American Merchant Ships and Sailors Part 12

Year after year the steamboats multiplied, not only on the rivers of the West, but on those leading from the Atlantic seaboard into the interior.

It may be said justly that the application of steam to purposes of navigation made the American people face fairly about. Long they had stood, looking outward, gazing across the sea to Europe, their sole market, both for buying and for selling. But now the rich lands beyond the mountains, inviting settlers, and cut up by streams which offered paths for the most rapid and comfortable method of transportation then known, commanded their attention. Immigrants no longer stopped in stony New England, or in Virginia, already dominated by an aristocratic land-owning cla.s.s, but pressed on to Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Illinois. As the lands filled up, the little steamers pushed their noses up new streams, seeking new markets. The c.u.mberland, and the Tennessee, the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red, the Tombigbee, and the Chattahoochee were stirred by the churning wheels, and over-their forests floated the mournful sough of the high-pressure exhaust.

In 1840, a count kept at Cairo, showed 4566 vessels had pa.s.sed that point during the year. By 1848, a "banner" year, in the history of navigation on the Mississippi, traffic was recorded thus:

25 vessels plying between Louisville, New Orleans and Cincinnati 8,484 tons 7 between Nashville and New Orleans 2,585 tons 4 between Florence and New Orleans 1,617 tons 4 in St. Louis local trade 1,001 tons 7 in local cotton trade 2,016 tons River "tramps" and uncla.s.sified 23,206 tons

It may be noted that in all the years of the development of the Mississippi s.h.i.+pping, there was comparatively little increase in the size of the individual boats. The "Vesuvius," built in 1814, was 480 tons burthen, 160 feet long, 28.6 feet beam, and drew from five to six feet.

The biggest boats of later years were but little larger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MISSISSIPPI PILOT]

The aristocrat of the Mississippi River steamboat was the pilot. To him all men deferred. So far as the river service furnished a parallel to the autocratic authority of the sea-going captain or master, he was it. All matters pertaining to the navigation of the boat were in his domain, and right zealously he guarded his authority and his dignity. The captain might determine such trivial matters as hiring or discharging men, buying fuel, or contracting for freight; the clerk might lord it over the pa.s.sengers, and the mate domineer over the black roustabouts; but the pilot moved along in a sort of isolated grandeur, the true monarch of all he surveyed. If, in his judgment the course of wisdom was to tie up to an old sycamore tree on the bank and remain motionless all night, the boat tied up. The grumblings of pa.s.sengers and the disapproval of the captain availed naught, nor did the captain often venture upon either criticism or suggestion to the lordly pilot, who was p.r.o.ne to resent such invasion of his dignity in ways that made trouble. Indeed, during the flush times on the Mississippi, the pilots were a body of men possessing painfully acquired knowledge and skill, and so organized as to protect all the privileges which their attainments should win for them. The ability to "run" the great river from St. Louis to New Orleans was not lightly won, nor, for that matter, easily retained, for the Mississippi is ever a fickle flood, with changing landmarks and s.h.i.+fting channel. In all the great volume of literature bearing on the story of the river, the difficulties of its conquest are nowhere so truly recounted as in Mark Twain's _Life on the Mississippi_, the humorous quality of which does not obscure, but rather enhances its value as a picturesque and truthful story of the old-time pilot's life. The pilot began his work in boyhood as a "cub" to a licensed pilot. His duties ranged from bringing refreshments up to the pilot-house, to holding the wheel when some straight stretch or clear, deep channel offered his master a chance to leave his post for a few minutes. For strain on the memory, his education is comparable only to the Chinese system of liberal culture, which comprehends learning by rote some tens of thousands of verses from the works of Confucius and other philosophers of the far East. Beginning at New Orleans, he had to commit to memory the name and appearance of every point of land, inlet, river or bayou mouth, "cut-off," light, plantation and hamlet on either bank of the river all the way to St. Louis. Then, he had to learn them all in their opposite order, quite an independent task, as all of us who learned the multiplication table backward in the days of our youth, will readily understand. These landmarks it was needful for him to recognize by day and by night, through fog or driving rain, when the river was swollen by spring floods, or shrunk in summer to a yellow ribbon meandering through a Sahara of sand. He had need to recognize at a glance the ripple on the water that told of a lurking sand-bar and distinguish it from the almost identical ripple that a brisk breeze would raise. Most perplexing of the perils that beset river navigation are the "snags," or sunken logs that often obstruct the channel. Some towering oak or pine, growing in l.u.s.ty strength for its half-century or more by the brink of the upper reaches of one of the Mississippi system would, in time, be undermined by the flood and fall into the rus.h.i.+ng tide. For weeks it would be rolled along the shallows; its leaves and twigs rotting off, its smaller branches breaking short, until at last, hundreds of miles, perhaps, below the scene of its fall, it would lodge fair in the channel. The gnarled and matted ma.s.s of boughs would ordinarily cling like an anchor to the sandy bottom, while the buoyant trunk, as though struggling to break away, would strain upward obliquely to within a few inches of the surface of the muddy water, which--too thick to drink and too thin to plough, as the old saying went--gave no hint of this concealed peril; but the boat running fairly upon it, would have her bows stove in and go quickly to the bottom. After the United States took control of the river and began spending its millions annually in improving it for navigation and protecting the surrounding country against its overflows, "snag-boats" were put on the river, equipped with special machinery for dragging these fallen forest giants from the channel, so that of late years accidents from this cause have been rare. But for many years the riverman's chief reliance was that curious instinct or second sight which enabled the trained pilot to pick his way along the most tortuous channel in the densest fog, or to find the landing of some obscure plantation on a night blacker than the blackest of the roustabouts, who moved lively to the incessant cursing of the mate.

