish and throws out hooks with a methodical precision, a
kind of slow haste, which unites the greatest speed with the utmost
security against fouling lines.
"And now the rain increases. We hear jibs rattling down; and glancing up
hastily, I am surprised to find our vessel surrounded on all sides by the
fleet, which has already become aware that we have got fish alongside.
Meantime the wind rises, and the sea struggles against the rain, which is
endeavoring with its steady patter to subdue the turmoil of old ocean. We
are already on our third barrel each, and still the fish come in as fast
as ever, and the business (sport it has ceased to be some time since),
continues with vigor undiminished. Thick beads of perspiration chase each
other down our faces. Jackets, caps, and even over-shirts, are thrown off,
to give more freedom to the limbs that are worked to their utmost.
"'Hillo! Where are the fish?' All gone. Every line is felt eagerly for a
bite, but not the faintest nibble is perceptible. The mackerel, which but
a moment ago were fairly rushing on board, have in that moment disappeared
so completely that not a sign of one is left. The vessel next under our
lee holds them a little longer than we, but they finally also disappear
from her side. And so on all around us.
"And now we have time to look about us--to compare notes on each other's
successes--to straighten our backbones, nearly broken and aching horribly
with the constant reaching over; to examine our fingers, cut to pieces and
grown sensationless with the perpetual dragging of small lines across
them--to--'There, the skipper's got a bite! Here they are again, boys, and
big fellows, too!' Everybody rushes once more to the rail, and business
commences again, but not at so fast a rate as before. By-and-by there is
another cessation, and we hoist our jib and run off a little way, into a
new berth.
"While running across, I take the first good look at the state of affairs
in general. We lie, as before said, nearly in the center of the whole
fleet, which from originally covering an area of perhaps fifteen miles
each way, has 'knotted up' into a little space, not above two miles
square. In many places, although the sea is tolerably rough, the vessels
lie so closely together that one could almost jump from one to the other.
The greatest skill and care are necessary on such occasions to keep them
apart, and prevent the inevitable consequences of a collision, a general
smash-up of masts, booms, bulwarks, etc. Yet a great fish-day like this
rarely passes off without some vessel sustaining serious damage. We thread
our way among the vessels with as much care and as daintily as a man would
walk over ground covered with eggs; and finally get into a berth under the
lee of a vessel which seems to hold the fish pretty well. Here we fish
away by spells, for they have become 'spirty,' that is, they are
capricious, and appear and disappear suddenly."
[Illustration: TRAWLING FROM A DORY]
Three causes make the occupation of those fishermen who go for cod and
halibut to the Newfoundland Banks extra hazardous--the almost continual
fog, the swift steel Atlantic liners always plowing their way at high
speed across the fishing grounds, heedless of fog or darkness, and the
custom of fishing with trawls which must be tended from dories. The trawl,
which is really only an extension of hand-lines, is a French device
adopted by American fishermen early in the last century. One long
hand-line, supported by floats, is set at some distance from the
schooner. From it depend a number of short lines with baited hooks, set at
brief intervals. The fisherman, in his dory, goes from one to the other of
these lines pulling them in, throwing the fish in the bottom of the boat
and rebaiting his hooks. When his dory is full he returns with his load to
the schooner--if he can find her.
That is the peril ever present to the minds of the men in the dory--the
danger of losing the schooner. On the Banks the sea is always running
moderately high, and the great surges, even on the clearest days, will
often shut out the dories from the vision of the lookout. The winds and
the currents tend to sweep the little fishing-boats away, and though a
schooner with five or six dories out hovers about them like a hen guarding
her chickens, sailing a triangular beat planned to include all the smaller
boats, yet it too often happens that night falls with one boat missing.
Then on the schooner all is watchfulness. Cruising slowly about, burning
flares and blowing the hoarse fog-horn, those on board search for the
missing ones until day dawns or the lost are found. Sometimes day comes in
a fog, a dense, dripping, gray curtain, more impenetrable than the
blackest night, for through it no flare will shine, and even the sound of
the braying horn or tolling bell is so curiously distorted, that it is
difficult to tell from what quarter it comes. No one who has not seen a
fog on the Banks can quite imagine its dense opaqueness. When it settles
down on a large fleet of fishermen, with hundreds of dories out, the peril
and perplexity of the skippers are extreme. In one instant after the dull
gray curtain falls over the ocean, each vessel is apparently as isolated
as though alone on the Banks. A dory forty feet away is invisible. The
great fleet of busy schooners, tacking back and forth, watching their
boats, is suddenly, obliterated. Hoarse cries, the tooting of horns and
the clanging of bells, sound through the misty air, and now and then a
ghostly schooner glides by, perhaps scraping the very gunwale and carrying
away bits of rail and rigging to the accompaniment of New England
profanity. This is the dangerous moment for every one on the Banks, for
right through the center of the fishing ground lies the pathway of the
great steel ocean steamships plying between England and the United States.
