150 FISHERMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 



to do with the fisheries was when I was nine years old. My father quit going to sea, and the next 

 season be was going to take me in the boat with him. That fall he, with some others, got a catch 

 of 250 barrels of sea herring, and he called me out. He got me in the night to go with him in a 

 boat. I remember it very well, although it was a great while ago, because the boat was nearly 

 full of herring, and I undertook to row, and made a poor piece of work of it. I remember the 

 herring quiddling around my legs. That is the first I had to do with fishing. 



The next spring I went, with one other boy, with my father in a boat cod-fishing. We went 

 to Race Point, and used, as the sailors say, to carry our "grub" out with us. Before Saturday 

 night we had to come in and get a recruit. We used a lap-strake boat a little smaller than a whale- 

 boat. The whale-boat rows with five oars, and these had four oars, and we used to call them five- 

 handed boats. There were six-strake boats and seven-strake boats. They were 18 feet keel, and 

 I should think about 5 feet beam, with four thwarts. We sometimes used a small sail, which we 

 made of 9 yards of top-gallant duck, $ wide. The mast was about 12 feet long. 



We landed at the Race and hauled the boats up. We had little fish-hnts there. My father built 

 his hut there, which was 6 feet by 8. He was G feet tall, and had a berth across the end, and 

 could touch his head at one end and his feet at the other. The hut had a wooden chimney. We 

 took such provisions as we could. Some fared better than others. We were pretty poor. I came 

 from poverty and obscurity. I suppose we were there about two months fishing for codfish. Dur- 

 ing the season a man and a boy, a youngster like, would probably average about 2a quintals to a 

 boat. That is a fair average for the two months that we stopped there. 



After this we came off here and set mackerel nets in the harbor, beginning about the 20th of 

 May to catch mackerel for sale fresh. These were sent to Boston market. After the mackerel 

 season was over there was little doing here in the summer, through July and August, but about 

 the middle of September the dogfish struck in on their way south. The dogfish were here in the 

 spring, as they passed by the Cape going north, but we didn't get many of them. We followed 

 fishing for dogfish two mouths, from about the middle of September till the middle of November. 

 That was the best fishing of the season, as dogfish oil was worth about $10 a barrel. A man and 

 a boy would get some 15 barrels in that time. They were mostly females when they came in, but 

 the last school in November were about all males. The males generally had better livers than the 

 females. 



When winter came they dropped me, as I was too small to go winter fishing. Two men went 

 together in a boat cod-fishing. We didn't hare any haddock at that time. In 25 quintals of fish 

 we didn't get more than 1 quintal of scale fish (haddock, hake, and pollock). The coil fish were sold 

 by tin- hundred pounds, from 50 cents to .*1 per hundred, while the haddock were always counted. 

 One boat would have two haddock and another throe, and perhaps two or three boats would have 

 none. Haddock, weighing tour, live, or six pounds, would sell for 15 or 20 cents. For many years 

 haddock were altogether higher than codfish, owing to their scarcity. This was in 1817. The busi- 

 ness on the whole during the, winter helped them out considerably, because there was nothing else 

 to do here. They used clams in the winter altogether lor bait. .Most of them we dug in the 

 vicinity, at House Point. About the first of March the winter school of fish was over, February 

 being tho best month. Then very little was done in cod fishing until herring made their appear- 

 ance, which came in generally about the first of April, and when they caught this fresh bait, for 

 two or three days they would do pretty well. We used to catch some few with clams in March. 



Now I have told you about what we did the first year, and that is the character of the fishing 

 that we followed right straight along, although some who were able to build pollock seines were 



