156 CHAPTER II 



had conducted a profitable business in organizing the annual fishing expeditions 

 to Newfoundland. They were opposed to any permanent settlement with its 

 consequent laws and regulations which would interfere with their authority. It 

 suited them better to send their fleets westward each spring to take possession of 

 the stages, flakes, and cook-rooms which they had left at the end of the preceding 

 season, to catch and cure fish there during the summer, then to abandon the place 

 in the autumn. If there were any settlers, they would occupy the harbours and 

 coves which the merchants had been accustomed to use and so interfere with their 

 business. Accordingly they tried hard to prevent any settlement, or at least to 

 keep it as low as possible" (Cochrane, 1938, p. 56). In 1633, on an influential 

 petition from the southwestern ports, the Privy Council issued an order, called the 

 "Western Charter", on which all subsequent regulations concerning Newfound- 

 land were based for more than a century and a half. Among the rules laid down here 

 was one giving the jurisdiction of every port to the "Fishing Admiral", that is the 

 captain of the ship arriving first in the spring. Another, especially directed against 

 settlement: "All owners of ships trading to Newfoundland forbidden to carry 

 any persons not of ships Company or such as are to plant or do intend to settle 

 there." A complementary rule, issued in 1637, deprived settlers the right to live 

 less than six miles from the shore (!) 



These and other obstacles contributed to keep the number of resident settlers 

 very low for a long time. The approximate figures of Prowse (1895, p. 698 a.f.) give 

 a total permanent population of Newfoundland during the last quarter of the 17th 

 century not exceeding 3000 men. In summer they were greatly outnumbered by 

 the crews of fishing- vessels; already in 1644 the English alone exceeded 10,000 

 (Prowse, I.e., p. 190). French settlements seem not to have existed before 1662, 

 at Placentia (westside of Avalon), and about 1670, on St. Pierre, Not until the later 

 half of the i8th century did the total permanent population of Newfoundland 

 exceed the seasonal fishermen in number. 



The extraordinary conditions prevailing in Newfoundland during a period of 

 almost three centuries were bound to stamp the trade with the mother country. 

 The large fishing-fleets leaving the ports of southwestern England every spring 

 were destined for a poor, almost uninhabited country, a bad market for goods 

 of any kind. The crews' own supplies gave no full cargo. The ships sailed in 

 ballast. At the end of the fishing season they returned fully loaded, as a rule not 

 directly home but to the foremost consumers, the catholic countries in southern 

 Europe, and thence back to England in the late fall, often likewise in ballast. This 

 triangular traffic was carried on to an almost unchanged extent as long as sailing- 

 vessels ruled the sea, that is to the middle of the 19th century. The first steam-line 

 calling at Newfoundland, connecting it with Halifax, was opened in 1842 (Harris, 



