The relation of the fisheries to the discovery and settlement of North America

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TILE

RELATION OF THE FISHERIES

TO THE

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

OF

NORTH AMERICA.

DELIVERZD BEFORE THE

NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT CONCORD, JUNE, x8%0,
AND THE MASSACHUSETTS FISH AND GAME PRO-

TECTION SOCIETY, AT BOSTON, 13%0,

BY

CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY,
TF

Honorsry Memeer or rue Historicar Soceries or New Hamepsurre anp oF Mase,
anp Vice-Presipenr or tue Massacuusetts Fis sawp
Game Prorecrion Socsery.

BOSTON:
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS,
34 Scuoor. STREET.

1830.

g/-18 78S

XY

ilo] Pa

BR 26

ft

Yat~O OF

THE RELATION OF THE FISHERIES

TO THE

DISCOVERY AND SEITLEMENT QF NORTH AMERICA.

DISCOVERY.

Tue desire to find a short route to the Indies stimulated
Columbus to the discovery of America. The success of
Magellan in the south excited other explorers to seek a passage
by the north or northwest to the Indies. A mental convic-
tion, not born of knowledge, pushed them on from the time
of Cabot, and has not yet spent its force. Thirty years after
Columbus's discovery, the land here was supposed to be the
back part of Cathay, and he had long been dead before geog-
raphers began to suggest these lands were a continent. In
1540 the French patent to Jacques Cartier describes Canada
and Hochelaga as forming one end of Asia on the west side.

Whilst gold and the spices of India were exciting the
cupidity and the enterprise of Europe, small -was the attention
given by the great to the humble occupation and daring
energy of the craft of fishermen who ranged the most danger-
ous parts or the stormy ocean in pursuit of cod, herring, and
mackerel. No literary idlers collected their lore and dressed
it in popular form. No path to fame was supposed to lay
across the gurry-covered deck, or to be enfolded in the
well-tanned seine. Hakluyt and Purchas, Peter Martyr and
Certereal, deemed it hardly of moment to mention these
men of the harpoon and the hook and line and seine; and
when they sought them for information, which was not infre-
quent, what they obtained from the close-mouthed craft was
regarded and used as their own original matter. Dimly
among the printed records of early voyagers, and amid the

4

mouldering papers in public archives, can we catch a trace of
what this craft were about at the time when modern literature
claims that America was discovered by royal expeditions and
lord high admirals under flags of Spain or England, France
or Portugal. Yet there are some grounds for believing that

by

“the skippers” and “the sharesmen” were on these shores
before the admirals. In the European settlement of those
parts of North America which are contiguous to the fisheries,
it is curious to compare the potential influences of the royal
charters and their grantees with those the fisheries exercised
in bringing about the settlements and occupation of the shores
by the European race. I shall present some crude views on
this subject, which, in connection with latest investigations
into the protection and restoration of the cod-fishery to its
former prosperity, have formed the subject of an address lately
given before a society in a sister State organized for the pro-

tection of fish and game.

THE GRAND BANKS.

When were they discovered ?

The great Admiral Columbus came no farther north than
the latitude of Florida. Tne Cabots make no mention of the
Grand Banks. These, then, did not discover them. The
younger Cabot describes the “ Isles of Baccalaos,” which may
be the Magdalen Isles or Cape Breton or some other and unim-
portant islands on the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland ;
but there are no islands on the Grand Banks. How came
this Bristol-born Englishman in a royal ship to use this
Basque word ‘‘baccalaos” in place of the word “cod,” which
all Somerset and Englishmen use, unless he found it so
applied already to these islands? As a discoverer, in emu-
lation of Spanish and Portuguese world-famed explorations, for
his owner and master, Henry VII. of England, he would scarcely
have been giving a Basque name to islands he discovered. It
is, then, improbable that Cabot gave this name, and it is prob-

5

able that he took the name of Baccalaos from those who had
preceded him there. Cabot, his reporters say, stated this was
the native name for this land; but we know the philology of
the word better than he did; and admitting that he reported
the Indian correctly, the proof is more convincing that the
Basques had been there before him.

The next voyagers whose narratives have come down to us
are Cortereal, Verazzano, Gomez, and John Rut; but neither
of these professes to have discovered the Grand Banks. Rut
states that at Newfoundland he met at the harbor of St. John’s
eleven sail Normand, one Breton, and two Portuguese fishing
vessels. An English play, an “ Interlude,’ cited by Nichols
in his life of Cabot, with the attributed date of 1510, states

that, —
‘* Now, Frenchmen and others have found the trade,
That yearly of fish there they lade,
Above a hundred sayle.”

There are still earlier notices of the fishermen. Among
these, the most active were the Basques, who, their traditions
say, were drawn there in the pursuit of whales.

The name of Cape Breton, as well as that of Baccalaos, is
taken from the Basque language.

