422 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



small boat, who keeps close to the school and guides the gang in setting 

 for them. The fish-driver makes the seventh man. Some gangs have 

 a man they call a striker. Generally, he is an apprentice, who goes for 

 small wages to learn the business. He makes the eighth man. To 

 recapitulate: A purse-gang, for either steamer or sail-vessel, consists of 

 from six to eight men, and the different make-up of gangs arises in dif- 

 ferent ideas of different gangs. Each boat has to have a seine-setter 

 and two men to row. Steamers have the same crew as vessels, 

 except they have no tenders, thereby saving that expense. To illus- 

 trate: Suppose a sail- vessel has a purse-gang of seven men and three 

 men to run tenders ; that makes ten men in all as sharesmen. In a 

 steamer the three extra men are dispensed with, and the steamer takes 

 their part for the extra expense of coal and machinery, but the men's 

 shares are the same on an equal amount of fish. The cai)tains of the 

 steamers manage them when the crew are absent catching the fish. 



38. xVll parts of the day are used in taking them, but the moderate 

 part is preferred. 



39. The tide is watched in catching fish. Generally, slack water is 

 the time when they can be taken the best, for at that time the seine is 

 not scraped over the bottom, thereby escaping the chances of catching 

 against obstructions and tearing. Cases have happened where seines 

 have been totally lost, and hardly a day goes by when one or more are, 

 in fishing language, ripped up; and sometimes it takes a week's steady 

 work to mend them. When the water is still, the seine hangs better in 

 the water. It is just the same as hanging clothes out to dry on a windy 

 day — the stronger the wind, the more they shake; so with seines; if 

 they are put into the water with it in swift motion, they are capsized 

 or pulled out of shape; for when they are in the water and swing one 

 hundred feet deep, they are in more than one kind of tide, for often the 

 tide on the surface is not of the same velocity as it is deeper down. 

 Cases have been known when the tide on the surface and the tide sev- 

 eral fathoms down were opposite. I have often heard the fishermen 

 say when they came in after a hard day's work, that " we have done noth- 

 ing today; strong tide, and our seine capsized every time we placed it.' 



40. All the effect we know is that the wind makes the water rough, 

 and we cannot catch them ; but I do not think the wind has much effect 

 on them as to their habits or to drive them away, for after the hardest 



^storms we have ever known on our coast, the fish are found where they 

 were when the storm came on. 



41. There were about ten gangs employed in IsTarragansett Bay for 

 the whole season, and there were not far from one hundred men em- 

 ployed in working them. I leave out of this estimate those gangs 

 that fit here in the spring, and go east and fish the whole season. My 

 business is mostly in Maine, and in my vicinity there were fifty-five 

 gangs, which employed over six hundred men. More than one-half of 

 these men came from Ehode Island. Most of them fish there a short 



