Old Fashioned Grand Banks cod- 

 fishing schooner with crew hand- 

 line fishing. Vessel is of about 

 1825. Drawn by H. Elliott under 

 the direction of Capt. J. VV. Col- 

 lins. From G. Brown Goode, The 

 fisheries and fishery industries of the 

 United States, Washington, Govern- 

 ment Printing Office, 1884-87. 



thus assumed very great importance. The first 

 effort to produce suitable vessels resulted in a large 

 number of smacks, or schooners having live-wells. 

 As most of these vessels were built on the old, slow 

 model, they did not prove very satisfactory. In 

 the midddle 1840's an effort was made to increase 

 the supply of ice at the Boston and Gloucester 

 fish piers, and to introduce better ways of handling 

 iced fish, with the result that by 1847 the market- 

 fishing schooners were almost entirely fitted for icing 

 their catch. The use of ice, w^hich made short, quick 

 trips necessary, added to the demand for speed. 



Sailmaker's Plan for a fishing schooner, 1836. From 

 a drawing, made for the U.S. Fish Commission, in 

 the Watercraft Collection. 



A third factor creating a demand for swift schooners 

 resulted from the trend in the 1840's toward com- 

 bining the summer mackerel fishery at Cape Cod 

 with the winter transport of oysters in the shell from 

 the Chesapeake to Cape Cod. This combination of 

 operation had led to the purchase of a number of 

 Chesapeake Bay schooners, some keel and some 

 centerboard, designed and built to conform to the 

 Chesapeake tradition that speed was a necessity in a 

 schooner. Of these, the most popular model in the 

 Cape Cod ports was the shoal-draft keel schooner 

 known in the Chesapeake Bay country as the "pungy." 

 Chesapeake Bay keel schooners, or "Baltimore clip- 

 pers," were also purchased by Gloucester owners 

 engas;ing in the summer mackerel fishery, so that by 

 1845 the fast-sailing clipper-schooner was very well 

 known in Cape Ann waters as w^ell as at Cape Cod. 

 However, the Bay schooners, ^vhich were rather shoal 

 bodied and low sided, had proved to be very wet 

 and uncomfortable in winter weather, and to meet 

 this objection and satisfy the demands for fast fishing 

 schooners, the Esse.x, Massachusetts, l^uilders pro- 

 duced a deep, keel schooner having great dead rise 

 amidships, hard and powerful Iiilges, a sharp entrance 

 and long easy run, heavy flaring sections forward 

 above the waterline, and drawing much more water 

 aft than forward. The model may have been in- 

 fluenced by the contemporary Chesapeake schooners 

 but probably was more affected by the large and deep 



167 



