THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 79 



defend all of their claims. They had between 400 and 500 

 vessels engaged in the fishery; they were well armed; they 

 outdid their competitors in the quantity of fish that they 

 caught, claiming, at the opening of the century, that their 

 catch of codfish was equal to the supply of all continental 

 or Catholic Europe ; their fishermen were first in European 

 markets, and their fish sold at a larger profit than that of 

 their rivals. 1 The outlook for England to retain what few 

 fishing privileges she possessed in America was nearly as 

 dubious as was the prospect that she could regain in war 

 the advantages that had been lost through shameful treaty. 



The people of New England, feeling keenly the loss of 

 a province that had been won very largely by their valor, 

 and stirred to action by the loss of the privilege to fish 

 upon the Acadian fishing grounds, needed little urging 

 from the mother country to enter heartily into the contest. 

 They employed armed vessels of their own ; they swept the 

 coast of Nova Scotia ; they equipped a fleet at Boston and 

 twice attempted the conquest of that province ; and they 

 furnished four battalions of fifteen hundred men and thirty 

 transport vessels to Nicholson when, in 1710, he captured 

 Port Royal, thus finally winning Nova Scotia as a province 

 under the crown of Great Britain. 



Peace was concluded by the treaty of Utrecht in 171?. 

 By this treaty the British statesmen attained, or supposed 

 that they had attained, what had been their ambition for 

 many years, the supremacy in the fisheries of the Ameri- 

 can seas. All Nova Scotia, or ancient Acadia with its 

 boundaries, was made over to the Queen of England and 

 her successors. The French were excluded from fishing 

 on the coast of that province or within thirty leagues of 

 it, from Sable Island to the southwest. Newfoundland 

 with the adjacent islands came wholly into the right of 

 Great Britain, as did Hudson Bay with its borders. On 



i Isham, The Fishery Question, pp. 15-16. 



