304 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [10] 



oak bark, tar, grease, and ochre, which acts as a good preservative of 

 the canvas. This is done once in six or eight weeks, and a suitable 

 place is kept for the i)urpose at all the important iishing stations. Oapt. 

 J. W. Collins^ states that to preserve their nets, the Newfoundland cod 

 fishermen make a mixture of tan and tar, which is thouglit botler than 

 either used separately. The tan is made from spruce buds, fir bark, and 

 birch bark (hemlock bark is not used), which are boiled together until 

 it is sufiBciently strong, when the bark is removed and tar added in the 

 proportion of 5 gallons tar to 200 gallons tan, the whole being stirred 

 well together. Some care is necessary in applying this, or else it will 

 not be evenly distributed on the net. The custom of mixing tan and tar 

 has doubtless been introduced from England, as it is known that the 

 Cornish fishermen do this, pouring out their tanning liquor into large 

 vats with coal tar, and this mixture is found to preserve the nets much 

 longer than simple tanning. The Newfoundland nets, when prepared 

 in this manner, generally last about four seasons. 



Something similar is done by the Irish fishermen from Gal way, a colony 

 of whom have for a number of years been settled here at South Boston. 

 I have received information from three difl:erent individuals with regard 

 to the methods employed. The first witness assured a friend of mine 

 that his people use "catechu, grease, and tar, to color their sails." He 

 had, for his own part, forsaken the traditional practice, and "would not 

 himself put such stuff on a white sail." Some time afterward 1 had an 

 opportunity to talk with an intelligent Galway woman, a domestic in a 

 friend's house. I quote her words: "First they take the clea-n cloth. 

 Then it is all white. Then they get some kind of oil, I don't know what, 

 and get it all over the cloth, and then they hang it up to dry for a long 

 while — a week or two weeks — and then the cloth is yellow, and then they 

 put the oil on it again, and hang it up to dry again — and 1 don't know 

 what they do after that." I was careful not to ask any leading ques- 

 tion, and made no effort to help on the story. She knew very well that 

 the sails were almost black finally, but could not tell what made them 

 black. Still later this same woman obtained the following account from 

 the mouth of an old Galway fisherman. Take 3 gallons of tar and 20 

 pounds of fresh butter. Melt the butter in a vessel, and add to it a cup 

 of salt. If salt butter were used there would be no need of the salt. 

 Heat the tar almost to boiling in another vessel, and slowly add to it 

 the butter, constantly stirring meanwhile. When the two are thor- 

 oughly combined the mixture is applied to the sailcloth by the hands of 

 the fishermen ; generally six fishermen on each side of the sail. The 

 rubbing-in by hand is deemed to be all-important, and it is commonly 

 done in the early morning of a fine day, and the sail exposed to the sun, 

 in order that the mixture may be dried in. In good sunshiny weather 

 the drying process is completed by sundown. At the end of a week 

 another coating is given in the same manner, and after a couple of days 



« BuUetiu of the U. S. Fish Commission, 18dl, p. 7. 