These Basques were an old race, living partly under the
French and a part under the Spanish government, plain
fishermen, far from the influence of the royal expeditions for
discovery of routes to the Indies, and indifferent to the question
about the Indies, living in a poor country, not influential at
court nor distinguished in letters. They were the originators
of the whale fishery, and had been known long before Colum-
bus’s time as hardy fishermen and enterprising whalemen,
seeking their game in its favorite feeding grounds. It is to
be remarked that the names of places, islands, harbors
about the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton
are mostly Basgue or French. It is claimed by those who
ought to know that the natives used Basque names for the

6

implements of these fisheries, and even on Cabot’s authority,
that they had at his discovery adopted the Basque “ baccalaos”’
(rather than the French “morue”) to designate the codfish
and the country.

It is claimed, then, that they were pursuing the whale and
the baccalaos on these banks and shores for an indefinite time
prior to Cabot’s voyage, and were, excluding the Norwegians’
and Icelanders’ voyages, the first Europeans to visit this part
of North America. I think these propositions may be affirmed
on therecords. Neither Columbus, Cabot, nor Cortereal drew
the French and Basque fishermen to that coast. But Cartier
and Gomez found a lively cod-fishery going on, and Cartier run
over their whaling grounds. The fishermen discovered for
themselves these coasts, how early none can tell; but the
fairest analysis of Cabot’s remarks leaves the logical inference
they were here before he came.

Authors writing prior to 1550 admit the Basques were
whaling and fishing on this coast as early as 1504; but as they
assign no proof that these people began then to fish here, the
admission that they were here then is no denial. that their
enterprise began a generation sooner., No argument can be
drawn from the silence of the Basques, except that the enter-
prise was good enough to keep for their own use. They knew
the court favorites would rob them of its profits if they pub-
lished the news, and the discoverers par le rot would hardly
wish to mention that fleets of European fishermen hovered
near the harbors of “Prima Vistu” or “Baccalaos.” The
royal explorers were searching for the Indies, but the fisher-
men cared for no more spicy breezes than those that dried
their fish and fanned the fires of their try-kettles on the shores
of Norumbega.

Until it can be shown that the chartered explorers dis-
covered the Banks of Newfoundland prior to the Basques, the
silence on both sides remains very natural, but it does not
weaken the Basque argument for priority. The Count de

ii

Premio Real, Consul-General of Spain for the Dominion of
Canada, has lately revived attention to this subject, and
pressed the claims of the Basques with an array of facts
and ingenious arguments, in which he has the support of
several eminent historical investigators of Quebec and some
in this country and Europe.

VERAZZANO IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Verazzano, an Italian captain in the employ of the French
government, sailed from Europe in 1523, and struck the
American coast in latitude 34° N. He ran to the northward,
describing the coast with great clearness. It would seem that
after leaving Narraganset Bay he landed on our New Hamp-
shire coast. His descriptions apply to points in the limited
region between Cape Ann and Cape Neddock ; and, aided by
a life-long familiarity with the appearance of that coast from
the sea, I cannot resist the inferences that the places where
he describes trading with the natives, his boat pulling to the
edge of the breakers, and throwing to the natives on the rocks
things they had to barter, by means of a line, and hauling in
the return “truck,” and that where he made an inland excur-
sion, must either have been at the east end of Cape Ann or near
the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The weight of the whole
description, the northeast course he sailed on leaving, and
the islands he saw, are alone consistent with the hypothesis
that the Piscataqua was his point of departure. This, too, is
confirmed by “the lofty hills” which he saw distant in the in-
terior, “ diminishing towards the shore of the sea,” a description
fitting the appearance of the first ranges of the New Hamp-
shire mountains, — not the White Hills, but those of North-
wood, Strafford, Alton, and Brookfield, Gunstock in Gilford,
Teneriffe in Milton, “diminuendo” to the coast hills like the

8

“butter pots,” Bonnebeag in Berwick, Stratham Hill, Frosts,
and Agamenticus in York.

Any visitor at the Isles of Shoals may notice the correspond-
ence of the description with the view. From here alone on the
coast he describes could he, by the dead reckoning and course
he gives, have sailed along the coast for “ fifty” leagues north-
east, either actually or approximately, and have found on such
a course the thirty islands he refers to on his port side. It
will be observed, that after sailing this over-estimated fifty
leagues, he hauls his course to east and then north for one hun-
dred and fifty leagues. As Portland is a few miles north of ©
the latitude of Seal Island and Cape Sable, this east course, to
have carried him on his voyage, must have begun as far south
as Portland or Seguin, and have been, as he states, first east
(till he rounded Cape Sable) and then north.

The White Mountains are rarely visible in summer from the
sea at the Isles of Shoals, from which they are ninety-six and
two thirds statute miles distant, true bearing north, 20° 31’ 40”
west. Their utmost range of visibility for the sea horizon is
one hundred and five statute miles. The first range I have
indicated, which is only some thirty miles inland, forms an
imposing background to the view of the land till you have
passed Cape Neddock ; whilst Agamenticus and other hills
near the shore break the monotony of the foreground, and
together with the first range serve as landmarks for the fisher-
men, helping them to find their various fishing-grounds in the
perilous winter fishery. For these many landmark hills they
have for centuries had a complete set of names among them-
selves, which are unknown to geographers or to the people
living about the foot of the mountains.