The Mississippi River steamboat of the golden age on the river--the type, indeed, which still persists--was a triumph of adaptability to the service for which she was designed. More than this--she was an egregious architectural sham. She was a success in her light draught, six to eight feet, at most, and in her prodigious carrying capacity. It was said of one of these boats, when skilfully loaded by a gang of practical roustabouts, under the direction of an experienced mate, that the freight she carried, if unloaded on the bank, would make a pile bigger than the boat herself.

The hull of the vessel was invariably of wood, broad of beam, light of draught, built "to run on a heavy dew," and with only the rudiments of a keel. Some freight was stowed in the hold, but the engines were not placed there, but on the main deck, built almost flush with the water, and extending unbroken from stem to stern. Often the engines were in pairs, so that the great paddle-wheels could be worked independently of each other.

The finest and fastest boats were side-wheelers, but a large wheel at the stern, or two stern wheels, side by side, capable of independent action, were common modes of propulsion. The escape-pipes of the engine were carried high aloft, above the topmost of the tiers of decks, and from each one alternately, when the boat was under way, would burst a gush of steam, with a sound like a dull puff, followed by a prolonged sigh, which could be heard far away beyond the dense forests that bordered the river. A row of posts, always in appearance, too slender for the load they bore, supported the saloon deck some fifteen feet above the main deck. When business was good on the river, the s.p.a.ce within was packed tight with freight, leaving barely room enough for pa.s.senger gangways, and for the men feeding the roaring furnaces with pine slabs. A great steamer coming down to New Orleans from the cotton country about the Red River, loaded to the water's edge with cotton bales, so that, from the sh.o.r.e, she looked herself like a monster cotton bale, surmounted by tiers of snowy cabins and pouring forth steam and smoke from towering pipes, was a sight long to be remembered. It is a sight, too, that is still common on the lower river, where the business of gathering up the planter's crop and getting it to market has not yet pa.s.sed wholly into the hands of the railroads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DECK LOAD OF COTTON]

Above the cargo and the roaring furnaces rose the cabins, two or three tiers, one atop the other, the topmost one extending only about one-third of the length of the boat, and called the "Texas." The main saloon extending the whole length of the boat, save for a bit of open deck at bow and stern, was in comparison with the average house of the time, palatial.

On either side it was lined by rows of doors, each opening into a two-berthed stateroom. The decoration was usually ivory white, and on the main panel of each door was an oil painting of some romantic landscape.

There Chillon brooded over the placid azure of the lake, there storms broke with jagged lightning in the Andes, there buxom girls trod out the purple grapes of some Italian vineyard. The builders of each new steamer strove to eclipse all earlier ones in the brilliancy of these works of art, and discussion of the relative merits of the paintings on the "Natchez" and those on the "Baton Rouge" came to be the chief theme of art criticism along the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables, about which, thrice a day, the hungry pa.s.sengers gathered to be fed, while from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants, tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious libations of alcoholic drinks were at least as customary for men as the cigar to-day, was usually a rallying point for the male pa.s.sengers.

Far up above the yellow river, perched on top of the "Texas," or topmost tier of cabins, was the pilot-house, that honorable eminence of gla.s.s and painted wood which it was the ambition of every boy along the river some day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with gla.s.s.

Square across the front of it rose the huge wheel, eight feet in diameter, sometimes half-sunken beneath the floor, so that the pilot, in moments of stress, might not only grip it with his hands, but stand on its spokes, as well. Easy chairs and a long bench made up the furniture of this sacred apartment. In front of it rose the two towering iron chimneys, joined, near the top by an iron grating that usually carried some gaudily colored or gilded device indicative of the line to which the boat belonged.

Amids.h.i.+ps, and aft of the pilot-house, rose the two escape pipes, from which the hoa.r.s.e, prolonged s-o-o-ugh of the high pressure exhaust burst at half-minute intervals, carrying to listeners miles away, the news that a boat was coming.

All this edifice above the hull of the boat, was of the flimsiest construction, built of pine scantling, liberally decorated with scroll-saw work, and lavishly covered with paint mixed with linseed oil. Beneath it were two, four, or six roaring furnaces fed with rich pitch-pine, and open on every side to drafts and gusts. From the top of the great chimneys poured volcanic showers of sparks, deluging the inflammable pile with a fiery rain. The marvel is not that every year saw its quotum of steamers burned to the water's edge, but, rather, that the quota were proportionately so small.

