1962 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



livelihood. The quotations from the reports of Captain Anstruther. 

 the British naval officer that Mr. Elder referred to, show what the 

 situation was. The only money that these poor fellows on the coast 

 ever got they got from the Americans. As Captain Anstruther says, 

 what they had been doing before was to work under the trade or barter 

 system, with such local business concerns as would buy from them. 

 They would bring in their fish and get a credit, and buy a pair of 

 boots, or an oiler, or molasses, or pork, and have it charged, and so on. 

 The first money they ever got, and the only money they got, came 

 from the Americans. But all that is in Captain Anstruther's report, 

 and I shall not dwell on it. But a custom, a practice, and a popula- 

 tion finding their means of livelihood from this trade had grown up 

 on the treaty coast, until down came the axe in 1905 and cut that 

 means off. 



As an incident to. the fact that these people, father and son. had 

 come to live upon this industry or trade with the Americans, there 

 came an assertion on their part of a right to take the fish themselves, 

 and to profit by the industry ; and that was the basis of the Fortune 

 Bay difficulty. I will read from some of the affidavits about the 

 Fortune Bay affair, in the United States Case Appendix, pp. 694 

 and 695. 



The Tribunal will remember that after the Treaty of Washington 

 was made, under which the United States, pursuant to the Halifax 

 award, paid 5,500,000 dollars to Great Britain for the privilege of 

 fishing, a lot of American fishing-vessels went into Fortune Bay to 

 exercise the privilege, and they undertook to do so, and were pre- 

 vented by the inhabitants. I read from p. 694 of the United States 

 Appendix : 



"The examination of James Tharnell, of Anderson's Cove, Long 

 Harbour, taken upon oath, and who saith : 



" ' I am a special constable for this neighbourhood.' ' 

 That is, a special officer of Newfoundland at that point in For- 

 tune Bay. I now read from the foot of p. 694, and over on to p. 

 695, what he says about the Fortune Bay affair: 



1188 " The people were not aware that it was illegal to set the 

 seines that time of the vear, and were only prompted to their 

 act by the fact that it was Sunday. We all consider it to be the 

 greatest loss to us for the Americans to bring those large seines to 

 catch herring. The seines will hold 2,000 or 3,000 barrels of herring, 

 and, if the soft weather continues, they are obliged to keep them in 

 the seines for sometimes two or three weeks, until the frost comes, 

 and by this means they deprive the poor fishermen of the bay of their 

 chance of catching any with their small nets, and then, when they 

 have secured a sufficient quantity of their own, they refused to buy of 

 the natives. 



" If the Americans had been allowed to secure all the herrings in 

 the bay for themselves, which they could have done that day. they 



