12 FISHERMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The reasoii why the Maine fishermen do not engage in the offshore winter fisheries can prob- 

 ably be found in the fact that they have not the system of mutual insurance which prevails in 

 Gloucester. The probability of vessels being lost on winter trips is so great that few individuals 

 or firms care to incur the risk without insurance; and the cost of insuring in stock companies is 

 too high to leave any profits. It is, therefore, seemingly a question of the profitable employment 

 of capital, and not a lack of courage or enterprise in the fishermen, that has commonly prevented 

 t lie winter fisheries from being extensively prosecuted from Maine. 



In substantiation of this statement, it can be said that a large percentage of the most daring 

 and efficient fishermen sailing from Gloucester are natives of Maine. In the sharp competition 

 which exists among the fishermen of this port, those from Maine hold a prominent place and are 

 second to none in bravery, hardihood, and seamanship — qualities which are pre-eminently required 

 in the winter fisheries. 



The following notes, communicated to Mr. Earll by a close observer, for many years living in 

 one of the principal fishing ports of Maine, indicate the habits and traits of those fishermen at 

 some of the fishing ports of this State : 



" Early training. — A man about to ship in a vessel will make arrangements to take his boy 

 with him. The boy is taken out at the age of ten to twelve years. At first he may be kept aboard 

 the vessel cutting sounds and fishing over the rail, or he may be allowed to accompany his father 

 in his dory ; and then he adds to the father's catch. He returns in the fall and again enters school 

 for the winter term, but is taken out again early in spring to go on another trip. By the time he 

 is fifteen, or sixteen at most, he has a dory of his own and forms one of the crew, catching his 

 share of the trip. With his boyish desire to be a man he readily takes to any vice common to 

 others of the crew, and is soon led to be as rough as any of his companions. His chief aim 

 now is to be a fisherman and to be with the fishermen, and he returns in the fall feeling that 

 he is too old for school, and if he enters it is largely that he may have a good time. He now wishes 

 to study only geography and arithmetic, thinks reading and spelling beneath him, while, to use his 

 own language, 'grammar will do well enough for the biled-shirt fellers and the girls, but as for him 

 he has no time for such trash.' The only way now to reach him is by a general black-board exer- 

 cise and course of oral instruction in those branches against which he is prejudiced. This is be- 

 ing introduced with favorable results, but the average fisher boy takes so little interest in schools 

 niter he has been away for two or three summers that he will improve but little. The fisherman's 

 daughter fares better, for there is little to keep her busy outside of school, and she, if once inter 

 ested in the work, has the chance of gratifying her desires beyond that of auy other class. As 

 a result we find her often a very bright and intellectual young girl where the school privileges 

 will allow and where she is not kept back by the home influences. 



" Married life. — When the fisherman marries he scon has a large family, varying with the 

 locality, the inferior communities averaging more than the more intellectual and well-to-do ones. 

 In one section of twenty families, taken in order as they chanced to live, the average was exactly 5, 

 the extremes being 1 1 and 0. The hard times seem to have no influence upon either the marriage 

 or birth rate, for in L878, the culmination of a series of adverse years, there were more marriages 

 than for any year since L874 by considerable, and tin' birth rate was unusually large.* 



'Herrings and marriages. — "The connection between beiriugs and marriages may nut be obvious to all, but 

 the Scotch registers make it clear enough. In the returns tor the third quarterof the present year (1ST 1) the registrar 

 of Fraserburgh states that the herring fishery was very successful, and the value of the catch, including casks and 

 curing, may be set down at £ 130,000 sterling, and the marriages were 80 per cent, above the average One registrar, 

 in liis return for the quarter, reports marriages in his district ' like angels' visits, few and far between.' At the fish- 

 ing villages it may be put more briefly -no herring, no wedding." 



