22 



ing six schooners, a wharf and fishing-room at Canso, and a large 

 amount of other property. 



A more extensive maritime business in another branch had, how- 

 ever, been commenced in the early part of the eighteenth century. 

 A portion of the wood land of the Cape was then divided and many 

 vessels were built in the town and used in the transportation of this 

 article to Boston. There seems to be good ground for believing that 

 as many as fifty sloops must have been engaged in it at one time ; 

 but it was a trade that must necessarily be of short duration, and 

 finally other employments for the vessels must be sought. Fishing 

 was, of course, the only resource, and we find, before 1720, several 

 sloops engaged in the distant fisheries. As early as 1711 certainly 

 our fishermen began to resort to Cape Sable, and in 1716 mention is 

 made of a "scooner" employed in fishing there : the same one per- 

 haps, the first of her class, that was built and owned by Capt. An- 

 drew Robinson, a noted fishing captain who invented the rig of that 

 class of vessels. This man is said to have been so industrious on 

 the banks, when fish were plenty, that he would not leave his place 

 on deck even to eat ; but when he was hungry he had a ship-biscuit 

 brought to him which he contrived to eat by working it round in 

 his mouth with his teeth and lips, while his hands were attending to 

 the hook and line. During these first years of the fishery the men 

 were greatly annoyed by the French and Indians, and some were kill- 

 ed ; but the business was rendered most discouraging by the havoc 

 of shipwreck. The year 171G is a year memorable in the annals of 

 the town for the first sad and sAveeping calamity of the kind, which 

 has so often since shrouded it in mourning. On this mournful occa- 

 sion, five vessels, comprising, upon a reasonable supposition, not less 

 than one-tenth part of all the tonnage of the town, were wholly lost 

 in that 3*ear on a fishing vo} r age to Cape Sable ; and about twenty 

 men, a fifteenth part, probabl}*, of all the male citizens of the place, 

 perished by the catastrophe. 



The history of the Gloucester fishery from this time to the Revo- 

 lutionary War may be briefly related. The vessels with which the 

 business was first carried on were the sloops built in the town. A 

 few schooners were added about 1720, and probably soon became the 

 favorite class of vessels for this business. Many of them were of 

 the burthen of fifty tons or more, and were therefore suitable for 

 vo3*ages to the Grand Bank and other distant fishing grounds, and 

 for emploj'mcnt in coastwise and foreign vo}'ages in the winter sea- 

 son. They were of a peculiar model, which prevailed about a him- 