I know of no point east of Agamenticus where Verazzano’s
description of the hills in the interior diminishing towards the
coast can be faithfully applied. At Camden there are hills
near to the shore which close the view inland.

9

At Portland there are no coast ranges of hills visible. Cape
Ann, also, lacks the mountain landscape.

Another reason for my view is, that if you throw his posi-
tion too far into the Gulf of Maine, Verazzano must have sailed
southeast to get into the open ocean, and would have noticed
the fact in his account.

My conclusion is, that Verazzano landed at or near the mouth
of the Piscataqua in 1524, and traded with the rude natives,
whose fear of them and desire for knives and fish-hooks yield
a strong inference they had met the white man before and
feared his kidnapping propensities, although they wanted his
fish hooks and cutlery. I do not see how Verazzano, from his
own account, could have got farther north than latitude 45° or
40°, but he very distinctly states that the Portuguese had been
before him on the shores north of that latitude.

ENGELS EE

So far as Cabot or the English were concerned, his discov-
eries excited little or no enterprise in that direction. Cabot per-
sonally went into the service of Spain at the La Platte; and
when, after many years, he returned to England, he became
governor of the Muscovy Trading Company. No account of his
voyages was published by him. A few reported conversations
are all we have. During the half-century he survived, the
fisheries on this coast were carried on by the French, Basque,
and Portuguese, without competition from England.

True it is, Cabot’s mind continued harassed with visions
of a northwestern and of a northeastern passage to the East
Indies ; but neither founding settlements in North America
nor the development of its fisheries ever disturbed its sen-
suous visions of reaching the Spice Islands and the Indies.

England was lethargic until the great Devonshire sailors

woke her to a sense of her own power, in the latter half of the
2

IO :

sixteenth century. Even then, reluctantly, her government
turned its attention to the fisheries. On her east coasts the
Dutch gathered the golden fruit, on the coast of Ireland the
Spanish and Portuguese drew the wealth of the herring and
the cod; and so decrepit was her own smaller industry, that
statutes forbidding the English fishermen to buy fares of for-
eigners on the seas, and others (5 Elizabeth) making Wednes-
day a fish-day in addition to Fridays and Saturdays, and lit-
erally penalizing the use of flesh meat on these days, avowedly
for the promotion of her fisheries, “and not for any super-
stition to be maintained in the choice of meats,” were enacted.

Hardly, prior to Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s day, do we find any
record that the English had become participants in the fisher-
ies of North America; yet, evidently, the western men had
begun upon this enterprise, for Capt. Whitbourne, in his nar-
rative, tells us that when this distinguished sailor took posses-
sion in the name of Queen Elizabeth of the island of New-
foundland and of the Banks (1582), it was in the harbor of
St. John’s, Newfoundland, and that he was present, “ being in
command of a worthy ship of 220 tons, set forth by one
Master Crook, of Southampton.”

The very fame which has surrounded Sir Humphrey Gil-
bert, in connection with the fishing shores of North America,
is a strong proof that the developing of that business to the
English is due mainly to his sagacity.

Hakluyt, the chronicler of his brother Raleigh’s expeditions,
urged the Queen to attempt something in behalf of the then
growing and vigorous English enterprise. The patent by
James L., in 1610, to the Earl of Northampton, authorizing a
settlement to be made in Newfoundland, says that coast has.
been used for more than fifty years for the fishery by the Eng-
lish, which does not even pretend that it began until twenty
years after Jacques Cartier was commissioned by Francis I.
of France (1640), as the admiral and governor of Canada and
Hochelaga, “making one end of Asia on the western side,”

Hat

Common fame is right in this, that England owes to the
half-brothers Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh the inception of
its career as a colonist, and to the stimulus of their efforts at
home even more than to their pioneer efforts, that rousing of
the English mind to grasp the national wealth and glory of
colonial enterprises. They both paid for their patriotism with
their fortunes and their lives: one foundered at sea, return-
ing from his voyage; the other, beheaded by a suspicious and
timid king to propitiate Spain, who feared his energy would
in the end endanger its possessions in America. All Eng-
land, but the court, mourned for Raleigh whilst his blue blood
was clotting on the block; and for England’s shame, history,
true for once to a righteous instinct, has clung lovingly to
their memories, and with a truthful pen placed the odium of
the treason to England on the king who killed, and not on the
victim whom he condemned.

The English colonial fever continued to increase, the re-
newed movements of France to settle in Acadia, in 1603,
under De Monts and the prior Robeval expedition, stirred
them to action, and it was determined to take possession of
and occupy Newfoundland. The right of her claim to this
land was based on Cabot’s alleged discovery a century or so
previously.

