Implements and Their Uses 137 



mediate and complete. Captain Decker owned about 

 sixty acres of bottom in deep water that he had been un- 

 able to use, largely because he could not keep it free 

 from starfish. With his new boat, that proved to be able 

 to operate large dredges rapidly, he thoroughly cleaned 

 his ground, and after oysters were placed on it, was able 

 to handle them easily and to keep down the numbers of 

 their foes. The result of this first attempt to use steam 

 power on an oyster boat in America was a tenfold in- 

 crease of the boat's capacity for dredging oysters with- 

 out great increase in operating expenses. 



When this fact was realized, as it was immediately, 

 a great cry was raised by all the oystermen along the 

 shore against the employment of steam in the oyster in- 

 dustry. The state legislature became convinced that 

 something should be done to reassure these conserva- 

 tive petitioners, so it prohibited the use of steam power 

 on the natural beds, and that prohibition remains to-day 

 in Connecticut. 



But a revolution in American oyster culture had been 

 inaugurated, and has resulted in an enormous increase 

 in the number of oysters produced, and in the reclama- 

 tion of much of the deeper area of Long Island Sound. 

 Steamers to be used in oyster culture at once began to 

 appear in Connecticut and New York, and have steadily 

 increased in number, size, and efficiency ever since. 



The little converted sloop " Early Bird " measured 

 but seven tons. In 1880 there were six steam oyster 

 vessels in Connecticut, one of them measuring thirty 

 tons, net. Five years later the number had increased to 

 forty-eight vessels, averaging twenty-seven tons — but 

 three tons less than the greatest in 1880. By 1887 there 

 were fifty-seven oyster steamers in the Connecticut field, 



