be true. If this should force the enemy to reason and to peace,
would you give up the navigation of the Mississippi and our
domestic fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland? The former almost
infinitely depreciating our back country and the latter totally
destroying us as a maritime power. That is taking the name of
independence without the means of supporting it.
I rejoice exceedingly at our successes both in the North and in the
South. If we continue to do thus, it will not be in the power of
the execrable junto to prevent us from having a safe and honorable
peace next winter. In this idea I shall ever include the fisheries
and the navigation of the Mississippi. These, Sir, are the strong
legs on which North America can alone walk securely in
independence.
If you do not get a wise and very firm friend to negotiate the
fishery, it is my clear opinion that it will be lost, and upon this
principle that it is the interest of every European power to weaken
us and strengthen themselves.
I heartily wish you success in your negotiations and that when you
secure one valuable point for us (the fishery) that you will not
less exert yourself for another very important object,--the free
navigation of the Mississippi, provided guilty Britain should
remain in possession of the Floridas.
Fishing as a matter of states' rights resulted in the pioneering
Potomac River Compact of 1785, when representatives of Maryland and
Virginia met under George Washington's sponsorship at Mt. Vernon to
deal with fishing and tolls. Maryland owned the river to the Virginia
shore line, and agreed to allow Virginians to fish in it in return for
free entry of Maryland ships through the Virginia capes. The compact,
in force to this day, was the first step taken in behalf of interstate
commerce. With its example to follow, other states eased the barriers
to their commercial interests, with immeasurable benefit to the Union.
Commercial fishing in Virginia was, as the century closed, on the verge
of the stability it had sorely lacked. Its reliance on Indians for
knowledge and skill, as in the first of the 17th century, was as dead
as its reliance on England for manufactures in the last of the 18th.
Just around the corner were railroads and steamboats with their
comparatively swift transportation. Teeming cities needed to be fed,
and after nearly two centuries of education in the ways of the
Chesapeake Bay and its marine life, Virginia fishermen knew how to keep
the markets stocked. In 1794 a French visitor, Moreau de Saint Mery,
wrote:
Fish is the commodity that sells for a ridiculously low price in
Norfolk. One can purchase weakfish weighing more than twenty pounds
for 4 or 5 francs and sometimes one that weighs three times more
for a gourde, 5 francs, 10 sous. Drum is also very cheap. Sturgeon,
weighing up to 60 pounds, can be bought for 6 French sous a pound,
about the same price paid for little codfish that are brought in
alive and are delicious to eat. Shad is also plentiful there. In
addition, one can get perch, porpoise, eels, leatherjackets, summer
flounder, turbot, mullet, trout, blackfish, herring, sole, garfish,
etc. In short, fish is so abundant in Norfolk that sometimes the
police find it necessary to throw back into the water those that
are not bought.
Herring fishing began to be abandoned by the planters, many of whom
were up to their necks in a variety of enterprises, in favor of
business men intending to specialize. Letters from a Virginia
speculator, John F. Mercer, to Richard Sprigg, sketch the situation:
April 19, 1779. To cure fish properly requires two days in the
brine before packing and they can only lie packed with safety in
dry weather. These circumstances joined with the heading and
drawing almost all the fish (a very tedious operation) will show
that no time was lost--only 9 days elapsed from his arrival here to
his completing his load of 15,000 herrings, a time beyond which
many wagons have waited on these shores for 4,000 uncured fish and
many have been obliged to return without one, after coming 40 and
50 miles and offering 2 and 5 dollars a thousand. Several indeed
from my own shore and six who want 36,000 herring will, I believe,
quit this night without a fish, after waiting all this storm on the
shore five days.
Mr. Clarke has had his fish completed two days.... He has been
delayed by the almost continual storm that has prevailed since his
arrival and which has ruined us fishermen.
My fishery has been miserably conducted from the beginning as might
be expected from my entire ignorance and the penury of my partner
who was poorer than myself.... Still I have expectations that it
may turn out an immense thing from the trial we have made. The
shores being opposite to Maryland Point, the reach above and below
with the mouths of the two creeks on this side form a sweep, both
tides upon them, that must collect for fish; and they are kept in
by a kind of pound on the Virginia shore's trend. There apparent
advantages accord with the experiment for, with a desperate
patched-up seine that always breaks with a good haul, we have
contrived to land 20,000 a day, every day we can haul. We are
nearer to the Fredericksburg and Falmouth Virginia markets than any
shore that is or can be opened on the river by 10 miles
notwithstanding every discouragement and particularly the activity
and lies practiced against us by the Little Creek fisheries on each
side, who must fail with our success.