The accounts of Cabot’s expedition are vague and conflict-
ing. Neither journal nor report was made by him that we
are aware of. The conversations with him reported by an-
nalists took place at least thirty years after the events they
purported to describe. Long before Cabot’s death the fame
of America was great enough to justify any man to make and
publish a concise and distinct account of a voyage whose
pretensions to be the first to the continent were so bold.
Cabot had wealth and position, but he contented himself with
loose, general statements, and a concealment or secrecy as to
those details which ordinary navigators produce to corroborate
their general statements. He is, as its record now appears,

1b

by no means a satisfactory authority as to his own voyage.
His annalists state that the first land he saw he named
Premier Vista, and the isle opposite, St. John. These would
appear, if we follow the courses he gives, not to be Labrador
and Newfoundland; and the other hypothesis, that he discov-
ered Cape Breton and saw from there Prince Edward’s Island,
is an absurdity. The day of discovery is stated to be St.
John the Baptist’s day, June 24, 1797. To the Legate of the
Pope he stated, in Spain, “That he sailed in the commence-
ment of the summer of 1796! and sailed northwest. [He
sailed from Bristol, latitude 50°.] That coming up with the land
he pushed north to the 56° north latitude, and finding the land
trended eastward he despaired of finding the passage to the
Indies, and turned, ran down the coast towards the equator,
looking for a passage, and arrived at that part of the continent
that is called, actually, Florida. His provisions running short,
he returned to England.” He could not have made Newfound-
landon ithisi;course.) (Lo: Peter Martyn heysaid, “He inst
steered so far towards the north pole that even in July he found
mountains of ice”; these obstructions caused him to steer
westward, coasting along a land which “he called Baccalaos,
a name given by the inhabitants to a large kind of fish, which
appeared in such shoals that they sometimes interrupted the
progress of his ships.”

A pretty good jish story for the great Sebastian to get off.
Baccalao is the Portuguese, and baccalaos is the Basque and
Spanish name for the cod-fish, which is a bottom fish, and is
never found swimming near the surface after it has attained
an inch or so of length.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in a treatise on a discovery of a
new passage to Cathay, written (1583) within a generation
after Cabot’s death, says Cabot sailed west with a quarter
north, and entered a “fret” (strait) in the north side of the
Terra Labrador, the 11th June, until he came to the north
latitude 672°, when his crew prevented his pushing farther
westward.

13

Mr. Kidder, in an essay published in the Astorical and
Genealogical Register, offers strong evidence that Cabot could
not have sailed the voyage he describes in the time he was
absent from England.

THE BANKS.

Putting aside these criticisms, it is evident from the accounts
that Cabot did not discover or describe the Banks of New-
foundland.

Before the English had begun to take an interest in the
fishery, the Baccalaos seems to have been well frequented by
discoverers. Cortereal, Verazzano, the Baron Levy, Robert
Thorne, John Rut, and Hore require but little comment,
because their objects were not connected with the fisheries.
The Basques were on the coast fishing on the Grand Banks
in 1504. They, too, gave the name to Cape Breton. In 1506,
Denys, of Harfleur, made a map of the Baccalaos country. In
1527, John Rut, sent by Henry VIII. to explore, reported he
had found in the harbor of St. Johns eleven sail of Normands,
one Breton, and two Portuguese barks, all a-fishing. Master
Hore, the lawyer, brought no news except that they had taken
the black bears “ for no bad food,’— a fact we of this generation
are ready to corroborate. A French fisherman rescued his
party from starvation. Jacques Cartier, in 1534-5, explored the
gulf and river of St. Lawrence, and wintered on the conti-
nent, but his mind was on the fur trade, and his effort at colo-
nization, though strongly pressed, fell through. He says he
met many ships of France and Brittany. Roberval, who also
was engaged in that enterprise, arriving at St. John’s in 1542,
found there “seventeen ships of fishers.”

These scattered data show that our patronized “explorers”
found on their voyages fleets of fishermen already practical
pilots of the coasts and harbors; and however much merit we
attribute to the former, that of piloting the fishermen to the
new grounds of America has no place in the catalogue.

14

In the last half of this century the English slowly began
to participate in the fisheries.

Parkhurst, near the close of the century, says that gener-
ally there were found there more than one hundred sail of
Spaniards, fifty sail of Portuguese, one hundred and fifty sail
of French and Bretons, and fifty sail of English taking cod,
and twenty or thirty sail of whalers.

Whitbourne says, in 1615, there were four hundred sail of
French, Biscayans, and Portuguese frequented Newfoundland,
and two hundred sail of English.