Colossal engines force these great masses of steel through sea and fog.
Each captain is eager to break a record; each one knows that a reputation
for fast trips will make his ship popular and increase his usefulness to
the company. In theory he is supposed to slow down in crossing the Banks;
in fact his great 12,000-ton ship rushes through at eighteen miles an
hour. If she hits a dory and sends two men to their long rest, no one
aboard the ocean leviathan will ever know it. If she strikes a schooner
and shears through her like a knife through cheese, there will be a slight
vibration of the steel fabric, but not enough to alarm the passengers; the
lookout will have caught a hasty glimpse of a ghostly craft, and heard
plaintive cries for help, then the fog shuts down on all, like the curtain
on the last act of a tragedy. Even if the great steamship were stopped at
once, her momentum would carry her a mile beyond the spot before a boat
could be lowered, and then it would be almost impossible to find the
floating wreckage in the fog. So, usually, the steamships press on with
unchecked speed, their officers perhaps breathing a sigh of pity for the
victims, but reflecting that it is a sailor's peril to which those on the
biggest and staunchest of ships are exposed almost equally with the
fishermen. For was it not on the Banks and in a fog that the blow was
struck which sent "La Bourgogne" to the bottom with more than four hundred
souls?
[Illustration: STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE]
Ordinarily there is but short shrift for the helpless folks on a fishing
vessel when struck by a liner. The keen prow cuts right through planking
and stout oak frame, and the dissevered portions of the hull are tossed to
starboard and to port, to sink before the white foam has faded from the
wake of the destroying monster. They tell ghoulish tales of bodies sliced
in twain as neatly as the boat itself; of men asleep in their bunks being
decapitated, or waking, to find themselves struggling in the water with an
arm or leg shorn off. And again, there are stories of escapes that were
almost miraculous; of men thrown by the shock of collision out of the
foretop of the schooner onto the deck of the steamship, and carried abroad
in safety, while their partners mourned them as dead; of men, dozing in
their bunks, startled suddenly by the grinding crash of steel and timbers,
and left gazing wide-eyed at the gray sea lapping the side of their
berths, where an instant before the tough oak skin of the schooner had
been; of men stunned by some flying bit of wood, who, all unconscious,
floated on the top of the hungry waves, until as by Divine direction,
their inert bodies touched the side of a vagrant dory and were dragged
aboard to life again. The Banks can perform their miracles of humanity as
well as of cruelty.
Few forms of manual work are more exacting, involve more physical
suffering and actual peril to life, than fishing with trawls. Under the
happiest circumstances, with the sky clear, the sea moderately calm, and
the air warm, it is arduous, muscle-trying, nerve-racking work. Pulling up
half a mile of line, with hooks catching on the bottom, big fish
floundering and fighting for freedom, and the dory dancing on the waves
like mad, is no easy task. The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard
pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory
rheumatism. But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or
in a nipping winter's wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while
the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman's
lot is a bitter one.
The method of setting and hauling the trawls has been well described by
Mr. John Z. Rogers, in "Outing," and some extracts from his story will be
of interest to readers:
"The trawls were of cod-line, and tied to them at distances of
six feet were smaller lines three feet in length, with a hook
attached to the end. Each dory had six trawls, each one eighteen
hundred feet long. The trawls were neatly coiled in tubs made by
sawing flour barrels in two, and as fast as they were baited
with pieces of herring they were carefully coiled into another
tub, that they might run out quickly without snarling when being
set.
"The last trawl was finished just before supper, at five
o'clock. After supper the men enjoyed a Half-hour smoke, then
preparations were made to set the gear, as the trawls are
called. The schooner got well to windward of the place where the
set was to be made, and the first dory was lowered by a block
and tackle. One of the men jumped into it, and his partner
handed him the tubs of gear and then jumped in himself. The dory
was made fast to the schooner by her painter as she drifted
astern, and the other dories were put over in the same manner.
When all the dories were disposed of the first one was cast off.
