88 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



plorer of North Carolina, records the use of "fatbacks" as a food of the early 

 colonists. 



It was not until the first half of the nineteenth century that serious effort 

 was made to separate the oil from the flesh, and even as late as 1879, 

 Professor Goode urged the use of the dried fish scrap as a food for domestic 

 farm animals, citing such use by European farmers and by the farmers of 

 New England, As late as 1864 the pressed scrap was thrown overboard in 

 Maine or given to farmers at the price of hauling it away. 



Formerly the fish were taken incidentally with other fish or sought after 

 in relatively small amounts to be used as fertilizer. They had no other recog- 

 nized value; their use as whole fish fertilizer was a doubtful practice, for 

 although prolific crops resulted for a season or two, the oil from the fish so 

 "burnt" the land that it was untillable for years to come. Until the early part 

 of the nineteenth century, however, menhaden was used solely as a raw whole 

 fish fertilizer. 



There are many claimants for the honor of having started the menhaden 

 industry, but the evidence seems to indicate that two men, Barker and Tall- 

 man, who in 181 1 set up two small iron pots at Black Point Wharf, Ports- 

 mouth, Rhode Island, were first (Goode & Clark, 1887). Their process was 

 simple. First, the menhaden, covered with water, were boiled in the iron pots 

 until the breakdown of the fleshy tissues released the oil. The boiled mass 

 was then poured into containers and weighted by rocks placed on boards 

 laid over the solid mass. When the oil floated to the top of the water, it was 

 skimmed off and barreled for shipment to the New York market. Two pots 

 were added in 1 814. Gales in 181 5 destroyed the apparatus, and business was 

 not resumed until 1818. Ini824a cooker replaced the pots. This cooker was 

 a wooden tank sy^ feet high, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet long. A furnace was 

 located at one end, from which a copper flue ran through the box. The 

 "factory" was built on skids and hauled from place to place by two oxen. 

 According to the early report, it was hauled from the shore to the farm a 

 mile away, and, after the oil was recovered, the water and scrap were broad- 

 cast to add fertility to the soil. 



The first factory to use live steam was built by John Tallman in 1841, also 

 at Portsmouth, R. I. This installation consisted of eight wooden tanks holding 

 60 barrels of fish each and a flue boiler. In 1842 the business expanded and 

 branched, and Tallman and Lambert built a plant at the mouth of the 

 Merrimac River, Mass. Shortly thereafter Daniel Wells built a factory, 

 modeled after Tallman's, on Shelter Island, near Greenport, New York. 

 About this time, Charles Tuthill, of Greenport, invented a method for ex- 

 pressing the oil from the cooked fish. The next twenty-five years saw a great 

 expansion in the menhaden industry, and by 1866 plants had been established 

 along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Portsmouth Island, North Carolina. 