At midnight this apparent inflammability was even more striking. Lights shone from the windows of the long row of cabins, and wherever there was a c.h.i.n.k, or a bit of gla.s.s, or a latticed blind, the radiance streamed forth as though within were a great ma.s.s of fire, struggling, in every way, to escape. Below, the boiler deck was dully illumined by smoky lanterns; but when one of the great doors of the roaring furnace was thrown open, that the half-naked black firemen might throw in more pitch-pine slabs, there shone forth such a fiery glare, that the boat and the machinery--working in the open, and plain to view--seemed wrapped in a Vesuvius of flame, and the st.u.r.dy stokers and lounging roustabouts looked like the fiends in a fiery inferno. The danger was not merely apparent, but very real. During the early days of steamboating, fires and boiler explosions were of frequent occurrence. A river boat, once ablaze, could never be saved, and the one hope for the pa.s.sengers was that it might be beached before the flames drove them overboard. The endeavor to do this brought out some examples of magnificent heroism among captains, pilots, and engineers, who, time and again, stood manfully at their posts, though scorched by flames, and cut off from any hope of escape, until the boat's prow was thrust well into the bank, and the pa.s.sengers were all saved. The pilots, in the presence of such disaster, were in the sorest straits, and were, moreover, the ones of the boat's company upon whom most depended the fate of those on board. Perched at the very top of a large tinder-box, all avenues of escape except a direct plunge overboard were quickly closed to them. If they left the wheel the current would inevitably swing the boat's head downstream, and she would drift, aimlessly, a flaming funeral pyre for all on board. Many a pilot stood, with clenched teeth, and eyes firm set upon the distant sh.o.r.e, while the fire roared below and behind him, and the terrified pa.s.sengers edged further and further forward as the flames pressed their way toward the bow, until at last came the grinding sound under the hull, and the sudden shock that told of shoal water and safety. Then, those on the lower deck might drop over the side, or swarm along the windward gangplank to safety, but the pilot too often was hemmed in by the flames, and perished with his vessel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEEDING THE FURNACE]

In the year 1840 alone there were 109 steamboat disasters chronicled, with a loss of fifty-nine vessels and 205 lives. The high-pressure boilers used on the river, cheaply built, and for many years not subjected to any official inspection, contributed more than their share to the list of accidents. Boiler explosions were so common as to be reckoned upon every time a voyage was begun. Pa.s.sengers were advised to secure staterooms aft when possible, as the forward part of the boat was the more apt to be shattered if the boiler "went up." Every river town had its citizens who had survived an explosion, and the stock form into which to put the humorous quip or story of the time was to have it told by the clerk going up as he met the captain in the air coming down, with the debris of the boat flying all about them. As the river boats improved in character, disasters of this sort became less frequent, and the United States, by establis.h.i.+ng a rigid system of boiler inspection, and compelling engineers to undergo a searching examination into their fitness before receiving a license, has done much to guard against them. Yet to-day, we hear all too frequently of river steamers blown to bits, and all on board lost, though it is a form of disaster almost unknown on Eastern waters where crowded steamboats ply the Sound, the Hudson, the Connecticut, and the Potomac, year after year, with never a disaster. The cheaper material of Western boats has something to do with this difference, but a certain happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care spirit, which has characterized the Western riverman since the days of the broadhorns, is chiefly responsible. Most often an explosion is the result of gross carelessness--a sleepy engineer, and a safety-valve "out of kilter," as too many of them often are, have killed their hundreds on the Western rivers. Sometimes, however, the almost criminal rashness, of which captains were guilty, in a mad rush for a little cheap glory, ended in a deafening crash, the annihilation of a good boat, and the death of scores of her people by drowning, or the awful torture of inhaling scalding steam. Rivalry between the different boats was fierce, and now and then at the sight of a compet.i.tor making for a landing where freight and pa.s.sengers awaited the first boat to land her gangplank, the alert captain would not unnaturally take some risks to get there first. Those were the moments that resulted in methods in the engine room picturesquely described as "feeding the fires with fat bacon and resin, and having a n.i.g.g.e.r sit on the safety valve." To such impromptu races might be charged the most terrifying accidents in the history of the river.

But the great races, extending sometimes for more than a thousand miles up the river, and carefully planned for months in advance, were seldom, if ever, marred by an accident. For then every man on both boats was on the alert, from pilot down to fuel pa.s.ser. The boat was trimmed by guidance of a spirit level until she rode the water at precisely the draft that a.s.sured the best speed. Her hull was sc.r.a.ped and oiled, her machinery overhauled, and her fuel carefully selected. Picked men made up her crew, and all the upper works that could be disposed of were landed before the race, in order to decrease air resistance. It was the current pleasantry to describe the captain as shaving off his whiskers lest they catch the breeze, and parting his hair in the middle, that the boat might be the better trimmed. Few pa.s.sengers were taken, for they could not be relied upon to "trim s.h.i.+p," but would be sure to crowd to one side or the other at a critical moment. Only through freight was s.h.i.+pped--and little of that--for there would be no stops made from starting-point to goal. Of course, neither boat could carry all the fuel--pine-wood slabs--needed for a long voyage, but by careful prearrangement, great "flats" loaded with wood, awaited them at specified points in midstream. The steamers slowed to half-speed, the flats were made fast alongside by cables, and nimble negroes transferred the wood, while the race went on. At every riverside town the wharves and roofs would be black with people, awaiting the two rivals, whose appearance could be foretold almost as exactly as that of a railway train running on schedule time. The firing of rifles and cannon, the blowing of horns, the waving of flags, greeted the racers from the sh.o.r.es by day, and great bonfires saluted them by night. At some of the larger towns they would touch for a moment to throw off mail, or to let a pa.s.senger leap ash.o.r.e. Then every nerve of captain, pilot, and crew was on edge with the effort to tie up and get away first. Up in the pilot-house the great man of the wheel took shrewd advantage of every eddy and back current; out on the guards the humblest roustabout stood ready for a life-risking leap to get the hawser to the dock at the earliest instant.

