60 GEOGRAPHICAL EEVIEW OF THE FISHERIES. 



forbidding the capture of alewives for six years. Assisted aiid protected in this way the fish have 

 grown to be very abundant. 



BREMEN. Bremen, a small town with a scattered population of 790, is located on the west 

 side of the Medoinak, between Bristol and Waldoboro'. It was first settled in 1735, and was a part 

 of Bristol until 1828. There is no village of importance, and it even lacks the advantages of a 

 country post-office. 



The fishing interests seem to have been small in early times, but they gradually increased, 

 reaching their maximum between 1865 and 1872, when six large vessels went regularly to Western 

 Banks and Quereau, and nice or ten smaller ones engaged in the shore-fisheries. 



The first "banker" was sent from the town about 1860; vessels began going south for mackerel 

 in the spring of 1868; and one vessel went on a halibut-netching trip in 1S69. 



The only mackerel seining from this vicinity is by small vessels that fish along the coast of 

 Maine. 



The present fleet consists of ten vessels, four of these being engaged in the bank-fisheries. 

 Besides the vessel-fleet, about forty small boats are engaged in the shore-fisheries, taking lobsters, 

 mackerel, cod, and other species. The residents dig several hundred barrels of clam-bait each 

 season for the Bremen and Portland bankers. About 7,000 quintals of fish are cured annually in 

 the town. 



For a number of years several parties have been more or less interested in boat-building, and 

 since 1865 about eighty lobster-boats and thirty dories have been built. 



31. BRISTOL AND ITS FISHERY INTERESTS. 



EARLY SETTLEMENT OF BRISTOL. Bristol township including within its limits Peinaquid, 

 one of the oldest settlements on the coast, belonged to the Pemaquid patent granted to Elbridge 

 and Aldsworth of Bristol, England, in 1629. It was visited by Gosnold in 1602, and settled as 

 early as 1625, under a title from the Indian chief Samoset "probably the first Indian deed to a 

 white man." 



In the fifth volume of the Maine Historical Collections we read that "in 1607 Popham and Gil- 

 bert had not been at anchor near Pemaquid two hours when they were visited by a party of savages 

 in a Spanish shallop"; thus showing that the place had been visited earlier by Spaniards, who doubt- 

 less came not only on a voyage of discovery, but also to fish in the vicinity. Williamson, in his 

 History of Maine, gives a table of populations of different portions of the coast for 1630, in which 

 he claims 500 inhabitants for Sagadahock, Sheepscott, Pemaquid, Saint George, and George's 

 Islands. He does not give the number for each place separately. The town was incorporated in 

 1765, and in 1700 had a population of 896, at which time it included the present town of Bremen. 

 It now has 2,916 inhabitants. It is situated a few miles south of Waldoboro', and occupies most 

 of the large neck of land lying between the Damariscotta River on the west and the Medomak 

 River and Museougus Sound on the east. The peninsula is divided in its lower half by John's 

 Bay and' River, and the larger part is again partially subdivided by the Pemaquid River, thus 

 giving it an extensive shore-line in the near vicinity of the fishing grounds. 



THE VESSEL- FISHERIES. Bristol has long been noted for the number of its small vessels and 

 the interest it has taken in the shore-fisheries. As early as 1830, twenty-five vessels were owned 

 there, three or four of them being large enough to visit the Gulf of Saint Lawrence for cod, 

 while the rest, ranging from 5 to 25 tons, were engaged in the shore-fisheries. In 1846 the first 

 vessel was sent to Grand Banks; in 1854 the Western Bank fisheries were inaugurated; dories 

 were first used by the Bristol vessels engaged in the latter fishery in 1868. The fishermen of the 



