124 GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF THE FISHERIES. 



concerned in the fishing trade as most of his neighbors ; but that, in the course of the war (then 

 soon to be terminated), he had met with considerable losses; that trade had much diminished; 

 that of upwards of sixty fishing vessels owned in that town at the commencement of hostilities, 

 only sis remained ; and that he believed no place in Massachusetts had suffered more by the war 

 than Salem. 



"At the close of the century, as we learn from Neal, the merchants of Massachusetts exported 

 about 100,000 quintals of dried codfish annually to Portugal, Spain, and Italy, of the value of 

 $400,000; while from another source we are informed, that, disregarding the navigation act of 

 England, a large contraband commerce was maintained by the merchants of Boston with most of 



Europe. 



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"In 1731 the fisheries of Massachusetts employed between five and six thousand men. Three 

 years later a township in Maine was granted to sixty inhabitants of Marblehead, and a similar 

 grant was made to citizens of Gloucester in 1735. Possibly many of the fishermen of these ancient 

 towns had become weary of the hazards of the sea, and desired repose ; but whatever the motives 

 of the grantees of these lands, the perils and hardships of the forest a century ago were quite equal 

 to those encountered upon the ocean, and such was their particular experience. 



"In 1741 the cod fishery was in a prosperous condition. The annual produce was about 

 230,000 quintals, and the value of the quantity exported nearly $700,000. The average size of 

 vessels was 50 tons; and of these, one hundred and sixty were owned in Marblehead alone. The 

 whole number of fishing vessels in Massachusetts was not less than four hundred, besides an equal 

 number of ketches, shallops, and undecked boats. 



"In the twenty years that succeeded there was a sensible decline, for which the causes were 

 abundant. The emigrations to Maine just mentioned, from Marblehead and Gloucester, the settle- 

 ments elsewhere in the eastern country by emigrants from Cape Cod, the depopulation and almost 

 entire abandonment of Proviucetown, the expedition against Louisbourg, the general events of the 

 two wars that occurred during this period between France and England, in the calamities of which 

 Massachusetts was deeply involved, the demand for fishermen to man privateers and to enter the 

 naval ships of the crown, with several minor events, combined to injure the fisheries to a very 

 considerable degree, and at times, indeed, to render attention to them nearly impossible. After 

 the peace of 1703, maritime enterprises were again undertaken with spirit and success, and the 

 fishing-towns shared in the general prosperity. But the controversies that produced civil war, 

 and finally a dismemberment of the British empire, had already commenced, and soon disturbed 

 every branch of industry. The fisheries suffered first, and at the shedding of blood were suspended. 

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"Omitting notice of the acts of Parliament which do not relate specially to the subject 

 before us, the first law to claim our attention was passed in 1733. This act, by imposing duties 

 on rum, molasses, and sugar imported into the colonies from any West India islands other than 

 British, was designed to break up an extensive and valuable trade with the French, Dutch, and 

 Spanish islands, where those products of the plantations were exchanged for fish. It is said that 

 previous to the commencement of the trade to these, islands molasses was thrown away by the 

 planters, and that this article which is now so extensively used in food was first saved and put into 

 casks to be brought to New England to be distilled into rum. Certain it is that on the passage of 

 the act of 1733 the people of the northern colonies insisted that unless they could continue to sell 

 fish to the planters of the foreign islands, and to import molasses from thence to be manufactured 

 into spirit for domestic consumption and for trade with the Indians, they could not prosecute the 