All the operations of the boat had been reduced to an exact science, so that when the crack packets were pitted against each other in a long race, their maneuvers would be as exactly matched in point of time consumed as those of two yachts sailing for the "America's" cup. Side by side, they would steam for hundreds of miles, jockeying all the way for the most favorable course. It was a fact that often such boats were so evenly matched that victory would hang almost entirely on the skill of the pilot, and where of two pilots on one boat one was markedly inferior, his watch at the wheel could be detected by the way the rival boat forged ahead.

During the golden days on the river, there were many of these races, but the most famous of them all was that between the "Robert E. Lee" and the "Natchez," in 1870. These boats, the pride of all who lived along the river at that time, raced from New Orleans to St. Louis. At Natchez, 268 miles, they were six minutes apart; at Cairo, 1024 miles, the "Lee" was three hours and thirty-four minutes ahead. She came in winner by six hours and thirty-six minutes, but the officers of the "Natchez" claimed that this was not a fair test of the relative speed of the boats, as they had been delayed by fog and for repairs to machinery for about seven hours.

Spectacular and picturesque was the riverside life of the great Mississippi towns in the steamboat days. Mark Twain has described the scenes along the levee at New Orleans at "steamboat time" in a bit of word-painting, which brings all the rush and bustle, the confusion, turmoil and din, clearly to the eye:

"It was always the custom for boats to leave New Orleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward, they would be burning resin and pitch-pine (the sign of preparation) and so one had the spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke, a colonnade which supported a roof of the same smoke, blending together and spreading abroad over the city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge-staff astern. Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis. Countless processions of freight, barrels, and boxes, were spinning athwart the levee, and flying aboard the stage-planks. Belated pa.s.sengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle companion-way alive, but having their doubts about it. Women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with husbands freighted with carpet sacks and crying babies, and making a failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general distraction. Drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windla.s.s connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las'

sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad. By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the packets would be packed and black with pa.s.sengers, the last bells would begin to clang all down the line, and then the pow-wows seemed to double. In a moment or two the final warning came, a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs with the cry, 'All dat aint going, please to get ash.o.r.e,' and, behold, the pow-wow quadrupled. People came swarming ash.o.r.e, overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One moment later, a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its customary latest pa.s.senger clinging to the end of it, with teeth, nails, and everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild spring ash.o.r.e over his head.

"Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd on the decks of boats that were not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flags flying, smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck hands (usually swarthy negroes) ma.s.sed together on the forecastle, the best voice in the lot towering in their midst (being mounted on the capstan) waving his hat or a flag, all roaring in a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boom, and the mult.i.tudinous spectators swing their hats and huzza. Steamer after steamer pulls into the line, and the stately procession goes winging its flight up the river."

Until 1865 the steamboats controlled the transportation business of all the territory drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. But two causes for their undoing had already begun to work. The long and fiercely-fought war had put a serious check to the navigation of the rivers. For long months the Mississippi was barricaded by the Confederate works at Island Number 10, at New Madrid and at Vicksburg. Even after Grant and Farragut had burst these shackles navigation was attended with danger from guerrillas on the banks and trade was dead. When peace brought the promise of better things, the railroads were there to take advantage of it. From every side they were pus.h.i.+ng their way into New Orleans, building roadways across the "trembling prairies," and crossing the water-logged country about the Rigolets on long trestles. They penetrated the cotton country and the mineral country. They paralleled the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the c.u.mberland, as well as the Father of Waters, and the steamboat lines began to feel the heavy hand of compet.i.tion. Captains and clerks found it prudent to abate something of their dignity. Instead of s.h.i.+ppers pleading for deck-room on the boats, the boats' agents had to do the pleading. Instead of levees crowded with freight awaiting carriage there were broad, empty s.p.a.ces by the river's bank, while the railroad freight-houses up town held the bales of cotton, the bundles of staves, the hogsheads of sugar, the s.h.i.+ngles and lumber. On long hauls the railroads quickly secured all the North and South business, though indeed, the hauling of freight down the river for s.h.i.+pment to Europe was ended for both railroads and steamboats, so far as the products raised north of the Tennessee line was concerned. For a new water route to the sea had been opened and wondrously developed. The Great Lakes were the shortest waterway to the Atlantic, and New York dug its Erie Ca.n.a.l which afforded an outlet--pinched and straitened, it is true, but still an outlet--for the cargoes of the lake schooners and the early steamers of the unsalted seas. Even the commonwealths forming the north bank of the Ohio River turned their faces away from the stream that had started them on the pathway to wealth and greatness, and dug ca.n.a.ls to Lake Erie, that their wheat, corn, and other products might reach tidewater by the shortest route. The great cargoes from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville, began to be legends of the past, and the larger boats were put on routes in Louisiana, or on the Mississippi, from Natchez south, while others were reduced to mere local voyages, gathering up freight from points tributary to St. Louis. The glory of the river faded fast, and the final stroke was dealt it when some man of inventive mind discovered that a little, puffing tug, costing one-tenth as much as a fine steamboat, could push broad acres of flatboats, loaded with coal, lumber, or cotton, down the tortuous stream, and return alone at one-tenth the expense of a heavy steamer. That was the final stroke to the picturesqueness and the romance of river life.

