CHAPTER IV

YEARS OF GROWTH AND EXPANSION

Down to the year 1635 the fishing industry of New England was carried on in a more or less desultory man

ner.

The amount of home capital invested in the business was small, even in the aggregate. The returns from year to year were uncertain. The fishing stations were scattered along many miles of the coast. There was no central supply station where boats might be fitted out, nor was there a distinctive shipping port to which products of the sea could be brought before being shipped to other countries. However, men were beginning to see the need of greater capital invested in the industry, of central storehouses, and of more united action among the fishermen. Some began to foresee great possibilities both in development of the fishing industry, and in the consequent evolution of the scattered fishing stations into respectable, united settlements.

The Rev. Hugh Peter, a celebrated minister of Salem, was one of the first to advocate an increase of commerce and the fisheries through business enterprise. In 1635, he went about from place to place arousing men in public and in private to a more generous spirit for the general welfare. He was successful in raising a good sum of money "to set on foot the fishing business." He sent word to England asking that an equal amount be raised there for the purpose. He himself became actively interested in the business that his zeal had helped to create. It was his purpose "to set up a magazine of all provisions

and other necessaries for fishing" in order that the fishermen might have a local supply of apparatus at a nominal cost.1 As matters then stood, the merchants and others who brought goods over from England charged exorbitant rates for carrying freight between England and the colonies, sometimes the cost of the goods being doubled in value by the excessive charges of transportation. To the efforts of Mr. Peter is due the credit of establishing the commerce and fisheries of Salem on a substantial basis. For years this port of the colonies was without a rival in domestic and foreign commerce and in the fisheries.

The course of trade was now well fixed in its natural routes. The Dutch on the Hudson had been trading with the New Englanders for some time. The Dove, a pinnace of fifty tons, came from Maryland in 1634 with a cargo of corn to be exchanged for the fish and other commodities of the northern colonies.2 The southern people were in need of the northern staples and gladly exchanged their tobacco and corn for New England fish. Settlers on the coast of Maine carried on a similar traffic with Massachusetts ports. A visitor to the coast of Maine about this time leaves a vivid account of the fisheries and coastwise trade. He describes the method of pursuing the fishing business thus:

"The fishermen take yearly on the coast many hundred quintals of cod, hake, haddock, pollock, etc., and dry them on their stages, making three voyages a year. They make merchantable and refuse fish, which they sell to Massachusetts merchants; the first for 32 ryals ($4) per quintal; the refuse for 9 and 10 shillings ($2 and $2.25). The merchant sends the first to Lisbon, Bilboa, Marseilles, Bordeau, Toulon, and other cities of France; to Canaries, 1 Sabine, p. 125.

2 Weeden, I, p. 128.

3 A quintal equals 112 pounds.

pipestaves and clapboards; the refuse fish to the West Indies for the negroes." The fishermen used shallops for their fishing, there being four men in a crew. Often their

share on a voyage was eight or nine barrels of fish per man. It was the practice of the merchants to buy of the planters their beef, pork, peas, wheat and Indian corn, which they sold to the fishermen or exchanged for cured fish.

Measures were taken at an early date to regulate the fisheries, and in several instances, to promote the industry by the passage of favorable legislation. In 1635, the General Court of Massachusetts appointed a commission consisting of Mr. Thomas Dudley and five others to have in charge the setting forth and management of the fish trade, all charges of the commission to be allowed out of the fishing stock. Three years later, in 1638, the Court allowed the commission the sum of £100 16s. 3d. to make up for the loss which followed from the governmental management of the fishing industry.2

The first measure for the protection of the infant industry in Massachusetts was passed by the General Court on May 22, 1639. "For the further encouragement of men to set upon fishinge," it was ordered that all vessels and other property employed in taking, curing, and transporting fish, according to the usual course of fishing voyages, should be exempt from all duties and public taxes for seven years; that neither cod nor bass should be used for manuring fish; and that all fishermen, during the season for their business, as well as all ship-carpenters, should be exempted from military training.3

Winthrop states that the order was not passed to encourage foreigners to engage in the fisheries among them,

1 Folsom, Saco and Biddeford, pp. 36-37.

2 Massachusetts Colonial Records, I, p. 230.

8 Mass. Col. Records, I, pp. 158, 230.

for the gains then would be returned to the place where the promoters dwelt; but to encourage their own people to develop the industry. The same year a fishing trade was commenced at Cape Ann by Mr. Maurice Thompson, a London merchant. The people of Massachusetts hoped that Mr. Thompson would come to settle with them, but there is no record that he availed himself of the measure of encouragement passed by the General Court, or that he ever came in person to Cape Ann. Evidently his business was conducted by agents, for fishing was carried on at Cape Ann and some stages were built there in 1639.1

The fisheries now appear to be as prosperous and active as at any time in the history of their early development. Winthrop speaks of the great benefit derived by all the plantations from the abundance of large fat mackerel on the coast during the season of 1639. One boat with three men would take ten hogsheads of mackerel in a week, which found a market in Connecticut at £3 12s. per hogshead. In 1641 he states that the fishermen followed their calling so well that there were about 300,000 dry fish sent to market.2

Richmond's Island, on the coast of Maine, was becoming an important and noted place for the fisheries. Mr. John Winter, the superintendent, often employed as many as sixty men there, and several vessels were furnished with cargoes of cured fish annually. Upon the death of Mr. Winter, in 1645, a commission was appointed to examine into the affairs of his estate. The report of the commission was rendered in 1648. It is of interest to our subject in that it shows the extent of the fishing industry and the price of commodities at the time. During the six years between 1639 and 1645, Mr. Winter sent to his principal in England 3,0561⁄2 quintals of

1 The Fisheries of Gloucester, p. 20.

2 Winthrop, I, p. 308; II, p. 42.

merchantable and refuse fish, 381⁄2 quintals of corefish, eleven hogsheads of train-oil, and other products of the sea, valued at not less than £2,292. The inventory of the property belonging to the fishery showed that there were three boats, which, with their moorings and fittings, were worth £28; two old boats worth £2; the fishing stage and a quantity of casks worth £10 6s; six dozen hooks, at 16 shillings; five dozen lines, at £7; one seine and two old nets, £4 10s; about ninety hogsheads of salt, valued at £65 10s; and that there was due the concern the sum of £84 15s. 9d. for one hundred and thirty-three quintals of fish sold but not paid for.1

Public interest in the fisheries was further manifested in 1641. It was ordered by the General Court that fishermen should be served first at the weirs and have their bait at the same rate at which others secured it. By another act, a fishing station was established at Nantasket, and inducements were offered to the inhabitants of Hingham and other places to remove to the new station. Shore room for stages and flakes was to be furnished, while for every boat used in fishing, four acres of upland were allowed the owner, with a portion of meadow for the fishermen who owned cattle.2 In the same year the Plymouth people allowed Mr. John Jenny certain privileges at Clarke's Island for the making of salt which was to be sold to the inhabitants at two shillings per bushel. In 1642, with the hope of further increasing the salt output, the colony granted the use of thirty acres at the island to five partners for the term of twenty-one years.8

The colonists now began their first attempts at fishing beyond the limits of the New England waters. It was the beginning of a movement which, at first directed to the

1 Sabine, p. 107.

2 Mass. Col. Rec., I, pp. 326-328.

8 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., III, 2nd series, p. 183.