24 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



banks so good that from that time forward they never 

 missed a year. They have left the name of Cape Breton 

 Island as an enduring trace of their early voyages. 1 In 

 1506, Jean Denys, of Honfleur, is said to have visited the 

 Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and to have made a chart of it. 

 Two years later, Thomas Aubert, from Dieppe, is credited 

 with having sailed up the Saint Lawrence River eighty 

 leagues. In 1518, the Baron De Lery attempted a French 

 settlement in the new country at Sable Island, but his 

 endeavors ended in failure. By 1522, there had been con- 

 structed at Newfoundland between forty and fifty houses 

 for the accommodation of fishermen. 2 Thus, it appears, 

 that within a quarter of a century after the discovery of 

 the mainland by Cabot, the French were well established 

 in the prosecution of the Newfoundland fisheries, and had 

 made considerable headway toward securing a permanent 

 foothold on land. 



The English seemed to have played a minor part in 

 these fisheries. In a letter written by John Rut to Henry 

 VIII in 1527, and dated from Saint John 's, Newfoundland, 

 the writer states that there were eleven sail of Normans, 

 one Brittain, and two Portuguese in the harbor, while he 

 knew of but one English vessel along the coast at the time. 

 In another report for the same year, it is stated that ships 

 from Spain, England, France and Portugal to the number 

 of fifty were employed in fishing at Newfoundland that 

 year. One writer places the date ten years earlier, but 

 this is a mistake. 3 The English made an attempt to estab- 

 lish a colony in Newfoundland in 1536. The affair was at 

 the expense of Mr. Hoare, a wealthy London merchant. 

 A company of one hundred and twenty persons, of whom 



1 Fiske, New France and New England, p. 4. 



2 Sabine, Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas, 

 p. 36. 



a Winsor, IV, p. 68. 