The volume of freight carried still grows apace, but the glory of Mississippi steamboat life is gone forever.

**Transcriber's Note: Page 268: change infreqently to infrequently

CHAPTER IX

THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA--THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF LORD NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE THE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FIs.h.i.+NG BANKS--TYPES OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FIs.h.i.+NG COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE OF HUMAN LIFE.

The summer yachtsman whiling away an idle month in cruises up and down that New England coast which, once stern and rock-bound, has come to be the smiling home of midsummer pleasures, encounters at each little port into which he may run, moldering and decrepit wharves, crowned with weatherbeaten and leaky structures, waterside streets lined with s.h.i.+ngled fish-houses in an advanced stage of decay, and acres of those low platforms known as flakes, on which at an earlier day the product of the New England fisheries was spread out to dry in the sun, but which now are rapidly disintegrating and mingling again with the soil from which the wood of their structures sprung. Every harbor on the New England coast, from New Bedford around to the Canadian line, bears these dumb memorials to the gradual decadence of what was once our foremost national industry.

For the fisheries which once nursed for us a school of the hardiest seamen, which aroused the jealousy of England and France, which built up our seaport towns, and carried our flag to the furthest corners of the globe, and which in the records both of diplomacy and war fill a prominent place have been for the last twenty years appreciably tending to disappear. Many causes are a.s.signed for this. The growing scarcity of certain kinds of fish, the repeal of encouraging legislation, a change in the taste of certain peoples to whom we s.h.i.+pped large quant.i.ties of the finny game, the compet.i.tion of Canadians and Frenchmen, the great development of the salmon fisheries and salmon canning on the Pacific coast, all have contributed to this decay. It is proper, however, to note that the decadence of the fisheries is to some extent more apparent than real. True, there are fewer towns supported by this industry, fewer boats and men engaged in it; but in part this is due to the fact that the steam fis.h.i.+ng boat carrying a large fleet of dories accomplishes in one season with fewer hands eight or ten times the work that the old-fas.h.i.+oned pink or schooner did. And, moreover, as the population of the seaport towns has grown, the apparent prominence of the fis.h.i.+ng industry has decreased, as that industry has not grown in proportion to the population. Forty years ago Marblehead and Nantucket were simply fis.h.i.+ng villages, and nothing else. To-day the remnants of the fis.h.i.+ng industry attract but little attention, in the face of the vastly more profitable and important calling of entertaining the summer visitor. New Bedford has become a great factory town, Lynn and Hull are great centers for the shoemaking industries.

When the Pilgrim Fathers first concluded to make their journey to the New England coast and sought of the English king a charter, they were asked by the thrifty James, what profit might arise. "Fis.h.i.+ng," was the answer.

Whereupon, according to the narrative of Edward Winslow, the king replied, "So, G.o.d have my soul; 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own calling." The redoubtable Captain John Smith, making his way to the New England coast from Virginia, happened to drop a fishline over what is known now as George's Bank. The miraculous draught of fishes which followed did not awaken in his mind the same pious reflections to which King James gave expression. Rather was he moved to exultation over the profit which he saw there. "Truly," he said, in a letter to his correspondent in London, "It is a pleasant thing to drop a line and pull up threepence, fivepence, and sixpence as fast as one may haul in." The gallant soldier of fortune was evidently quite awake to the possibilities of profit upon which he had stumbled. Yet, probably even he would have been amazed could he have known that within fifty years not all the land in the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, nor in the Providence and Rhode Island plantations produced so much of value as the annual crop the fishermen harvested on the shallow banks off Cape Cod.

As early as 1633 fish began to be exported from Boston, and very shortly thereafter the industry had a.s.sumed so important a position that the general court adopted laws for its encouragement, exempting vessels, and stock from taxation, and granting to fishermen immunity from military duty. At the close of the seventeenth century, Ma.s.sachusetts was exporting over $400,000 worth of fish annually. From that time until well into the middle of the last century the fisheries were so thoroughly the leading industry of Ma.s.sachusetts that the gilded codfish which crowns the dome of the State House at Boston, only fitly typifies by its prominence above the city the part which its natural prototypes played in building up the commonwealth. In the Revolution and the early wars of the United States, the fishermen suffered severely. Crowded together on the banks, they were easy prey for the British cruisers, who, in time of peace or in time of war, treated them about as they chose, impressing such sailors as seemed useful, and seizing such of their cargo as the whim of the captain of the cruiser might suggest. And even before the colonies had attained the status of a nation, the jealousy and hostility of Great Britain bore heavily on the fortunes of the New England fishermen. It was then, as it has been until the present day, the policy of Great Britain to build up in every possible way its navy, and to encourage by all imaginable devices the development of a large body of able seamen, by whom the naval vessels might be manned. Accordingly parliament undertook to discourage the American fisherman by hostile legislation, so that a body of deep-sea fishermen might be created claiming English ports for their home. At first the effort was made to prohibit the colonies from exporting fish. The great Roman Catholic countries of France, Spain, and Portugal took by far the greater share of the fish sent out, though the poorer qualities were s.h.i.+pped to the West Indies and there exchanged for sugar and mola.s.ses.

