42 



court, nnd heard the complaints of one hundred and seventy masters 

 of English vessels. The abuses seem to have been flagrant. The 

 captaiijs had been accustomed to leave their })oats and salt on tlie coast, 

 hoping to find them at the beginning of the next season, but in many 

 cases not a vestige remained of either. The bait prepared for the next 

 day's fishing was li-cqucnith' stolen out of the nets; the forests were 

 often wantonly set fire to; the large stones used in pressing the fish 

 were sunk at the mouth of the harbors; and little or no regard was 

 paid to the Sabbath. Whitbourne's courts and juries were the first, 

 probably, under the authority of England, in the New World. 



Many thousand persons were employed as catchers and curers, and 

 the fisher}^ was in a flourishing condition. Besides the vessels of foreign 

 flags we found "then on that coast," says he, " of your Majestie's sub- 

 jects, two hundred and fifty sail of ships, great and small."* In the 

 paper from which I have cited he speaks of a settlement of the 

 "Worship full William Vaughan, of Tawacod, in the county of Car- 

 marthen, doctor of the civil law," who had "undertaken to plant a 

 circuit in the Newfoundland," and who " in two severall years had sent 

 thither divers men and women;" and he adds, that "there are many 

 other worth}'- persons, adventurers in the said plantations, whose names 

 "are not herein mentioned;" concluding with an appeal to his country- 

 men to sustain the colonies of which he had given an account, because 

 of the "great increase of shipping and mariners, and the emplo3"ment 

 and enriching of many thousands of poore people which now live charge- 

 able to the parishioners," and for other reasons. 



Leaving here the Newfoundland fishery, for the present, we turn to 

 adventures on the coast of New England. The Englishman who made 

 the first direct voyage across the Atlantic was Btutholomew Gosnold, 

 who explored our shores in 1602, and, catching codfish near the 

 southern cape of Massachusetts, gave the name which it still bears. 

 He was followed by the celebrated John Smith in 1614, who took 

 "forty thousand" fish, which he dried, and "seven thousand" which 

 he "corned," or pickled, in the waters of Maine, and purchased a large 

 quantity of furs of the natives. The profits of his voyage were up- 

 wards of seven thousand dollars. 



Four ships from London and four from Plymouth came in 1616. 

 They obtained full fares, and sold their fish in Spain and the Canaiy 

 Islands at liigh prices. The number increased rapidl}^ At the time 

 the I^ilgrims landed at Plymouth the island of Monhegan, in Maine, 

 had become a noted fishing station. In 1622 no less than thirty-five 

 ships from London and the west counties of England made profitable 

 voyages to our shores. "Where in Newfoundland," says Smith, a 

 common fisherman "shared six or seven pounds," in New England 

 he "shared fourteen pounds." This was a great difference; and it is 

 to be remembered that the profit of the merchant who furnished the 



* Eichard Mather, who came over to Massachnsetts in 1635, kept a journal of the voyage. 

 When on the Bank of Newfoundhmd, "on the end of it nearer to New England," he records 

 seeing "niightj" fishes rolling and tumbling in the waters, twice as long and big as an ox." 

 He saw, too, "mighty whales spewing u]) water in the air, like tlie smoke of a chimney, and 

 making the sea about them white and hoary, as is said in Job : of such incredible bigness that 

 I will never wonder that the body of Jonas could be m the belly of a whale." 



