COMMERCE, NAVIGATION AND FISHERIES. ^5 



the same place in Maine, where they still own it but it is not now in opera- 

 tion, the tish having deserted that coast for four years past, until late in the 

 present season. Capt. B. C. Cartwright, of Shelter Island, one of the 

 veterans of this fishery, began with a steam factory at Ram Head in i860, 

 and in 1872 removed it to Bunker City, where be now carries it on success- 

 fully. I have not time to enumerate the various factories and pot works 

 that have been started on Shelter Island and descril)e their several vicissi- 

 tudes. Of the 15 or 16 that have had longer or shorter careers on that 

 island, only that of Capt. Cartwright, known as the Peconic Oil Co., and 

 of Hawkins Bros., near the same place, remain. On Gardiner's and Pe- 

 conic Bays, beside 8 or 10 now closed or dismantled, there ^re 12 factories 

 in active operation, viz: at Promised Land, Abbe & Co., George F. 

 Tuthill & Co., Di.\on, Jonas Smith, T. F. Price & Co., Elsworth Tuthill & 

 Co., O. H. Bishop and the pot works of Wilham M. Tuthill & Sons; at 

 North West, D. D. Wells & Sons and Sterling Oil Co. ; at Bunker City, 

 Peconic Oil Co. and Hawkins Bros. ; at Long Beach, Orient, the Atlantic 

 & Virginia Fertilizer Co. During the season just about to close, these 

 factories empioyed 7 double and 20 single gang steamers costing ■ 

 $10,000 to $25,000 each and averaging 29 men for 

 the former and 16 for the latter, or a total of 528 

 men on the steamers, beside 6 sailing gangs averaging 13 men, or 78 in 

 all, while the factorits employ an everage uf 30 men, ur 360 in all, making 

 an aggregate of nearly 1,000 men employed m this industry on the two 

 bays. A careful approximate estimate of the past season's catch, by which 

 is meant the fish brought and rendered at the factories on those bays is 

 145,000,000, ot which about 134,000,000 were taken in steamers, averaging 

 something over 5,000,000 to a steamer; while the sailing gangs have 

 averaged about 2,000,000. Wells & Co., have made 894 barrels of oil and 

 1,100 tons of scrap, and have consumed about $5,000 worth or 1,000 tons 

 of coal. The carrying of coal and salt to the factories and taking oil and 

 scrap from them to market, makes freight lor many vessels. In 1880 the 

 total value of products of the menhaden fishery in the State of New York, 

 as tabulated for the U. S. Census of that year, was $1, 114, 158, of which all 

 but the products of lour factories on Barren Island, one of them owned by 

 Hawkins Bro.s., of Jamesport, and all of them mainly or wholly supplied 

 with fish by fishermen from this county, was a result of the combination of 

 capital, labor and skill by residents ot Suffolk County in a manufacture of 

 which the raw. material had no value until taken out of the teeming sea and 

 applied to the uses of mankind. Certainly, than this no branch ot human 

 industry could be more intrinsically worthy of commendation and encour- 

 agement. 



Mr. Louis C. d'Homergue, Secretary of the U. S. Menhaden Oil and 

 Guano Association, which was organized in January 1874, was the first to 

 make a business ot drying scraps and shipping it to Europe; he had a fac- 

 tory for this purpose at Hay Beach, Shelter Island, previous to 1876. He 

 has kindly furnished me with many useful data respecting the work of the 

 Association and the stadstics of the business in the United States for every 

 year since its organization, but I regret to find my time will not allow me 

 to make use of them. In 1882, writing to U. S. Senator Lapham, he esti- 

 mated that the business then employed about $4,000,000 of capital, over 

 90 steam and 250 sailing vessels, and 3,000 men; that the 71,000 tons of 

 dry scrap manufactured that year was used as the basis in the composition 