Against this trade Lord North leveled some of his most offensive measures, proposing bills, indeed, so unjust and tyrannical that outcries were raised against them even in the British House of Lords. To cut off intercourse with the foreign peoples who took the fish of the Yankees by hundreds and thousands of quintals, and gave in return rum, mola.s.ses, and bills of exchange on England, to destroy the calling in which every little New England seacoast village was interested above all things, Lord North first proposed to prohibit the colonies trading in fish with any country save the "mother" country, and secondly, to refuse to the people of New England the right to fish on the Great Banks of Newfoundland, thus confining them to the off-sh.o.r.e banks, which already began to show signs of being fished out. Even a hostile parliament was shocked by these measures. Every witness who appeared before the House of Commons testified that they would work irreparable injury to New England, would rob six thousand of her able-bodied men of their means of livelihood, and would drive ten thousand more into other vocations. But the power of the ministry forced the bills through, though twenty-one peers joined in a solemn protest. "We dissent," said they, "because the attempt to coerce, by famine, the whole body of the inhabitants of great and populous provinces, is without example in the history of this, or, perhaps, of any civilized nations." This was in 1775, and the revolution in America had already begun. It was the policy of Lord North to force the colonists to stop their opposition to unjust and offensive laws by imposing upon them other laws more unjust and more offensive still--a sort of homeopathic treatment, not infrequently applied by tyrants, but which seldom proves effective. In this case it aligned the New England fishermen to a man with the Revolutionists. A Tory fisherman would have fared as hard as

"Old Floyd Ireson for his hard heart Tarr'd and feathered and carried in a cart, By the woman of Marblehead."

Nor was this any inconsiderable or puny element which Lord North had deliberately forced into revolt. Ma.s.sachusetts alone had at the outbreak of the Revolution five hundred fis.h.i.+ng vessels, and the town of Marblehead one hundred and fifty sea-going fis.h.i.+ng schooners. Gloucester had nearly as many, and all along the coast, from Maine to New York, there were thrifty settlers, farmers and fishermen, by turns, as the season served.

New England was preeminently a maritime state. Its people had early discovered that a livelihood could more easily be plucked from the green surges of ocean, white-capped as they sometimes were, than wrested from the green and boulder-crowned hills. Upon the fisheries rested practically all the foreign commerce. They were the foundation upon which were built the superstructure of comfort and even luxury, the evidences of which are impressive even in the richer New England of to-day. Therefore, when the British ministry attacked this calling, it roused against the crown not merely the fisherman and the sailor, but the merchants as well--not only the denizens of the stuffy forecastles of pinks and schooners, but the owners of the fair great houses in Boston and New Bedford. Lord North's edicts stopped some thousands of st.u.r.dy sailors from catching cod and selling them to foreign peoples. They accordingly became privateers, and preyed upon British commerce until it became easier for a mackerel to slip through the meshes of a seine than for a British s.h.i.+p to make its usual voyages. The edicts touched the commercial Bostonians in their pockets, and stimulated them to give to the Revolution that countenance and support of the "business cla.s.ses" which revolutionary movements are apt to lack, and lacking which, are apt to fail.

The war, of course, left the fisheries crippled and almost destroyed. It had been a struggle between the greatest naval power of the world, and a loose coalition of independent colonies, without a navy and without a centralized power to build and maintain one. Ma.s.sachusetts did, indeed, equip an armed s.h.i.+p to protect her fishermen, but partly because the protection was inadequate, and partly as a result of the superior attractions of privateering, the fis.h.i.+ng boats were gradually laid up, until scarcely enough remained in commission to supply the demands of the home merchant for fish. Where there had been prosperity and bustle about wharves, and fish-houses, there succeeded idleness and squalor.

s.h.i.+pbuilding was prostrate, commerce was dead. The sailors returned to the farms, s.h.i.+pped on the privateers, or went into Was.h.i.+ngton's army. But when peace was declared, they flocked to their boats, and began to rebuild their shattered industry. Marblehead, which went into the war with 12,000 tons of s.h.i.+pping, came out with 1500. Her able-bodied male citizens had decreased in numbers from 1200 to 500. Six hundred of her sons, used to hauling the seine and baiting the trawl, were in British prisons. How many from this and other fis.h.i.+ng ports were pressed against their will into service on British men-of-war, history has no figures to show; but there were hundreds. Yet, prostrate as the industry was, it quickly revived, and soon again attained those n.o.ble proportions that had enabled Edmund Burke to say of it, in defending the colonies before the House of Commons:

"No ocean but what is vexed with their fisheries; no climate that is not witness of their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this perilous mode of hardy enterprise to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people--a people who are still, as it were, in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood."