There are several authorities on the manners and customs
of these fishermen of all nations, and the usages which they
had adopted. The first comer in a harbor had the right to
pick and choose the locality for its stages, and even to take
possession of those unoccupied which had been left from the
preceding season. Complaints of their wilfulness are fre-
quent. The first comer was the admiral of that port, and
presided at the meetings of the masters in port, who were a
government in themselves. Frequently, the early comers
shut the harbor against new comers. When Sir Humphrey
Gilbert arrived off St. John’s he found his consort, the
“ Squirrel,” anchored outside the harbor, “the English mer-
chants” having forbade her entrance. With the aid of Sir
Humphrey’s vessel, they prepared to force an entrance, de-
spite the thirty-six sail in port ; but learning of his commission,
the ‘‘insiders”’ raised the “ bar-out,” admitted them, feasted the
officers, and the glorious old chief took possession, in her
Majesty’s name, of the island of Newfoundland and the
Banks, as his fleet reported home, and as. Capt. Whitbourne,
who was in the harbor in a two hundred and twenty ton ship,
“set forth by one Master Crook, of South Hampton,” veri-
fies, forty years afterward, in his narrative.

The English increased in the fishery rapidly after Sir
Humphrey Gilbert’s time, and thetr rough ways became more
prevalent as theif power increased. It was said that no

nS

people but they were so free to burn and destroy the stages
and flakes others had left the year before, to unroof their fish-
houses, stave their boats, and steal their salt. Hakluyt, in
1584, wrote of them: “ Whereas, we and the French are most
infamous for our outrageous, common, and daily piracies.”
Indeed, in 1615, when Capt. Whitbourne, under his commis-
sion, held a court of admiralty there, aided by the fishing
skippers, he presented these grievances, and throwing ballast
over in the harbor, stealing bait, cutting nets, and fishing on
every day of the week, and burning the forests, as evil doings
requiring abatement. The colony, then on the coast, was too
weak to control the 6,000 British fishermen, and he recom-
mended a fleet of four men-of-war to protect against these
evils and prevent the frequent piracies the fishermen suffered
from, and that arrangements should be made that one fifth of
the fishermen should winter on the island, and become the
nucleus of an extensive settlement of its large bays.

FUR TRADERS.

Whilst the summer fishermen were thriving, a lively fur
trade with the natives also was being carried on. Cartier,
after his discovery of the St. Lawrence, spent several years in
this pursuit. It was the main incentive of Roberval’s efforts to
form a settlement. These traders rarely spent the winter on
the coast, but arriving early, well fitted with a proper assort-
ment, they sought communications with the natives, and they
kept silence regarding the favorable places which they found.
There can be no doubt that every river mouth and harbor,
from Labrador to Florida, was explored in their pursuit of
trade during the sixteenth century. Not unfrequently did it
happen that when the trade was about over for the season,
“the honest trader,’ desiring to increase-his gains, would

16

manage to seize from one to three dozen of the natives and
carry them off as part of his freight, and sell them as slaves.
Indeed, the name “ Labrador” was given to the coast north-
west of Newfoundland by Cortereal or the Spaniards, from
the peculiar fitness for labor its captured people were found to
possess. This special idiosyncrasy lasted long into the next
century. The pious Puritans even found thrift in sending
King Philip’s captured family as slaves to the Barbadoes and
selling them. Candor requires it to be said, that the “ admi-
rals,” who preceded the Pilgrims, like Hunt, Weymouth, etc.,
were equally forward in a like trade.

It is remarkable that the early voyagers for discovery ap-
pear to have thought it necessary to bring home some of the
natives captives, probably sometimes from a feeling that this
would be the strongest evidence of their actually having found
a new, strange country, and more often from a sense of the
profit which might result from the sale of these people in the
West Indies, or the exhibition of these curiosities.

In 1500, Cortereal seized fifty in Labrador. In 1502, some
“salvages”’ were exhibited in London before the king. In
1508, Aubert brought two of them to Dieppe, in France. In
1524, Gomez seized and brought home twenty-four ; Verazzano
brought one from about North Carolina, and. found the coast
in the Gulf of Maine alive with terror from the doings of
some previous voyagers.

It is difficult to estimate the extent of fur trade on this coast
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. John Smith, in
1614, says he procured 5,000 skins of beaver in a few weeks,
and that 20,000 were shipped from Canada. He was not the
only trader. Beaver was the Indian medium of exchange for
European goods. South from the Kennebec, before the set-
tlements of the whites, the Indians cultivated corn, beans,
and what Mr. Choate soothingly called “that delicious escu-
lent, the pompion” ; anticipating our modern fertilizers, they
manured their cornfields with two herrings to the hill. Their

uy

great festival was when “roasting ears” came in; then, says
Champlain, in 1605, their fires glistened along the coast ; they
danced, welcomed the exploring Europeans with generous
hospitality, and danced again, stacking their arms in the
centre of the circle. The saturnine character of the Puritan
settlers obliterated this festival from the eastern coast, but the
kindly influences of Roger Williams and John Gorton pre-
served it embodied with the clam bake in Rhode Island, until in
the present generation it bids fair to resume its ancient vogue
“all along shore.’ Whether the “husking” was also an In-
dian festival does not appear, — probably it was.

As the Indians here did not raise any potatoes, nor did the
early settlers, the other famous coast dish, “ the chowder,” has
no claim to Indian descent.