April 10, 1795. Herrings they tell me are 10 shillings per thousand
at all the shores. If I had your lease I could make a fortune. I
have a great mind to send Pollard and George up for your small boat
and seine.... If Peyton comes down with his seine to haul at my
shore, I will seine salted herrings enough for us both.
That acidulous but always colorful roving reporter from the mid-west,
Anne Royall, offers the best picture, for accuracy and detail, of
hauling a seine ever presented by anyone not a technician. Though
written almost 50 years after the Revolution, it describes the kind of
fishing on which Virginians had principally depended since Christopher
Newport began the Colonial era and George Washington ended it:
The market of Alexandria is abundant and cheap; though much
inferior to any in any part of the western country, except beef and
fish, which are by far superior to that of the western markets....
Their exquisite fish, oysters, crabs, and foreign fruits upon the
whole bring them upon a value with us.
Their fish differ from ours, even some species. Their catfish is
the only sort in which we excel; they have none that answer to our
blue cat, either in size or flavor, and nothing like our mud-cat.
Their catfish is from ten to fifteen inches in length, with a wide
mouth, like the mud-cat of the Western waters; but their cat differ
from both ours in substance and color; they are soft, pied black
and white. They are principally used to make soup, which is much
esteemed by the inhabitants. All their fish are small compared with
ours. Besides the catfish which they take in the latter part of the
winter, they have the rock, winter shad, mackerel, and perch, shad
and herring. The winter shad is very fine indeed. They are like our
perch, but infinitely smaller. These fish are sold very low; a
large string, enough for a dozen persons, may be purchased for a
few cents. No fish, however, that I have tasted, equal our trout.
The Potomac at Alexandria, is rather over a mile in width; it is
celebrated for its beauty. It is certainly a great blessing to this
country in supplying its inhabitants with food in the article of
fish.
Fish is abundant (at Washington), and cheap at all seasons, shad is
three dollars per hundred; herrings, one dollar per thousand.
Great quantities of herring and shad are taken in these waters
during the fishing season, which commences in March, and lasts
about ten weeks. As many as 160,000 are said to be caught at one
haul. When the season commences no time is to be lost, not even
Sunday. Although I am not one of those that make no scruple of
breaking the Sabbath, yet, Sunday, as it was, I was anxious to see
a process which I had never witnessed--I mean that of taking fish
with a seine--there being no such thing in the Western country. It
is very natural for one to form an opinion of some sort respecting
things they have never seen, but the idea I had formed of the
method of fishing with a seine was far from a correct one. In the
first place, about fifteen or twenty men, and very often an
hundred, repair to the place where the fish are to be taken, with a
seine and a skiff. This skiff, however, must be large enough to
contain the net and three men--two to row, and one to let out the
net. These nets, or seines, are of different sizes, say from two to
three hundred fathom in length, and from three to four fathom wide.
On one edge are fastened pieces of cork-wood as large as a man's
fist, about two feet asunder, and on the opposite edge are fastened
pieces of lead, about the same distance--the lead is intended to
keep the lower end of the seine close to the bottom of the river.
The width of the seine is adapted to the depth of the river, so
that the corks just appear on its surface, otherwise the lead would
draw the top of the seine under water, and the fish would escape
over the top. All this being understood and the seine and rowers in
the boat, they give one end of the seine to a party of men on the
shore, who are to hold it fast. Those in the boat then row off from
the shore, letting out the seine as they go; they advance in a
straight line towards the opposite shore, until they gain the
middle of the river, when they proceed down the stream, until the
net is all out of the boat except just sufficient to reach the
shore from whence they set out, to which they immediately proceed.
Here an equal number of men take hold of the net with those at the
other end, and both parties commence drawing it towards the shore.