In 1789, immediately upon the formation of the Government under which we now live, the system of giving bounties to the deep-sea fishermen was inaugurated and was continued down to the middle of the last century, when a treaty with England led to its discontinuance. The wisest statesmen and publicists differ sharply concerning the effect of bounties and special governmental favors, like tariffs and rebates, upon the favored industry, and so, as long as the fis.h.i.+ng bounty was continued, its needfulness was sharply questioned by one school, while ever since its withdrawal the opposing school has ascribed to that act all the later ills of the industry. Indeed, as this chapter is being written, a subsidy measure before Congress for the encouragement of American s.h.i.+pping, contains a proviso for a direct payment from the national treasury to fis.h.i.+ng vessels, proportioned to their size and the numbers of their crews. It is not my purpose to discuss the merits, either of the measure now pending, or of the many which have, from time to time, encouraged or depressed our fishermen. It would be hard, however, for any one to read the history of the fisheries without being impressed by the fact that the hardy and gallant men who have risked their lives in this most arduous of pursuits, have suffered from too much government, often being sorely injured by a measure intended solely for their good, as in the case of the Treaty of 1818. That instrument was negotiated for the purpose of maintaining the rights of American fishermen on the banks off Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia. The American commissioners failed to insist upon the right of the fishermen to land for bait, and this omission, together with an ambiguity in defining the "three-mile limit,"

enabled the British government to hara.s.s, harry, and even confiscate American fishermen for years. American fleets were sent into the disputed waters, and two nations were brought to the point of war over the question which should control the taking of fish in waters that belonged to neither, and that held more than enough for all peoples. To settle the dispute the United States finally entered into another treaty which secured the fishermen the rights ignored in the treaty of 1818, but threw American markets open to Canadian fishermen. This the men of Gloucester and Marblehead, nurtured in the school of protection, declared made their last state worse than the first. So the tinkering of statutes and treaties went on, even to the present day, the fisheries languis.h.i.+ng meanwhile, not in our country alone, but in all engaged in the effort to get special privileges on the fis.h.i.+ng grounds. Whenever man tries thus to monopolize, by sharp practise or exclusive laws, the bounty which G.o.d has provided in abundance for all, the end is confusion, distress, disaster, and too often war.

But the story of what the politicians, and those postgraduates of politics, the statesmen, have done for and against the fishermen of New England, is not that which I have to tell. Rather, it is my purpose to tell something of the lives of the fishermen, the style of their vessels, the portions of the rolling Atlantic which they visit in search of their prey, their dire perils, their rough pleasures, and their puny profits.

First, then, as to their prey, and its haunts.

The New England fishermen, in the main, seek three sorts of fish--the mackerel, the cod, and the halibut. These they find on the shallow banks which border the coast from the southern end of Delaware to the very entrance of Baffin's Bay. The mackerel is a summer fish, coming and going with the regularity of the equinoxes themselves. Early in March, they appear off the coast, and all summer work their way northward, until, in early November, they disappear off the coast of Labrador, as suddenly as though some t.i.tanic seine had swept the ocean clear of them. What becomes of the mackerel in winter, neither the inquisitive fisherman nor the investigating scientist has ever been able to determine. They do not, like migratory birds, reappear in more temperate southern climes, but vanish utterly from sight. Eight months, therefore, is the term of the mackerel fis.h.i.+ng, and the men engaged in it escape the bitterest rigors of the winter fisheries on the Newfoundland Banks, where the cod is taken from January to January. Yet it has dangers of its own--dangers of a sort that, to the sailor, are more menacing than the icebergs or even the swift-rus.h.i.+ng ocean liners of the Great Banks. For mackerel fis.h.i.+ng is pursued close in sh.o.r.e, in shallow water, where the sand lies a scant two fathoms below the surface, and a north-east wind will, in a few minutes, raise, a roaring sea that will pound the stoutest vessel to bits against the bottom. With plenty of sea-room, and water enough under the keel, the sailor cares little for wind or waves; but in the shallows, with the beach only a few miles to the leeward, and the breakers showing white through the darkness, like the fangs of a beast of prey, the captain of a fis.h.i.+ng schooner on George's banks has need of every resource of the sailor, if he is to beat his way off, and not feed the fishes that he came to take.

Nowhere is the barometer watched more carefully than on the boats cruising about on George's. When its warning column falls, the whole fleet makes for the open sea, however good the fis.h.i.+ng may be. But, with all possible caution, the losses are so many that George's, early in its history, came to have the ghoulish nickname of "Dead Men's Bank."

