COMMEPCE, NAVIGATION AND FISHERIES. d*] 



complaining that Connecticut fills the island with European goods cheaper 

 than New York can, and that the people here, being full of New England 

 principles, would rather trade with Boston, Rhode Island and Connecticut 

 than with New York. " In another letter he says that in 1 707 Long Island 

 made 4,000 barrels of train oil, adding that " about the middle of October 

 they began to look out for fish ; the season lasts all November, Decem- 

 ber, January, February and a part of March ; a yearling will make about 

 40 barrels of oil, a stunt qr whale will make sometimes 50, sometimes 60 

 barrels of oil, and the largest whale that I heard of in these parts yielded 

 1 10 barrels of oil and i, 200 weight of bone. " In 1678 a Boston merchant, 

 named xMfred, had permission from the Dutch authorities to clear a vessel 

 from Southampton direct for England with oil bought at that place. I cite 

 these scattered facts in illustration of the extent and value to which the 

 whale fishing in boats from the shore had grown in the first century after 

 the settlement, not only because of their intrinsic interest, but because they 

 are attested by undoubted records and may be accepted without hesitation. 

 From them, in the absence of definite proof, it may safely be inferred that 

 men who could with such rare skill and success prosecute the highest 

 branch of fishing, would be equally skillful and successful in pursuit of the 

 lesser fisheries. 



Beside the moss bunker or bony fish, which, then as now, came in 

 countless numbers, and, while very palatable as food, were, then as now, 

 overshadowed by the superior toothsomeness of other species and were 

 thrown aside when caught or used merely as manure, the better sorts of 

 fish most common in these waters were the sea and striped bass, black fish, 

 cod, chequet, eels, flounders, flat-fish, frost fish, mackerel, perch, 'porgies, 

 shad, sheepshead, tom-cod, etc., while of shell fish the most abundant and 

 important were oysters, clams, crabs, lobsters, escalops, mussels and 

 winkles. 



When the taking of these various swimming and shell fish in quantities 

 beyond the needs of the local markets, and the sending them across the 

 sound or to New York for sale, began to be a regular branch of trade, it is not 

 possible to say, but it is probable that it did not become a business of much 

 magnitude till long after the Revolution. Smacks, or vessels provided with 

 wells in which to carry live fish, or with apartments for preserving them in 

 ice, were not built till after the present century began. Neither were the 

 modes of fishing at an earlier date such as to admit of keeping the fish any 

 great length of time. They were caught with hook and fine, with seines, 

 or with gill nets, and were dead when brought to land. As late as 1825 or 

 '30, it is stated thar there was no demand in N. Y. market for dead fish. 

 Using ice in which to box and ship dead fish is a modern invention and has 

 grown up mostly within the past 20 or 25 years ; it was perhaps suggested 

 and made possible by the putting on of steam packets, with the old propell- 

 er Albany as one of the pioneers, to ply between our eastern bays and New 

 York, and was promoted by the flicilities afforded to fishermen by the L. I. 

 R. R. Co., which has derived and does still derive a large revenue from 

 the transportation of boxed fish — how large, I could not ascertain. The 

 earliest knowledge I have had of building fishing smacks in the county goes 

 back to about 1810, when, and during succeeding years, several were built 

 at Rocky Point (now East Marion), a few miles east of Stirling (as Green- 

 port was then called), by Boss Jerry Brown, whose old shipyard was where 