The Indians, though skilled in the river fisheries, do not
seem to have taken to the cod-fishery, probably because they
were aware that the European fishermen, whose ships were to
be filled, knew of good markets for live Indians, and might
easily fall before the temptation to finish off their cargo with
a catch of Indian fishermen.

PURE ASE S:

The fishermen had great trouble from pirates, and indeed a
predatory disposition often showed itself in the fishermen
themselves. When the combined force in a harbor was out-
numbered or overmatched in armament by some new arrival,
little more attention was paid to rights of property than Sir
Francis Drake and other bold seamen paid to such rights
when protected by the flag of Spain. True, the more adven-
turous and better armed were drawn by the gold loadstone to
plan the capture of Spanish galleons; the humble spoil of a

fisherman was too insignificant to divert them from the gold
3

18

and silver ingots of the well-cuarded treasure-ships of Spain ;
yet, when one came in their way, he was unhesitatingly robbed
if not captured as prize. Rapacity grew apace, the fishing
vessels were of good size, the crews were large, and armaments
were necessary. Many quaint stories of robberies and at-
tempts at compelling restitution have come down to us, but
the names of the well-bred Sir Barnard Drake and Hudson
must mingle with the vulgar fame of Peter Easton and Tibolo
and Dixy Bull to serve merely as specimens of the buccaneer-
ing habits of the era. An instinct of better self-protection
seems to have led many of the fishermen of different flags to
rendezvous at different harbors, although at many berths fish-
ermen of all nations could be found; thus, where, afterwards,
Louisburg was built, was called English Harbor.

SETTLEMENT.

The numerous efforts in the sixteenth century had all failed
to effect a permanent settlement because of inherent evils
in their plans. The despotic rule and monopoly of the char-
tered companies killed individuality in enterprise. In the
absence of the competition of free markets, the local farmer,
fisherman, or lumberman would have been so burdened with
the difficulty and expense of exchange, that he was forced to
rely on the fixed rates or wages of the company for his sup-
port, rather than on the profits of individualized energy and
industry. There can be no growth without liberty. The sys-
tem of settlement provided no field for profitable employment
during the greater part of the year, and gave no inducement
for the settler to spend the winter on this side of the Atlantic.

There was a hankering among the “lords proprietors” to
establish the English system of rents and tenures, not encour-
aging to those on whose labor the development of the resources
of the soil depended.

Le)

The selection of material was ill-judged ; too many soldiers,
too many of the sweepings of great cities,— too few men of
skilled industries and farmers and fishermen,—too much
fur trade. The priest showed more knowledge of the human
heart than the traders and soldiers he accompanied. The,
selfreliance necessary for pioneer success was not sought
for; though zeal was not wanting, yet it was wasted on meth-
ods and material impossible of success., Their labor was not
fruitful; but as the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church, so with these unfortunate pioneers, — founded on
their bones rests the present glory of the French and British
races in North America.

The West of Europe waxed earnest to match the power of
Spain in North America, and to protect and build up their
fisheries.

Within a few years after the beginning of the seventeenth
century, De Monts and Champlain, under French grants, be-
gan at Nova Scotia and Acadia, and others in Canada. The
fishermen of England began of themselves to settle in the
bays of Newfoundland. King James I. gave charters for
North and South Virginia, the latter being an agricultural
settlement exclusively, and the former, from 40° north lati-
tude to Acadia, being placed in the hands of a separate com-
pany. This northern country was not very fertile, its winters
were cold and long, and no amount of representations proved
attractive to the agriculturalists of the British Islands.

De Monts and Poutrincourt had hard luck, but so also had
Popham and Gorges on the agricultural side of their enter-
prise. There was something else that saved the ventures
from shipwreck. Their charter gave admiralty powers to the
companies. You will recall, in your readings of early history,
that Gorges sent admiral after admiral to the coast of New
England; and that in 1605, in his first year, De Monts arrested
French traders hovering on his coast. You will recall that
Whitbourne came to Newfoundland in 1615 with an admiralty

20

commission, and held what he terms the first court of admiralty
ever held on the coast of North America. The object of all
this admiralty jurisdiction was to make fishermen pay license,
and to hold the monopoly of the rich fur trade. Great sources
of profit these were to the companies, whilst the permanent
settlements on shore were a heavy bill of expense.

It is instructive to follow, through the scattered chronicles
of the doings of these three great companies, the misty traces
of the operating causes on their progress. The monopolies
carved out to each were alike odious to the free fishermen who
were brought under impositions for which they received no
benefit in return; consequently a steady opposition at home,
to the patentees, alike in England and in France, was main-
tained by them and their outfitters. In this, the old fur
traders joined. The chartered companies sent out their
exploring expeditions, fitted to trade and fish in their re-
spective limits, and to drive off, capture, or license all others
as intruders. The intruders were the most numerous and the
best posted in the course of trade, the habits of the fish, and
the weather, harbors, and landfalls of the coast.