As they draw, they advance towards each other, until they finally
meet, and now comes the most pleasing part of the business. It is
amusing enough to see what a spattering the fish make when they
find themselves completely foiled: they raise the water in a
perfect shower, and wet every one that stands within their reach. I
ought to have mentioned, that when the fish begin to draw near the
shore, one or two men step into the water, on each side of the net,
and hold it close to the bottom of the channel, otherwise the fish
would escape underneath. All this being accomplished, the fishermen
proceed to take out the fish in greater or less numbers, as they
are more or less fortunate. These fishermen make a wretched
appearance, they certainly bring up the rear of the human race.
They were scarcely covered with clothes, were mostly drunk, and had
the looks of the veriest sots on earth.
A Virginian born in 1792, Col. T. J. Randolph of Edgehill near
Charlottesville, was asked to search his earliest memories in order to
record 18th century fishing conditions. He wrote a letter in 1875 to
the newly-constituted Virginia fish commissioners describing an era
well-nigh incredible to today's Tidewater fishermen:
Shad were abundant in the Rivanna at my earliest recollection, say
prior to 1800. They penetrated into the mountains to breed. I have
heard the old people, when I was young, speak of their descending
the rivers in continuous streams in the fall, as large as a man's
hand. The old ones so weak, that if they were forced by the current
against a rock they got off with difficulty. Six miles north of
Charlottesville three hundred were caught in one night with a bush
seine. A negro told me he had caught seventeen in a trap at one
time. I recollect the negroes bringing them to my mother
continually. An entry of land near Charlottesville about 1735
crossed the Rivanna for two or three acres as a fishing shore. The
dams absolutely stopped them, but they had greatly declined before
their erection. In 1810 every sluice in the falls at Richmond was
plied day and night by float seines. I never heard of rockfish
above the falls, and supposed they were confined to Tidewater....
Rockfish were hunted on the Eastern Shore on horseback with spears.
The large fish coming to feed on the creek shores, overflowed by
the tide, showed themselves in the shallow water by a ripple before
them. They were ridden on behind and forced into water too shallow
for them to swim well, and were speared. I inferred from this fact
that they confined themselves to the Tidewater. When young, I have
heard the old people speak of an abundance of other fish. The
supposition was that the clearing of the country, and consequent
muddying of the streams, had destroyed them.
By sluicing the dams, and prohibiting fishing in sluices, or
trapping, or anything that should bar their progress, I do not see
why the shad should not return.
The shad have never returned to the up-country. But they still visit
the vast inland waters below the Fall line, sometimes so abundantly
that the price declines, as it did so recently as 1956, to where the
fishermen can scarcely make a profit. Other fish referred to by the
first Virginians continue to return, and will do so as long as our
outreaching civilization does not deprive them of the natural
conditions they need for survival.
The years closely following the Revolution brought profound readjustment
in American commerce. Observations on whaling, a minor but vital home
industry, filled many pages of a 1788 communication of Thomas Jefferson
to John Jay, one of his confreres in the shaping of national policy.
After sketching the uses of whale oil, its economic position and its
history, he took up the particular problem facing the people of
Nantucket, perhaps the foremost whalers in America. As long as they had
been subjects of the British Empire they had been able to sell their
oil duty-free in England. Now as aliens they must pay the same tariff
charged other foreign traders. This meant the difference between a
profitable and unprofitable enterprise. A few Nantucket seamen had even
transferred to Nova Scotia in order to become British citizens again
and thus receive exemption from whale-oil import duty. This trend
alarmed the French in particular, who could visualize thousands of the
United States' best sailors going over to their enemies the English.
The remedy was suggested: make France the most attractive market for
U.S. whale oil. At the same time, English whaling had been government
subsidized and could undercut competition.
The international chess game went briskly on, to the concern of
Jefferson and the well-wishers of the infant Union. Before the
Revolution England had fewer than 100 vessels whaling, while America
had more than 300. But by 1788 England had 314 and America 80. Such was
the result of the conflict, aided by the bounty paid by Britain to its
own whalers. Jefferson hoped that the United States producers could
develop a market in France, in part, by bartering oil for the essential
work clothes which hitherto had been bought for cash in England. But he
warned that without some kind of subsidy American whalers could neither
compete with foreign countries nor make a living commensurate with
other pursuits. The growing nation's sea-faring men would decrease to
the point where the country's sea power would be in question.
