One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and distant ports.The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and misfortune overtaken them.It is a traffic which flourished from the beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by war, and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this modern era.
The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when the voyage of five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a prolonged and hazardous adventure.Fog and shoals and lee shores beset these coastwise sailors, and shipwrecks were pitifully frequent.In no Hall of Fame will you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, but he was nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and deserves a place among the most useful Americans.His invention was the Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he gave to this type of vessel its name.* Seaworthy, fast, and easily handled, adapted for use in the early eighteenth century when inland transportation was almost impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the colonies and was an important factor in the growth of the fisheries.
* It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the water, a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye,"answered Captain Robinson, "a SCHOONER let her be!" This launching took place in 1718 or 1714.
Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut.They were of no more than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned by fishermen of surpassing hardihood.
Marblehead was then the foremost fishing port with two hundred brigs and schooners on the offshore banks.But to Gloucester belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the Grand Bank.* From these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained seamen to man the privateers and the ships of the Continental navy, slinging their hammocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of Nantucket.These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought on the land as well and followed the drums of Washington's armies until the final scene at Yorktown.Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing.
* Marvin's "American Merchant Marine," p.287.
The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire.They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock, deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: "Every person on board our fishing vessels has an interest in common with his associates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise.Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fishing vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful navigators."Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked.
Schooners loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back naval stores and other southern products.
Well-to-do fishermen owned trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from one forecastle to the other.With a taste for an easier life than the stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucesterman would sign on for a voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become a mate or master and take to deep water after a while.In this way was maintained a school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent and efficient officers of the merchant marine.For generations they were mostly recruited from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England until the term "Yankee shipmaster"had a meaning peculiarly its own.
Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather.The Gloucester fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, as did their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago.But the old New England strain of blood no longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova Scotia "Bluenoses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock.
Yet they are alike for courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the calling are undimmed.
There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected the fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against our Canadian neighbors.The fishing fleets were regarded as a source of national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and merchant marine.In 1858the bounty system was abandoned, however, and the fishermen were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits at peril of their lives and preferring to follow the sea because they knew no other profession.In spite of this loss of assistance from the Government, the tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great as in the second year of the Civil War.Four years later the industry had shrunk one-half; and it has never recovered its early importance** In 1882, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,336.