One of the men rowed the boat before the wind while the other
ran out the gear. First, he threw over a keg for a buoy, which
could be seen from some distance. Fastened to the buoy-line at
some sixty fathoms, or three hundred and sixty feet from the
keg, was the trawl with a small anchor attached to sink it to
the bottom. When this was dropped overboard the trawl was
rapidly run out, and as fast as the end of one was reached it
was tied to the next one, thus making a line of trawl ten
thousand eight hundred feet long, with eighteen hundred hooks
attached. After the schooner had sailed on a straight course a
few hundred yards, the captain cast off the second dory, then
along a little farther the third one, and so on till the five
boats were all setting gear in parallel lines to each other.
When all set this gear practically represented a fishing line
over _ten miles_ long with nine _thousand hooks_ tied to it."
The trawls thus set were left out over night, the schooner picking up the
dories and anchoring near the buoy of the first trawl. At daybreak the
work of hauling in was begun:
"All the dories were made fast astern and left at the head of
their respective trawls as the schooner sailed along. One of the
men in each dory, after pulling up the anchor, put the trawl in
the roller--a grooved wooden wheel eight inches in diameter.
This was fastened to one side of the dory. The trawl was hauled
in hand over hand, the heavy strain necessarily working the dory
slowly along. The fish were taken off as fast as they appeared.
A gaff--a stick about the size and length of a broom handle with
a large, sharp hook attached--lay near at hand, and was
frequently used in landing a fish over the side. Occasionally a
fish would free itself from the trawl hook as it reached the
surface, but the fisherman, with remarkable dexterity, would
grab the gaff, and hook the victim before it could swim out of
reach. What would be on the next hook was always an interesting
uncertainty, for it seemed that all kinds of fish were
represented. Cod and haddock were, of course, numerous, but hake
and pollock struggled on many a hook. Besides these, there was
the brim, a small, red fish, which is excellent fried; the cat
fish, also a good pan fish; the cusk, which is best baked; the
whiting, the eel, the repulsive-looking skate, the monk, of
which it can almost be said that his mouth is bigger than
himself, and last, but not least, that ubiquitous fish, the
curse of amateur harbor fishers, the much-abused sculpin. Nor
were fish alone caught on the hooks, for stones were frequently
pulled up, and one dory brought in a lobster, which had been
hooked by his tail. Some of the captives showed where large
chunks had been bitten out of them by larger fish, and
sometimes, when a hook appeared above water, there would be
nothing on it but a fish head. This was certainly a case of one
fish taking a mean advantage of another."
Such is the routine of trawling when weather and all the fates are
propitious. But the Banks have other stories to tell--stories of men lost
in the fog, drifting for long days and nights until the little keg of
fresh water and the scanty store of biscuit are exhausted, and then slowly
dying of starvation, alone on the trackless sea; of boats picked up in
winter with frozen bodies curled together on the floor, huddled close in a
vain endeavor to keep warm; of trawlers looking up from their work to see
towering high above them the keen prow of an ocean grayhound, and
thereafter seeing nothing that their dumb lips could tell to mortal ears.
Many a story of suffering and death the men skilled in the lore of the
Banks could tell, but most eloquent of all stories are those told by the
figures of the men lost from the fishing ports of New England. From
Gloucester alone, in 1879, two hundred and fifty fishermen were lost. In
one storm in 1846 Marblehead lost twelve vessels and sixty-six men and
boys. In 1894, and the first month of 1895, one hundred and twenty-two men
sailing out of Gloucester, were drowned. In fifty years this little town
gave to the hungry sea two thousand two hundred men, and vessels valued at
nearly two million, dollars. Full of significance is the fact that every
fishing-boat sets aside part of the proceeds of its catch for the widows'
and orphans' fund before making the final division among the men. One of
the many New England poets who have felt and voiced the pathos of life in
the fishing villages, Mr. Frank H. Sweet, has told the story of the old
and oft-repeated tragedy of the sea in these verses:
"THE WIVES OF THE FISHERS
"The boats of the fishers met the wind
And spread their canvas wide,
And with bows low set and taffrails wet
Skim onward side by side;
The wives of the fishers watch from shore,
And though the sky be blue,
They breathe a prayer into the air
As the boats go from view.
"The wives of the fishers wait on shore
With faces full of fright,
And the waves roll in with deafening din
Through the tempestuous night;
The boats of the fishers meet the wind
Cast up by a scornful sea;
But the fishermen come not again,
Though the wives watch ceaselessly."
**Transcriber's Notes:
Page 317: changed cherry to cheery.
Page 329: page ends "cry of 'Fish"; next page begins with a new paragraph,
punctuation added to read 'Fish!'
Page 330: changed volent to violent
changed trumphantly to triumphantly