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.
|