102 FISHERIES OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC 



American vessels is given as about three hundred, of 18,000 

 tons, and 3,900 men. 



The New Englanders, says Gosling, did not seem to mend 

 their ways as the years went on, for we find, in the very full 

 reports made in 1772-3 by Lieutenant Roger Curtis, even 

 severer strictures upon their conduct. He said they were a 

 lawless banditti, the cause of every quarrel between the Esqui- 

 maux and Europeans, and whose greatest joy was to distress 

 the subjects of the mother country; they swarmed upon the 

 coasts like locusts, and committeed every kind of offence 

 with malignant wantonness. 



But their fishing operations were soon brought to a 

 standstill by the outbreak of the War of Independence, when 

 many of the erstwhile fishermen turned privateers and return- 

 ed to their former haunts, to harry the unprotected fisher- 

 men and settlers in Newfoundland and Labrador. 



In 1776 Governor Montague writes that he hears that 

 four privateers have been seen in the Straits of Belle Isle, 

 and that he has two men-of-war there which he hopes may 

 encounter them. While the negotiations for a treaty of peace 

 between Britain arid the United States were in progress, great 

 stress was laid upon the importance of the fisheries. Every 

 point, every word, was carefully weighed. Time and again 

 the negotiations were nearly broken off because of the diffi- 

 culty in coming to an agreement on this matter. But finally, 

 by the Treaty of Paris, 1783, it was agreed "That the peo- 

 ple of the United States shall continue to enjoy, unmolested, 

 the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank, and 

 on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea where the 

 inhabitants of both countries used at any time to fish; and 

 also that the inhabitants of the United States shall have 

 liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of 

 Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use (but not to dry 

 or cure the same on that island), and also on the coasts, bays, 

 and creeks of all other of His Britannic Majesty's dominions 

 in America; and that the American fishermen shall have 



