130 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



or less interference with the progress of the business. Such 

 a recovery, however, was not possible after the Revolution- 

 ary War. The fishing industry had been shaken to its 

 foundation by a decade of inactivity and suspension. 

 There had been rapid and disastrous depreciation of the 

 property used for the furtherance of fishing interests. 

 Wharves had fallen into decay, mainly through lack of 

 trade to keep them in repair. Many vessels, too, had be- 

 come valueless for the same reason ; others had been em- 

 ployed in the privateering service, never to return as fish- 

 ing vessels. Flakes and other shore apparatus used in 

 curing fish had long since disappeared. Men, too, had lost 

 the habit of their old vocation in following varying for- 

 tunes of service in the army or navy. The younger genera- 

 tion of boys had received little training in the shore fish- 

 eries such as their fathers had, and none of them had 

 acquired practical experience in deep-sea fishing by a trip 

 to the Grand Bank as "cut-tail' aboard a New England 

 schooner. 



Added to the discouraging domestic conditions was an 

 order, proclaimed by the British council the very year of 

 the treaty, prohibiting American fish from being carried to 

 the British West Indies. The order worked injury to our 

 fishermen in two ways; first, in distinctly narrowing the 

 markets for the larger part of our fish; secondly, in en- 

 couraging the rival fisheries of Nova Scotia and other Brit- 

 ish possessions in the vicinity of the Gulf of Saint Law- 

 rence. The Congress of the Confederation declared that 

 retaliatory measures were necessary to prevent our com- 

 merce from falling into the hands of foreigners, and asked 

 the States for power to provide suitable remedies. But no 

 such power was granted to the Congress. 1 



The condition of the codfishery of Massachusetts for the 



i Sabine, p. 155. 



