Conditions in the Northern Field 199 



seem not to be generally appreciated, are made possible 

 by the recent development of mammoth steam dredging 

 vessels. The finest of the fleet of the eighties, housed 

 over, operating four steam dredges, and having a daily 

 capacity of five hundred bushels, could almost be carried 

 on the deck of some of the vessels now owned by the 

 same company. Figure 37 gives a view of one of these 

 powerful ice-breaking boats. It steams out regularly 

 to distant farms, perhaps in Narragansett Bay or eastern 

 Long Island, where its owner has leased bottoms, and 

 neither weather nor ice fields seriously interfere. In one 

 day it is able to dredge eight thousand five hundred bush- 

 els of oysters in forty feet of water, and during the next 

 it can, from the most distant point, deliver the cargo at 

 its owner's packing establishment at New Haven. 



One may imagine the nature of the protest that would 

 come from the Chesapeake oysterman if a few vessels 

 of this sort were suddenly to appear on his own oyster 

 territory. He would expect his Maryland rocks to melt 

 like snow in April, and his expectation would be realized. 

 Yet he boasts that the immense reaches of Chesapeake 

 Bay comprise the greatest oyster field in the world ; 

 and undoubtedly he is right. How, then, is it possible 

 for vessels of this sort to operate in so small a body as 

 Long Island Sound, where natural conditions for oyster 

 growth are so much less favorable, without destroying 

 the industry? Here they are busily occupied from fall 

 until summer in taking immense cargoes from the bot- 

 tom, and yet the industry actually increases from year to 

 year. This forest of buoys explains the matter, for 

 among them during the remainder of the year these ves- 

 sels and many smaller ones are engaged in sowing a 

 distant harvest. The future will perhaps see a similar 