As Secretary of State in 1791, Jefferson reported to Congress on the
two principal American fisheries of the day, both oceanic. "The cod and
whale fisheries," he began, "carried on by different persons, from
different ports, in different vessels, in different seas, and seeking
different markets, agree in one circumstance, as being as unprofitable
to the adventurer as important to the public." Once prosperous, he
said, they were now in embarrassing decline.
He traced the history of the cod fisheries back to 1517, in which year
as many as 50 European ships were reported fishing off the Newfoundland
banks at one time. In 1577 there were 150 French vessels, 100 Spanish
and 50 Portuguese. The British limped far behind with 15. The French
gradually took over as they claimed more and more territory in the
region. Other nations dropped out, except England, whose cod fleet at
the beginning of the seventeenth century had increased to about 150
vessels. These in due course were largely supplanted by the New England
colonists. When France lost Newfoundland to England in 1713 the English
and Colonial fisheries spurted ahead. By 1755 their fleets and catches
equaled those of the French, and in 1768 passed them. Jefferson's
statistics present an impressive picture of the fishing activity of
that time and place, especially when compared with the unorganized
Chesapeake fisheries just then coming of age.
In 1791 he said there were 259 French vessels totaling 24,422 tons and
employing 9,722 seamen. Their catch: 20 million pounds that year. There
were 665 American vessels with 25,650 tonnage, 4,405 seamen and a catch
of around 40 million pounds. England's ships, tonnage and men were not
given. However, her estimated catch nearly equaled that of France and
America combined. Thus the Northern fishing grounds in their palmy days
accounted for well over 100 million pounds of cod a year.
It is worth remarking that the size of today's New England cod fishery
is not radically different from the pre-Revolutionary one described by
Jefferson. Boats, men and catch remain about the same on the average.
Turning to the whaling industry, Jefferson noted that Americans did not
enter it until 1715, although he credited the Biscayans and Basques of
Southern Europe with prosecuting it in the 15th century and leading the
way to the fishing grounds off Newfoundland. Whales were sought in both
the North and South Atlantic. The figures for the American Colonies in
1771 as given by Jefferson were 304 vessels engaged, totaling 27,800
tons, navigated by 4,059 men.
They were in for a difficult time in 1791. The Revolution halted their
activities and deprived them of their markets. Re-establishing this
fishery was a prime concern of Jefferson.
It is significant that in his painstaking consideration of the nation's
fisheries he, a Virginian, apparently found no cause to deal with those
of his own Chesapeake bay. They were one day nevertheless to outstrip
many times over both the volume and value of American cod and whale
fisheries together.
The evidence is that Jefferson was more interested in fish at
Monticello than anywhere else. But there the interest was personal, not
national. In his so-called _Farm Book_, or plantation record, he often
mentions fish. A note on slave labor reads: "A barrel of fish costing
$7. goes as far with the laborers as 200 ponds of pork costing $14."
This was in all probability Virginia salt-herring, which had finally
reached the status of a staple during the latter half of the 18th
century. An 1806 memorandum to his overseer runs: "Fish is always to be
got in Richmond ... and to be dealt out to the hirelings, laborers,
workmen, and house servants of all sorts as has been usual." In 1812 a
bill for fish, which he terms "indeed very high and discouraging, but
the necessity of it is still stronger," lists the species no doubt in
chief demand: "Twelve barrels herrings, $75. and one barrel of shads,
$6.50." These were salted and shipped in from Tidewater fisheries like
George Washington's at Mt. Vernon.
For fresh fish Jefferson and his neighbors could look to their adjacent
rivers. In fact, so greatly did they rely on them that it was with
feelings akin to consternation that he wrote his friend William D.
Meriwether in 1809 that a neighbor, Mr. Ashlin, proposed to erect a dam
which was sure to inconvenience the watermen of the vicinity.
Furthermore, "to this then add the removal of our resort for fresh fish
... and the deprivation of all the intermediate inhabitants who now
catch them at their door." He was not on too firm ground in objecting,
however. He had a dam of his own across the Rivanna river which had
been there since 1757.
