74 COMMERCE, KAVlGAtlON AND FISHERIES. 



and two' purse-net gangs fishing in the bays; afterwards a third. At first 

 cat-rigged boats were used both for the seines and for carryaways to convey 

 the fish to the factory; sloop yachts, after handsome and finely equipped . 

 vessels costing several thousand dollars, were introduced about 1868, and 

 being built chiefly for speed, they made, until steam supplanted them a few 

 years ago, a most picturesque as well as novel feature of a busin -ss strictly 

 utilitarian — perhaps the only business which ever did or fairly could warrant 

 the employment of vessels fitted by model, rig, finish, and sailing qualities 

 to rank with pleasure yachts. In 1870 a small steamer designed for towing 

 the carry-away boats — in which manhaden are carried from the place where 

 a haul or "set" of the purse-net may he made to the factories — about the 

 Bays, with a view to saving time in delivery of the fish, was built at the ship- 

 yard of Boss Oliver H. Bishop in Greenport; but she -was not adapted to 

 the work in all respects, and did not develop spoed enough to make her 

 profitably serviceable, and so after full trial she was sold to the Greenport 

 and Shelter Island Ferry Company to be converted to its use as a ferry boat 

 between the two places. In 1872 Messrs. Wells & Co. had built for their 

 Maine factory the steamer Vvm. A. Wells, modeled, constructed and 

 engined with special referenc(; to the business of following menhaden into 

 deep water off" the coast of Maine, towing or following the purse-boats to 

 the fish, hoisting their catch by steam scoops into the hold, and after steam- 

 ing back to the factory discharging them in the same way into cars that 

 carry them on inclined railways to the rendering tanks. In the following 

 year the Ranger Oil Co. , of Greenport, of w^hich Thomas F. Price was 

 (and is) managing agent, built at South Bristol, Maine, the steamer E. F. 

 Price, for Cap. Elijah Tallman, of Rhode Island, who has remained in 

 the service of the same company ever since, and is now ''commodore" of 

 its flejt; this was the first menhaden steamer actually employed in fishing 

 on Peconic and Gardiner's Bays. The first steamer ever built for this 

 fishery was the Seven Brothers, built, and I believe still owned, bv the 

 enterprising firm of Church Bros., of Tiverton, Rhode Island. Hawkins 

 Bros., of Jamespcjrt. in 1874, brought their first steamer into the Bav. 

 Wells & Sons, after carrying on the business at White Hill- for nearl\- 20 

 years, with varying fortune but with a preponderance on the right side of 

 the account, were led by the growing opposition of their new neighbors at 

 Prospect to pull up stakes in 1871 and remove to North West, in East- 

 Hampton town, where they now have their factory in active operation, its 

 cash products for the past .season exceeding $53,000. Their largest sea- 

 son's catch was in 1879, ^^hen 18,000,000 fish, caught by two gangs and 

 averaging 4 gallons of oil to the thousand fish, were rendered. On another 

 year, from 6,200,000 fish they made 62,000 gallons, or a full average of 10 

 gallons to the thousand. That year, from one particular boat load of fish, 

 which was kept separate and accurately measured, an average yield of 24 

 gallons to the thousand was got. The fattest fish and largest yield of oil 

 ever known, is reported from Shinnecock Bayf where some menhaden that 

 had been shut up in brackish water grew to such size and fatness that they 

 yielded at the rate of 48 gallons to the thousand. 



Wells & Co. , a firm with D. D. and H. E.Wells holdingone-third interest 

 were the first to build a steam factory in the State of Maine, having put up 

 one at South Bristol in 1864, two years before any others in that State. 

 Five years later they removed to Virginia, at Farmer's Creek, it being also 

 the first factory in that State; not succeeding there they removed 't back to 