North of George's Bank--which lies directly east of Cape Cod--are found, in order, Brown's Bank, La Have, Western Bank--in the center of which lies Sable Island, famed as an ocean graveyard, whose s.h.i.+fting sands are as thickly strewn with the bleaching ribs of stout s.h.i.+ps as an old green churchyard is set with mossy marbles--St. Peter's Bank, and the Grand Bank of Newfoundland. All of these lie further out to sea than George's, and are tenanted only by cod and halibut, though in the waters near the sh.o.r.e the fishermen pursue the mackerel, the herring--which, in cottonseed oil masquerades as American sardines--and the menhaden, used chiefly for fertilizer. The boats used in the fisheries are virtually of the same model, whatever the fish they may seek--except in the case of the menhaden fishery, which more and more is being prosecuted in slow-going steamers, with machines for hauling seines, and trawl nets. But the typical fis.h.i.+ng boat engaged in the food fisheries is a trim, swift schooner, built almost on the lines of a yacht, and modeled after a type designed by Edward Burgess, one of New England's most famous yacht designers. Seaworthy and speedy both are these fis.h.i.+ng boats of to-day, fit almost to sail for the "America's" cup, modeled, as they are, from a craft built by the designer of a successful cup defender. That the fishermen ply their calling in vessels so perfectly fitted to their needs is due to a notable exhibition of common sense and enterprise on the part of the United States Fish Commission. Some years ago almost anything that would float was thought good enough for the bank fishermen. In the earliest days of the industry, small sloops were used. These gave way to the "Chebacco boat," a boat taking its name from the town of Chebacco, Ma.s.sachusetts, where its rig was first tested. This was a fifteen to twenty ton boat almost as sharp at the stern as in the bow, carrying two masts, both cat-rigged. A perfect marvel of crankiness a boat so rigged would seem; but the New England seamen became so expert in handling them that they took them to all of the fis.h.i.+ng banks, and even made cruises to the West Indies with cargoes of fish, bringing back mola.s.ses and rum. A development of the Chebacco boat was the pink, differing only in its rig, which was of the schooner model.

But in time the regular schooner crowded out all other types of fis.h.i.+ng vessels. In 1882, the members of the Fish Commission, studying the frightful record of wrecks and drownings among the Gloucester and Marblehead fishermen, reached the conclusion that an improved model fis.h.i.+ng boat might be the means of saving scores of lives. The old model was seen to be too heavily rigged, with too square a counter, and insufficient draught. Accordingly, a model boat, the "Grampus," was designed, the style of which has been pretty generally followed in the fis.h.i.+ng fleet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE BANKS.]

Such a typical craft is a schooner of about eighty tons, clean-cut about the bows, and with a long overhang at the stern that would give her a rakish, yacht-like air, except for the evidences of her trade, with which her deck is piled. Her hull is of the cutter model, sharp and deep, affording ample storage room. She has a cabin aft, and a roomy forecastle, though such are the democratic conditions of the fis.h.i.+ng trade that part of the crew bunks aft with the skipper. The galley, a little box of a place, is directly abaft the foremast, and back of it to the cabin, are the fishbins for storing fish, after they are cleaned and salted or iced.

Nowadays, when the great cities, within a few hours' sail of the banks, offer a quick market for fresh fish, many of the fis.h.i.+ng boats bring in their catch alive--a deep well, always filled with sea-water, taking the place of the fishbins. The deck, forward of the trunk cabin, is flush, and provided with "knockdown" part.i.tions, so that hundreds of flapping fish may be confined to any desired portion. Amids.h.i.+ps of the bankers rises a pile of five or six dories, the presence of which tells the story of the schooner's purpose, for fis.h.i.+ng on the Grand Banks for cod is mainly done with trawls which must be tended from dories--a method which has resulted in countless cruel tragedies.

The lives of the men who go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps are always full of romance, the literary value of which has been fully exploited by such writers of sea stories as Cooper and Clark Russell. But the romance of the typical sailor's life is that which grows out of a ceaseless struggle with the winds and waves, out of world-wide wanderings, and encounters with savages and pirates. It is the romance which makes up melodrama, rather than that of the normal life. The early New England fishermen, however, were something more than vagrants on the surface of the seas. In their lives were often combined the peaceful vocations of the farmer or woodsman, with the adventurous calling of the sailor. For months out of the year, the Maine fisherman would be working in the forests, felling great trees, guiding the tugging ox-teams to the frozen rivers, which with spring would float the timber down to tidewater. When winter's grip was loosened, he, like the st.u.r.dy logs his axe had shaped, would find his way to where the air was full of salt, and the owners of pinks and schooners were painting their craft, running over the rigging, and bargaining with the outfitters for stores for the spring cruise.

From Ma.s.sachusetts and Rhode Island farms men would flock to the little ports, leaving behind the wife and younger boys to take care of the homestead, until the husband and father returned from the banks in the fall, with his summer's earnings. His luck at fis.h.i.+ng, her luck with corn and calves and pigs, determined the scale of the winter's living.

Some of the fishermen were not only farmers, as well, but s.h.i.+p-builders and s.h.i.+p-owners, too. If the farm happened to front on some little cove, the frame of a schooner would be set up there on the beach, and all winter long the fisherman-farmer-builder would work away with adze and saw and hammer, putting together the stout hull that would defend him in time against the shock of the north-east sea. His own forest land supplied the oak trees, keelson, ribs, and stem. The neighboring sawmill shaped his planks. One lucky cruise as a hand on a fis.h.i.+ng boat owned by a friend would earn him enough to pay for the paint and cordage. With Yankee ingenuity he shaped the iron work at his own forge--evading in its time the stupid British law that forbade the colonists to make nails or bolts. Two winters' labor would often give the thrifty builder a staunch boat of his own, to be christened the "Polly Ann," or the "Mary Jane"--more loyal to family ties than to poetic euphony were the Yankee fishermen--with which he would drive into the teeth of the north-east gale, breaking through the waves as calmly as in early spring at home he forced his plough through the stubble.