He decided to build a fish pond in his garden. As he described it in
1808 it was little larger than an aquarium, 40 cubic yards contents,
probably for water lilies and goldfish. It was the first of several
fish ponds, constructed, no doubt, with both beauty and utility in
mind. A note in his _Weather Memorandum Book_ under date April 1812
tells us: "The two fish ponds on the Colle branch were 40 days work to
grub, clean and make the dams."
A series of letters in 1812 to friends who he thought might supply him
with live fish, particularly carp, for stocking, all run very much on
the order of this one to Captain Mathew Wills:
I return you many thanks for the fish you have been so kind as to
send me, and still more for your aid in procuring the carp, and you
will further oblige me by presenting my thanks to Capt. Holman &
Mr. Ashlin. I have found too late, on enquiry that the cask sent
was an old and foul one, and I have no doubt that must have been
the cause of the death of the fish. The carp, altho it cannot live
the shortest time out of water, yet is understood to bear
transportation in water the best of any fish whatever. The
obtaining breeders for my pond being too interesting to be
abandoned, I have had a proper smack made, such as is regularly
used for transporting fish, to be towed after the boat, and have
dispatched the bearer with it without delay, as the season is
passing away. I have therefor again to solicit your patronage, as
well as Captain Holman's in obtaining a supply of carp. I think a
dozen would be enough and would therefore wish him to come away as
soon as he can get that number.
From that time on his ponds came in for periodic mention, as when one
was broken up by flood waters in 1814. But despite setbacks he kept
faith in them as good food-producing adjuncts of a farm, thus
anticipating the U.S. Department of Agriculture's modern food-fish
pond-development program by more than a century.
As is likely to be the case with experimenters, Jefferson's efforts at
fish propagation do not appear to have been overwhelmingly successful.
At any rate, there is much more frequent reference in his records to
putting fish in his ponds than taking them out. So far as he was
concerned, it may be said that results were less important than
example. Like all great leaders he was an originator and investigator,
confining himself to the basic things that insure man's sustenance and
contribute to his happiness, not the least of which is fishing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archer, Gabriel. _A Relation of the Discovery of Our River From James
Forte into the Maine, Made by Captain Christopher Newport._ Worcester,
1860.
Beverley, Robert. _The History and Present State of Virginia._ London,
1705.
Brown, Alexander. _The Genesis of the United States._ Boston, 1890. 2
vols.
Burnaby, Andrew. _Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North
America in the Years 1759-1760._ London, 1798.
Byrd, William. _Natural History of Virginia._ Ed. and tr. by R. C.
Beatty and W. J. Mulloy. Richmond, 1940.
Chastellux, Francois J. _Travels in North America in the Years 1780,
1781, and 1782._ London, 1787.
Cresswell, Nicholas. _The Journal, 1774-77._ Ed. by Lincoln McVeagh.
New York, 1924.
De Vries, David P. _Voyages From Holland to America, 1632-1644._ New
York, 1857.
Durand, --. _A Huguenot exile in Virginia._ Ed. by Gilbert Chinard. New
York, 1934.
Fithian, Philip V. _Journal and Letters, 1773-1774._ Ed. by Hunter D.
Farish. Williamsburg, 1943.
Force, Peter. _Tracts and Other Papers._ Washington, 1836-46. 4 vols.
Glover, Thomas. _An Account of Virginia._ London, 1676.
Hamilton, Stanislaus M., ed. _Letters to Washington and Accompanying
Papers._ Boston, 1898-1901. 5 vols.
Hamor, Ralph. _Notes of Virginian affaires of the Government of Sir
Thomas Gates and of Sir Thomas Dale till 1614._ Glasgow, 1906.
---- _A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia._ London, 1614.
Hariot, Thomas. _Narrative of the First English Plantation of
Virginia._ London, 1893.
Hart, Albert B. _American History Told by Contemporaries._ New York,
1908. 4 vols.
Hening, William W. _The Statutes at Large of Virginia._ 1809-1823. 13
vols.
Jefferson, Thomas. _The Complete Jefferson._ Ed. by Saul K. Padover.
New York, 1943.
---- _Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book._ Ed. by Edwin M. Betts. Princeton.
1953.
---- _Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book, 1766-1824._ Ed. by Edwin M.
Betts. Philadelphia, 1944.