278 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



possess the interest that attaches to the cod and whale 

 fishery. Lobsters and salmon occur to the mind as im- 

 portant branches of the fishery industry of the twentieth 

 century. Nevertheless the cod has not lost its place among 

 these other fisheries. But we associate with the history 

 of the cod of to-day the other fish of its kind, the hake, 

 the haddock, the cusk, the pollock, and the halibut. All 

 of these fish are grouped together as ground fish. Further 

 mention of the ground fish will embrace all the different 

 fish here included in that term. 



Since the Civil War the New England deep-sea fisher- 

 men have enlarged the field of their activities by embarking 

 on the seas of Greenland and Iceland in search of hali- 

 but. The first vessel that ever left Gloucester for a flitch- 

 ing halibut voyage to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland 

 was the schooner A. J. Chapman in 1864. 1 The schooner 

 returned in August after a voyage of 85 days, with a stock 

 of nearly $5,000. Reports of the abundance of halibut 

 were first brought to Massachusetts by Provincetown 

 whalers. The first trip to the coast of Greenland for hali- 

 but was made in 1866, by the schooner John Atwood. The 

 stock of the schooner was $5,500. Capt. John McQuinn 

 in 1870 brought from Greenland a flitched halibut trip 

 worth $19,000. During the next two years half a dozen 

 vessels made halibut trips to Greenland. The fishery did 

 not prove remunerative, so that it was practically aban- 

 doned between 1874 and 1877. The fishery was revived in 

 1878. 



Captain McQuinn was the first of the American fisher- 

 men to go to the halibut fishing grounds of Iceland. In 

 1873, he set sail in the schooner Membrino Chief. The 

 vessel remained in Iceland waters for five weeks, visiting 

 various harbors and cruising on the fishing grounds when- 

 ever the weather would permit, but catching very few fish. 



iGoode, Sec. V, Vol. II, p. 91. 



