178 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



the first can of sealed goods of any kind within the limits 

 of our country. The business began in 184? with the can- 

 ning of lobsters for market, an industry that has since risen 

 to the rank of the highest importance in the State. In 

 1850 there were seven firms at Eastport engaged in the 

 fish trade. These firms (< employed 238 men; used 18,900 

 bushels of salt; cured 18,000 quintals of fish and 3,500 

 boxes of smoked herring; put up 12,000 barrels of pickled 

 herring, 300 barrels of mackerel, and 3,503 barrels of other 

 fish, ... in addition to 450 barrels of oil and a quan- 

 tity of canned goods, the whole having a value of $85,000.' 



The neighboring town of Lubec rivaled Eastport in the 

 business of catching and smoking herring. By 1821, there 

 were twenty smoke-houses in the place, each house having 

 an annual output of from 2,500 to 3,000 boxes of herring. 

 As early as 1830 the merchants of Lubec were sending 

 vessels to the Magdalen Islands for additional herring to 

 smoke and pickle. This herring fleet consisted of eleven 

 vessels in 1860, each returning with cargoes of 700 to 800 

 barrels of fish. The smoked herring business was at its 

 height between 1845 and 1865, there being from 400,000 to 

 500,000 boxes of herring smoked and packed annually. 



Millbridge, located about midway between Machias Bay 

 and Frenchman's Bay, became interested in the herring 

 fishery in 1820. The business increased slowly until 1850, 

 when people from Lubec built smoke-houses and presses 

 for utilizing the catch of fish. The most prosperous period 

 of the industry was between 1858 and 1863 when 75,000 to 

 100,000 boxes of herring were packed yearly. Lubec fisher- 

 men also visited Steuben, adjacent to Millbridge on the 

 west, about the year 1850 to secure herring for smoking, 

 and the business thrived at about the same time as for 

 Millbridge, declining during the period of the war. 



The towns bordering on the Frenchman's Bay district, 

 which extends from Gouldsboro on the east as far west 



