INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES 27 



by their country in these waters. Perhaps both Spain and 

 Portugal were deterred from asserting themselves by the 

 Treaty of Tordesillas, which might, for aught they knew, 

 assign Newfoundland to the other Power. If so, this motive 

 would be no longer operative after 1580, when Portugal 

 merged in Spain. 



Thus four nations fished side by side in armed but their cus- 

 innocent anarchy. Their customs were different but similar. *'" s f the 

 All the English ships hailed from the south-west of England, similar; 

 and the proceeds of the cod-fishery used to be divided into- 

 equal thirds one for the owner, one for the victualler, and 

 one for the crew in lieu of wages. 1 French crews, also, had 

 a movable wage, if their ships caught less than three hun- 

 dred Quintals, 2 and, as this maximum was rarely obtained, 

 profit-sharing was the rule both among the French and 

 the English fishermen. Both the English and the foreign 

 fleets were subject to so-called admirals, who seized or 

 allotted fishing-stations, and places for erecting temporary 

 stages and flakes for drying cod-fish, and dispensed rude 

 justice ; but the English admiral of a harbour was the 

 captain who first arrived there, while foreign captains 

 as a rule succeeded one another as admirals by weekly 

 rotation. The customs of the sea ensured some sort of 

 order, and there were signs of a tacit partition of spheres 

 of influence. 



The southern half of the west coast of Newfoundland was but their 

 universally shunned, and two Basque whalers, which were "4/3^ 

 wrecked in the Bay of St. George in 1591, were probably different, 

 driven thither by storms. 3 The most westerly fishing-stations 



on the south coast, of which we hear from English sources, being south, 

 were first the Bay possibly White Bear Bay where a pfacentia 

 French vessel saved Hore in 1536; next Little and Great 



1 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West 

 Indies, 1640, p. 315; Sept. i, 1681 ; Nov. 18, 1698. 

 J Quintal = cwt. (circa). 

 3 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. viii, p. 163 (S. Wyet). 



