CHAPTER XVI

THE DECADENCE OF THE DEEP-SEA FISHERIES

The last fifty years of the history of the New England fisheries afford a more complete record of their condition than is given by any former period. It is a record filled with deeds of daring and of suffering equal to the hardy experiences of fishermen during colonial times. The fisheries have changed during the centuries in the methods of pursuit and of capture; but charts of the coast cannot lessen the severity of winter seas, neither are the men of the later period less daring and courageous because of lighthouses and patrols along the shore. The history of fishermen must always be a record of a superior class of men who are ready to brave the severest storms and exposures of the ocean in order to gain a living, men who apparently have little regard for their own life and safety, due to long continued experiences of a hazardous nature in battling for the safety of their little craft.

It will be remembered that one of the first acts of the Federal Government was the passage of an act that gave fishing vessels the benefit of a bounty. This measure of national assistance continued in force until 1866, since which time the fisheries have received no help in the form of bounties. That the benefit of bounties was a wise and beneficial provision cannot be doubted. However, from 1845 to 1885 the fisheries of the country were in a prosperous condition, in general, and would have prospered had there been no system of bounties. Those were years of abundance of deep-sea fish, and for a decade before

and after the beginning of the war there was also a very large body of fish of the herring family on the New England coast. Since 1885, however, the tonnage employed in the fisheries has fallen off to such a marked degree that a revival of the system of tonnage-bounty would be a desideratum.

During the last quarter century the fisheries of New England have declined in a remarkable manner. This decadence has been most marked with the offshore fisheries. They are the kind that require larger vessels, that are most hazardous, and that develop able seamen. Our fisheries have been the nursery of our navy in the past. The capture of Louisburg, the naval exploits of the Revolution, the fishermen-gunners of the privateers of the war of 1812, as well as the naval history of the Civil and Spanish wars afford most glorious proof of that fact. The shipbuilding industry and our merchant marine date back to the fisheries for their origin and development. So that if the fisheries had no reason of their own for protection and development, their important relation to our navy and merchant marine, in the past and in the present time, would afford ample grounds for their continuance, even at the cost of national assistance.

The amount of tonnage employed in an industry of the sea is an index to the general prosperity of that industry. The tonnage of the merchant marine employed in the cod and mackerel fisheries since 1866 shows a general decline when compared with the tonnage employed in these industries during the Civil War period. The tonnage reached its highest mark in the history of the fisheries in 1862, when 204,197 tons were employed in the deep-sea fisheries. The registry for the last three years of the war averaged about 146,000 tons annually. A decline began even in the last years of the war, and since that time the total tonnage has reached beyond the 100,000

tons mark only once. Beginning with 1870, there was a revival of the fisheries which reached a climax in 1873, when 109,519 tons were employed. The total tonnage fell off immediately to 78,290 tons in 1874, but kept above the 70,000 tons mark until 1890, averaging 87,000 tons yearly.1

The tonnage in 1890 was 68,367 tons. For the next seven years there was little change. In 1898, there was a decline to 52,327 tons, and in 1899 to 50,679 tons, the lowest tonnage employed in the cod and mackerel fisheries of the country since the close of our last war with Great Britain in 1816. Since 1899, there has been a yearly increase to the 61,439 tons for 1906.

The tonnage employed in the cod and mackerel fisheries is made up of enrolled vessels, and licensed vessels under twenty tons. The fluctuations in the total tonnage from year to year have been principally in the class of enrolled vessels, that is, those that engage in the deep-sea fisheries. The year of greatest tonnage for enrolled vessels was 1873, when 1,558 vessels had a total of 99,542 tons. In 1899, the 545 vessels of this class aggregated 42,901 tons, the lowest tonnage on record. From 1867 to 1887, inclusive, the number employed was always above a thousand vessels. Since that time the number never has been above 968. The number of enrolled vessels employed in the cod and mackerel fisheries in 1906 was 560 vessels. The average tonnage of vessels of this class is a little above eighty tons.

Taking the last forty-four years as a whole it is easily seen that there are two well-defined periods. The first, from 1866 to 1885, is one of general prosperity in the amount of tonnage employed in the cod and mackerel fisheries. Yet even this better period is considerably below that period of greatest prosperity which had its beginning in the year 1845 and extended through 1865. The 1 Compiled from An. Reports, Commissioner of Navigation.

second period, from 1885 to the present, has been one of general decline in the amount of tonnage employed in these fisheries, in spite of the upward tendency of the fishing industry, as a whole, since the opening of the present century.

The decadence of the deep-sea fisheries of New England during the last quarter century has led some people to the erroneous conclusion that our fisheries and fishery industries are in a declining condition. In the mackerel and codfishery there has been a falling off in the amount of tonnage employed, and consequently in the output of these fisheries. Instances of decay might be cited in other branches of the fisheries, as the menhaden industry. But the development of several inshore industries and the rise of new enterprises in connection with the fisheries make the value of the fisheries of New England greater to-day than for the past twenty-five years.

It is not difficult to discover several of the causes that have led to the decadence of the deep-sea fisheries. In a word, it has been due to important economic changes that have entered into the industrial life of the country at large. Contributing causes to this changed condition of things are the competition of fishery products from other parts of our own country and Canada, the development of cheap but wholesome food products of other varieties, the increase in the pound-net fisheries in southern waters, the improved methods of transportation and the rise of the refrigerator car system, and the passage of legislation that has favored the ready admission of food fish from the neighboring British Provinces.

The New England States held a monopoly of the fishing industry of the United States down to 1850. So complete was the control of the fisheries possessed by these states that a history of the fisheries of the United States for the first two hundred and fifty years after the inception of the

industry on our shores is very nearly comprehended in a history of the industry as it has been carried on in New England for that time. By the middle of the last century, the oyster trade of the Middle Atlantic States had assumed definite form throughout the Middle West. The importance of the fisheries of the Great Lakes was being discovered by the people of those sections, and its growth was by leaps and bounds once the people realized its possibilities. The new settlers about San Francisco found oysters in the sands of their bay; but these were inferior to the eastern product. With Yankee enterprise, oysters from the East were introduced into the waters of the Pacific, that the markets might be supplied with home grown products. The canned fish products and dried codfish of New England found their way to the Pacific coast. But they could hold no monopoly of the market there after it was learned with what endless abundance the waters of the northern Pacific supplied markets with salmon and halibut.

The building of railroads throughout the land at first led to the extension of the New England fish trade over wider sections of the land. For one or two decades the effect was wholly to the advantage of the eastern fisheries. With the growth and development of an important lake fishery, and with an over-abundant supply of salmon every year upon the Pacific coast, however, the time was sure to come when the fishery products of the West invaded the markets of the East, and competition was set up in the very stronghold of the industry. This event marked the beginning of the time when the deep-sea fisheries had to contend not only for the control of the markets but even for their existence. Improvements in the refrigerator car service made it possible for the fresh fish of New England to be delivered a thousand miles from Gloucester. But the same service brought the fresh salmon of the Columbia