100 FISHERMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 



capitalists also would be very great, since they would be able to supply vacancies in the list of 

 skippers from men who had been systematically trained for the position, instead of being obliged 

 to select untried men at random from among the crews. At present the only means by which the 

 owner can select a skipper for one of his vessels is upon the recommendation of some other skipper 

 with whom he has sailed, and every one knows how little value such recommendations ordinarily 

 possess. 



(3) The enactment or the confirmation of laws by which the relations between the crew, the 

 skipper, and the owners shall be clearly defined. It is the common belief that the same laws 

 apply to the fishing vessels that are in force with respect to merchant vessels. Even if this be the 

 case, the question of law is but little considered by the fishermen in the discipline on board of a 

 fishing vessel. The officers should be supported in the necessary measures which they may take 

 to quell insubordination or mutiny and to prevent disorderly conduct, the same rights being recog- 

 nized as in the case of merchant vessels. The crews should be obliged to sign shipping papers in 

 regular form, and these papers should be regarded as legal contracts, and means for their enforce- 

 ment should be provided; this, too, without the necessity of protracted and expensive law suits. 

 American consuls in foreign ports should be instructed to aid the masters of vessels in controlling 

 disorderly men. Such a provision as the last one would have an important effect in controlling 

 the acts of crews in provincial ports. It is now possible for two or three of the crew, by drunk- 

 enness and disorder, to neutralize the well-meant efforts of all their associates and prevent the 

 success of the voyage. 



(4) The investment of the officers of the vessel with a greater amount of dignity. It is, of 

 course, impossible on board a fishing vessel to maintain the same kind of exclusiveness which pre- 

 vails on a merchant vessel or a whaler. The number of officers is less, and the nature of the 

 employment prevents all ceremony. At the same time it is within the power of the officers, by 

 their personal bearing, to prevent familiarities on the part of the crew, and thereby greatly to 

 increase their own influence. 



Such provision for the mainteuance of discipline on board of the vessels are especially neces- 

 sary in a port like Gloucester, where the fishermen are of different nationalities and are often men 

 who have been unable to hold their own in other ports on account of their notoriously bad char- 

 acters. A considerable percentage of the fishermen of Gloucester resemble, more than those of 

 any other American fishing port, the ordinary sailors, though far superior to the average men who 

 compose the crews of merchant and whaling vessels. 



Sabine on discipline of fishermen. — The following words, written by Sabine in 1852, 

 and referring more particularly to the Labrador cod fishery, are none the less applicable at the 

 present time, and to all branches of the fisheries of the United States: 



"The selection of a master is a point so important to owners that a word upon his qualifica 

 tions will not be amiss. Besides all the responsibilities at sea which devolve upon a master in the 

 merchant service, lie has cares and anxieties which are unknown to that branch of maritime 

 adventure. His passage being safely made, the master of the merchantman is relieved by the 

 counsel and assistance of the owner or consignee. But it is not so witli the master of the fishing 

 \ess,d. During the period devoted to fishing his labor is arduous in the extreme, and, come what 

 will, in the desolate and distant regions which he visits his own sagacity and prudence are his 

 only reliance. If, as not unfrequently happens, he be so unfortunate as to have among his crew 

 two or three refractory Spirits who seek to poison the minds of all the rest; if others, who boasted 

 loudly, before sailing from home, how well and quickly tliey could use the splitting-knife, or how 

 tine and even handed they were in distributing the salt, prove too ignorant to be trusted; or if 