Capt. John Smith states that prior to his voyage in 1614 he
had procured seven or eight charts from the fishermen and
traders who had been in the habit of frequenting the coast of
New England, and probably all the exploring voyages of the
century conducted for the companies were similarly supplied
from the old skippers who had long frequented the coast.
Poutrincourt, in 1606, describes his interviews at Canseau
with Savelefte, an old fisherman, who had made /orty-tiwo
voyages to the coast! Smith, again, after describing the
Isles of Shoals, speaks of the Merrimack River, but states he
did not enter it because two French ships were lying there
who had traded there for several years. Mourt, in his
“ Relation,” speaks of an abandoned French fort, and a plank-
built house the Pilgrims found on Cape Cod at their first
landing.

oe
4 .

221)

The languorx of the colonial efforts of the French at St.
Croix, Port Royal, Mt. Desert, etc., and of the English at
New Somerset, Monhegan, and Saco, was suddenly changed
into energy by a discovery that offered prosperity to indi-
vidual energy, and made a residence on the coast pecuniarily.
desirable.

WINTER FISHERY.

The Newfoundland men of enterprise had founded a settle-
ment very early. Capt. Mason, afterwards a grantee of New
Hampshire, was there as governor for some time. John Guy,
the worshipful, late mayor of Bristol, and others, in 1608, had
tried the winter climate. Whitbourne asserted the interest of
the fishermen in a permanent settlement was to preserve their
stages and boats, and begin earlier the spring and carry on
the autumn fishery later. His arguments were in the interest
of the summer fishery. The experiment, casually tried, devel-
oped the fact that the winter fishery was better than the
summer along the coast of Acadia and to the eastward of
Cape Ann; that the cod come in from off shore to the coast
at this, their spawning season, and that a positive profit would
result from fishing in the winter season near the shore. This
renewed the zeal and enterprise of the Acadian and North
Virginia proprietors to establish stations along the coast for
the fishery, and the hope that their land might consequently
derive an agricultural value again sprung up in their minds,
None more earnest than Gorges in obtaining a reorganization
of his company under a broader charter, and in circulating the
fact that the coast of Maine was the Eldorado of winter fishing,
and the fishermen came. Gorges, in his narrative, states that
in October, 1615, Sir Richard Hakings, in his employ, sailed
for this coast, and in the following season sent home his ship
laden with fish for the market. This is the first winter-caught

22

cargo that I have traced. Gorges complains that for severa]
years he “had to hire men to stay there the winter quarter at
extreme rates.” We know that in 1619 they wintered at
their favorite station, Monhegan, the year before the Pil-
grims came over ; how often prior, we do not know. There is
every reason to believe they continued to winter there as well
as summer, for years afterwards. The Piscataqua and the
Plymouth men bought, in 1626, on the breaking up of a trading
house there, a lot of goats, for the relief of the Plymouth colony.
It and Damrell’s Cove were the resort for goods and trade
of the whole coast. Phineas Pratt, who arrived in the spring
of 1622, describes the fishermen gathering around their May-
pole at Damrell’s Cove, and making merry in a style that would
have gladdened Old Herrick’s heart and woke his song could
he have been there. In 1617-18, Vines and a party wintered
at Saco, and for several other seasons, I infer from Gorges’s
account.

In 1623 the Isles of Shoals was a berth for six ships, according
to Levett. The English fishermen drew around this coast in
shoals that increased every year. Their stages were set up in
every favorable harbor. Strong in their numbers and united on
the question of a free fishery, the lords proprietors found their
“admirals” were unable to extract the coveted license money,
and were compelled to take their chance on even footing in
throwing the cod-line and hook, and in chumming the glittering
mackerel to the surface. The winter-fishery profits were the
nucleus for the settlements that began along the eastern coast.
This Piscataqua was based upon it. At Cape Ann, the Dor-
chester people began, in 1623, a permanent settlement con-
nected therewith, which, in 1627, they removed to Naumkeag,
now Salem, the root and stem on which the Bay colony was
grafted. Subsequently Mason had another settlement on the
Cape, probably at Ipswich. Levett tried to plant one ‘at
Quack, now Portland, Gorges at York, Winter and Vines
and others at various points eastward. Monhegan and the

eee

23

Isles of Shoals remained the main places where the incomers
endeavored to make their landfalls, and whence the home-
ward bound took their departure from our coast. Trade was
lively east of Cape Ann. The Plymouth Pilgrims were not
fishermen, and they located in a very poor place for fishing,
out of the line of cruising of the fishermen, and on very poor
land; hence, they almost starved, lacking fish as well as corn.
And while the fishermen were catching fish by the scores of
thousands, the unskilled but undaunted Pilgrims would strive
all day to get enough for their own consumption, and very
often fail at that. In the process of time their descendants
learned the art among our Eastern folk, and then Cape Cod
- men took equal rank among the hardy skippers and sharesmen
who have made the whale and cod fisheries famous. When
the Pilgrims grew short of food, they sent down to the Pis-
cataqua or to Monhegan or to Damrell’s Cove for supplies,
and never asked in vain, the generous fishermen even raising
for them their stove boat, and helping to make her again
seaworthy.

