[71] HISTORY OF THE MACKEREL FISHERY. 



is pursed up and they see the mackerel, signs are made for the vessel, 

 which comes alongside. The lines are hove from the boat and the 

 mackerel are bailed in on deck and dressed." 



(/.) The mackerel pocket, or spiller. — In 1877 the schooner "Alice," ot 

 Swan's Island, had a bag-net made of haddock gauging-line, into which 

 the lish were transferred when there were too many to be cared for at 

 once. This vessel began the season in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, but 

 caught ouly 200 barrels of mackerel there, and later fished on the coast 

 of Maine, where, up to October, she had caught 1,400 barrels. 



A development of this idea is the mackerel pocket or spiller, patented 

 in April, 1880, by H. E. Willard, of Portland, Me., an article long 

 needed in the mackerel seine fishery, and which has received from the 

 fishermen the name of "mackerel pocket," or "spiller." It was first 

 used by the patentee in 1878, and Capt. Geo. Merchant, jr., of Glouces- 

 ter, Mass., invented and put into practical operation an improved 

 " spiller" last year (1880), though it was not until the present summer 

 that the advantage of its use was known to the majority of the mack- 

 erel fishermen, who have hastened to adopt it, and now more than thirty 

 of the vessels sailing from this port are each provided with one of the 

 pockets. 



The apparatus is a large net-bag, 36 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 30 

 feet deep ; it is made of stout, coarse twine and is attached to the side 

 of the vessel, where it is-kept in position, when in use, by wooden poles 

 or "outriggers," which extend out a distance of 15 feet from the 

 schooner's rail. 



When distended in this manner a "spiller" will hold over 200 barrels 

 of mackerel, which can thus be kept alive, as in the well of a smack, 

 until the crew, who have captured them in the great purse-seines, have 

 time to cure their catch. As is well known, it frequently happens that 

 several hundred barrels of mackerel are taken at a single haul. Here- 

 tofore, when such a large quantity of fish were caught, but a compara- 

 tively small portion of them could be cured by the crew of the vessel 

 to which the seine belonged. The result was that when a large catch 

 was made, a considerable percentage of the fish were generally "given 

 away" to some other vessel, since if only a part of them were removed 

 from the seine to the vessel's deck, the remainder being left in the net 

 until the first lot were cured, the chances were nine to one that the fine 

 twine of which the purse-seines are made would be bitten in many 

 place:; by the swarming dogfish (Squalus Americanus), that bete noir of 

 the mackerel fisher. In addition to the injury to the net, the inclosed 

 body of fish were thus allowed to escape and went streaming out through 

 the numerous holes made by the keen teeth of these voracious blood- 

 hounds of the sea, which, in their fierce and ravenous pursuit of the 

 imprisoned mackerel, usually succeeded in robbing the fisherman of a 

 large portion of the fruits of his labors.* 



* Captain S. J. Martin writes that in the summer of 1881 the crew of one of the 

 mackerel schooners endeavored to save their seine from the depredations of the dog- 



