PACIFIC COD FISHERIES 415 



March 3 the vessel went on the reef at Eagle Harbor, Kodiak Island, 

 and was a total loss. 



The same company also sent north the former halibut power 

 schooner Progress (115 tons), schooner Ghas. Broivn (64 tons), 

 power schooner V aides (10 tons), and the power schooner Hunter 

 (60 tons) to engage in fishing operations. The latter vessel, how- 

 ever, was wrecked on Sutwick Island on August 30, and, together 

 with its cargo of codfish, was lost. 



In 1918 this company purchased the controlling interest in the 

 Union Fish Co. of San Francisco. In 1919 the Anacortes plant was 

 closed, and after this operations were carried on at the San Fran- 

 cisco plant of the Union Fish Co. 



In 1918 Lars Mikkelson organized the Bering Sea Fisheries Co. 

 and built a station on Unalaska Island. The former mail steamer 

 Dora (217 tons) was purchased and sent north to engage in fishing 

 operations and to bring down to the home station (that was later es- 

 tablished at Dockton on Puget Sound) its own catch and that of the 

 fishermen at the station. On December 20, 1920, the steamer Dora 

 struck on Noble Island and was beached on Vancouver Island, 

 British Columbia, only a short distance away. She was salvaged 

 subsequently and sold elsewhere. 



The first Canadian company to engage in cod fishing on the 

 Pacific banks was the Western Canadian Fish Co. This company 

 built a home station at Barnet, British Columbia, in 1903, and sent 

 the brigantine Blakely to Bering Sea. The company struggled 

 along until the latter part of 1905, when it went out of the business. 



In 1913 the Canadian Fish & Cold Storage Co., of Pince Rupert, 

 British Columbia, outfitted the schooner Albert Meyer and sent her 

 to the Bering Sea banks. She arrived there at almost the end of 

 the fishing season, and as a result brought back but a few hundred 

 fish. The vessel made another trip in 1914, when it met with fair 

 success. As the market was very poor when she returned the com- 

 pany gave up this branch of its business. 



HISTORY OF ALASKA SHORE-FISHING STATIONS 



The natives living in the vicinty of the great cod banks of Alaska 

 have depended upon them for a considerable part of their food 

 supply, although not to such an important extent as they have upon 

 the salmon. When the Russians came more and more home use was 

 made of cod, and the same is true of their Creole descendents to-day. 

 With the exception of a few small shipments made from Kodiak in 

 the early years of the industry, the catch of the natives and few 

 whites living at other than the regular cod stations has all been 

 consumed locally. 



The late Thomas W. McCollam, of the McCollam Fishing & Trad- 

 ing Co., of San Francisco, was the first to perceive the advantages to 

 be obtained from establishing stations close to the cod banks where 

 the fishermen could go out daily in dories to the adjacent banks and 

 the catch be stored ashore until a cargo accumulated, when a vessel 

 could be sent north to bring them to San Francisco. 



Early in the seventies a party of hunters had established a station 

 at Pirate Cove, a very pretty and well-sheltered cove, with ample 

 18163—27 3 