It was the winter fishery that placed on our coasts a class
of permanent consumers, and gave to agriculture the possibil-
ity of flourishing. The lumber trade marched beside it. In
these pursuits, they who tilled the land during the short
summer could find profitable employment in the winter on
the ocean or in the forest near their homes. The elements
for supporting a family were thus united together. It was the
winter fishery, prosecuted in boats from the shore, as it
usually was, that furnished, not merely a supply of food to the
fisherman’s family, but an article which was a medium of ex-
change that was in demand with the traders on land, or the
fishing smacks which came in fleets to fill up a cargo, and
sure to command goods or money, as his necessities demanded.
It secured employment all the year round to the industrious,
and made a residence profitable. It thus also gave to the
industrious the great boon of independence, the foundation of

24

character in the individual, and in the State. Agriculture fol-
lowed with halting steps where it led the way. There was no
crop that the land produced for export, like the tobacco of
Virginia or the indigo and sugar of the West Indies; no
great prairie range for pasturage of either cattle or sheep.

The early agriculture of the country was not carried on ac-
cording to English plans. The settlers adopted the habits of
the country and the crop, planted Indian corn in the Indian
way, and hoed and manured it, two herrings to a hill, as the
Indians did. Mourt’s “ Relation’
the Pilgrims how to plant corn. Their English grain failed.

The first cattle were brought over to the Dorchester settle-
ment, at Cape Ann, in 1623-4, and the same or the next year
a few also came to Plymouth. The Dorchester people, “the

)

states that Squanto taught

BI

old planters” of Massachusetts, who proved the country and
the fisheries before Endicott or Winthrop came over, testified
that they and the Indians at Naumkeag cultivated a cornfield
together and in common.

The rush to these coasts preceded the progress of its agri-
culture. Our crops did not supply the needs for food, much
less furnish an export trade. The winter and summer fish-
eries, and the lumber, were the exports that furnished the
means to buy the necessaries of life, only to be had from
Europe. Capital found employment in regular trade, and the
arts connected with navigation flourished and grew apace.

The early history of New England shows that those who
having procured grants of land came here with an eye to
trading with the Indians, were in constant quarrels from their
rivalry, and, in their efforts to break up each other’s “ beaver
trade,’ rarely spared their settlements. Thus the poor attor-
ney of Merry Mount, Morton, Mr. Weston, Mr. Oldham, and
others suffered at various times from stronger rivals among
their countrymen. Sometimes, indeed, the unco-righteous
would slander the gentle craft, the fishermen, accusing them
of some of the infirmities of humanity Thus they fined a man

25

at the Isles of Shoals for bringing his wife out there to live
with him; and a Bay State clergyman, speaking of another
fishing place, said a woman there was divided into as many
shares as one of their fishing smacks. Every one smiled at
the malice, but none credited the defamation. The fishermen
plied their profitable trade and sang, as Jenness says, —

‘* Oh, the herring he loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind ;
But the grampus loves the fisherman’s song,
For he comes of a gentle kind.”’

Indifferent that the temperature was near zero, the wind a
half gale, and the sea rising fast as he filled his open boat with
the twelve-pound cod, the hardy fisherman toiled on, rejoicing
that his home was but a few miles off,

The discovery that the cod approach these shores to spawn
in the winter, whilst late in the spring and summer they are
found at greater distances from the coast, and notably on
Georges, the Grand Banks, Jeffries, etc, completed a fisher-
man’s round, giving him a home fishery for the months when
the dangers on the Banks are greatest, and perfecting an eco-
nomical employment of his time.

Incident to the fisheries were those of the mackerel and
herring, together with the salmon and shad that frequented
the rivers of the coast, and the abundance of lobsters and
clams of savory flavor, which delighted and often sustained
the early settlers on the coast; but although exercising some
influence in the location of settlements, they cannot be said
to have induced the emigration to these shores.

The whale fishery followed, rather than led, the settlement
of the coast.

In the natural order, the continuous employment a residence
on these coasts afforded to the fishermen, gave him great ad-
vantages over the European and those who had no winter
fishery at their doors, and the fishing population rapidly in-

26

creased in numbers and prosperity, bringing with it commerce
and an agricultural population. Let me be clear, neither Pil-
grims nor Puritans were its pioneers; neither the axe, the
plough, nor the hoe led it to these shores ; neither the devices
of the chartered companies nor the commands of royalty. It
was the discovery of the winter fishery on its shores that led
New England to civilization, and fed alike the churchmen and
the strange emigrants who came with the romance of their
faith in their hearts, and the /er ¢alzonzs in their souls to per-
secute because they had been persecuted. May I be pardoned
for the imperfect manner in which I have presented the claim
of the fishermen, that gentle, practical, and self-reliant craft,
to the discovery of America north of 40°, to the exploration
of its coasts, and finally to its successful settlement and
civilization.

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