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The early days of offshore fishing

Since the early 1500’s men have fished the Grand Banks, seeking its living wealth . The first to fish those waters were Europeans, drawn across the Atlantic by explorers’ reports of fish so numerous they could be dipped up in baskets.

However, it has been only since 1813 that we can technically say that Newfoundland has prosecuted an offshore fishery. In that year, Sir Richard Keats, the governor of Newfoundland, gave an order on behalf of the home ( British ) government that allowed people to settle at will on the island. Prior to that momentous declaration, English fishermen, under the control of the powerful West Country merchants, had come to Newfoundland each spring, returning to England each fall with their fish. Although they were primarily seeking cod, records of the day indicate that better than 25 species of fish were taken on those voyages.

The English, however, weren’t alone in Newfoundland waters. Boats from France, Portugal, and Spain followed the same spring to fall ritual. French records give an interesting account of the methods used by vessels of that nation.

In 1848, close to 150 French vessels were outfitted for the Newfoundland fishery. The French historian Robert de Loture records that in later years the method of fishing involved attaching a number of barrels to each side of ship, with a man being placed in each barrel. Covered by a “cuirier” or huge leather poncho, he was given a strong line, 4 mm in diameter, 100 fathoms long with an 8 to 10 pound weight. At the beginning of the season, each man was outfitted with 10 or 12 such lines, plus leads and hooks. Fishing from the barrel, the men would pull up sharply when he felt a tug, then gaff the fish through the gills. After he cut out the tongue, the fish was placed in brine, and later split and thrown into the hold. There the salter gave the fish its first salting. A few days later it was salted a second time before being packed away.

According to de Loture, each man fished until dark, then brought to an officer the tongues he had cut that day. The number of tongues per man was recorded in the account book, and those with the fewest tongues got the delightful chore of scrubbing down the ship’s decks.

During the early 1800’s a number of countries switched from this method of stationary fishing to using trawl lines. Each vessel carried two or three longboats to the Grand Banks and these boats would carry a large number of men in each. Each man was equipped with lines roughly 60 fathoms in length. Lines were set and hauled, with the boats leaving the mothership each morning, to return each night.

By 1975, all counties had abandoned this method in favor of dory fishing, a technique Newfoundlanders used until the late 1940’s. Each schooner carried anywhere from 8 to 18 dories, and employed one of two methods of fishing. Handlining saw the schooners used as floating bases, with the dorymen leaving the ship about 2 a.m. each morning, and handling until late at night. The catch was split and salted aboard the schooner, and later taken to port for drying.

The other method used was trawling. The Frenchmen de Loture noted that the vessels’ crew, when they arrived on the Banks in the spring, would immediately go over the side in their dories to catch bait fish. Although salted herring, capelin, and squid were used, the French preferred the ‘buccinus’, which were large periwinkles. When they had enough bait, fishing started, with the first trawls being set about 5 a.m.

“Going to his assigned sector, the head dorymen reaches, by sail or oar, the point where he anchors one end of the trawl, marked by a buoy attached to the anchorline,” de Loture records. “Then he runs out his lines, being careful under penalty of fouling, to go with or across the current, but never into it. Coming to the other extremity of the trawl, he casts over the second anchor with its attached buoy.” Normally it took about 2 hours to set a trawl, and the dory returned later to the haul the trawl, a process that took three to five hours. The fish were taken to the mother vessel and salted.

Rear Admiral Pullen, in his book, “Life on a Banker”, writes that men trawling on the Grand Banks slept in a small forecastle forward which also served them as a mess room and galley, while the skipper had his own cabin aft. The men wore heavy leather knee length boots, and oil skins made of unbleached cotton treated with linseed oil. While the men fished from their dories, the skipper and the cook remained aboard, with the skipper keeping the ship windward under reduced canvas. When the dories returned from the trawls, the men tossed the fish aboard the schooner.

Schooners survived on the Grand Banks into the 1940’s, and there are still many men alive who remember their days on the “the bankers.” Schooners came in all shapes and sizes, from small two masted boats to seven masted giants used for world trading. The period from 1860 to 1890 was the heyday of the great square riggers, but the comparative simplicity and enhanced windward ability of the two masted schooner replaced the square riggers around the turn of the century.

No vessel is more closely identified with Newfoundland than the schooner, but local building did not start until the turn of the century, perhaps because of Newfoundland’s slow pace of development and its close ties with Britain. Instead of building their own, ship merchants chartered English or Nova Scotian vessels. According to the records, the first schooners were not built in Newfoundland until 1901. At that time two schooners were built, one in Burnt Bay and one in Burgeo.

Shannon Ryan writes in “The Newfoundland Cod Fishery in the 19th Century”, that the Labrador fishery reached its peak at the tail end of the 19th century , with 330 vessels going to Labrador in 1889 and catching over 230, 000 quintals of fish. Sir William McGregor indicated in his records of 1907 that some 400 schooners from Trinity and Conception Bays set sail for Labrador in 1893.

With this size of a fleet seeking fish, it’s little wonder that the Labrador fishery declined so quickly. That decline was followed by the economic crisis of 1894, which Shannon Ryan claims occurred because of the ever increasing number of people dependent on the cod fishery, coupled with the decline of the seal fishery and the lack of diversification in the economy. It was at this time that the Newfoundland fleet started returning to the Grand Banks fishery.

By the early 1900’s Newfoundland was heavily involved in the salt fish trade, with schooners carrying the Labrador and Grand Banks catches to Brazil, Portugal, Spain and the West Indies. To keep up with the growing demand for salt fish, local shipbuilding began to develop at a feverish pace. In 1918 alone, 14 tern, or three masted, schooners were built in Newfoundland and by 1920, some 150 Newfoundland schooners built here and elsewhere, were trading to South America, Europe, and the West Indies with their holds full of salt fish. However, John Parker, in his book “Sails of the Maritimes”¸ claims that high building costs made many of the schooners incapable of paying the owners a fair return on their investments.

Other problems besides high costs plagued the Newfoundland built fleet. Parker charges that many were of poor quality, being of light design, poorly fastened, and built of green unseasoned wood, which rots in a matter of years. In addition “there is no doubt that many were badly overloaded in service,’ Parker writes, “especially in the salt fish trade many were badly strained soon after launching.”

Interior materials, poor design fastening, and overloading to the point of straining…is it any wonder for a company to lose one or two boats a season?

The tremendous loss of vessels during the World War I helped to keep the schooner boat yards going, especially as war costs kept the nations of the world from embarking of on massive ship building programs.

Although the schooner remained essentially the same during that period, the world started changing, and the colony of Newfoundland was no exception. The opening of Bell Island iron mines in 1895, and the coming of the first two paper mills in the early 1920’s, meant that the island no longer was totally dependent on the fishery both inshore and offshore, for a living.

However, one thing remains the same in the face of all the changes. While draggers have replaced the bankers, and fresh fish has replaced salt fish to a great extent, the Grand Banks and Labrador offshore fishery remains a crucial factor in the economic health of Newfoundland to this day.

 

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