1162 MISCELLANEOUS. 



whole commercial marine consisted of only 1,232 vessels in 1582, of 

 which 217 were upwards of 80 tons. To assume that the fifty then 

 visiting Newfoundland were of the latter class, is to state that nearly 

 one quarter part of the navigation of England, suitable for distant 

 voyages, was employed in fishing. 



In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, under the first charter that passed 

 the great seal of England for colonization in America, arrived at New- 

 foundland. He found thirty-six vessels in the harbor of St. John of 

 different nations, and was refused entrance; but on hearing that he 

 had a commission from Queen Elizabeth, they submitted. 



He took possession of the island with great pomp and ceremony, 

 and granted lands and privileges to fishermen in fee, on condition of 

 the payment of quit-rent. It is important to remark that the right of 

 England to Newfoundland and its fishing-grounds rests on the dis- 

 covery of Cabot, in 1497, and on the possession of Gilbert at this time. 



Sir Humphrey was accompanied oy smiths, shipwrights, masons, 

 carpenters, "mineral men," and refiners, and, to win the savages, 

 toys, such as morris-dancers and hobby-horses, were provided in 

 ample quantities. The crews of his vessels, and, indeed, some of the 

 artisans, were desperate men. The seamen on board of his own ship, 

 the Swallow, were, it is said, chiefly pirates. Poorly clad, and falling 

 in with a French vessel returning from the fishing-ground, they deter- 

 mined to rob her to supply their wants. They not only executed 

 their purpose, by stripping their victims of their clothing and of arti- 

 cles of food, but, by winding cords round their heads, produced such 

 exquisite torture as to extort the surrender of their most hidden stores. 



After a short tarry at Newfoundland, Sir Humphrey sailed for Eng- 

 land. On the passage his vessel encountered a fearful gale, and he 

 and all on board perished. He deserves honorable mention in our 

 annals. He was the first great projector of an American colony, and 

 a virtuous and enlightened man, and impoverished himself and 

 injured his friends, and finally lost his life, in his endeavors to plant 

 the Anglo Saxon race in the western hemisphere. 



Assuming full title to the island and the fisheries, the English seem, 

 for the moment, to have attempted to exclude the vessels of other 

 nations, or, at least, to have compelled an acknowledgment of subjec- 

 tion to them as vested with proprietary rights. We find that, in 1585, 

 a fleet of ships under Sir Bernard Drake made prizes of several vessels 

 laden with fish and furs, which he sent to England. 



Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage, disastrous as it was to himself and 

 to others, was still the direct means of exciting the attention of his 

 countrymen to adventures, which, by virtue of his patent, could be 

 made under the protection of the crown, as to a British possession. I 

 incline to believe that the Newfoundland fishery had never yet become 

 the favorite of the English merchants. 



By the statute-book there were one hundred and fifty-three days in 

 a year on which British subjects were required to abstain from flesh, 

 and to eat fish, and the demand for the products of the sea w T as, of 

 course, immense. But the Iceland fishery was still prosecuted; and, 

 that her people might not be molested there, Queen Elizabeth conde- 

 scended to ask the forbearance and protection of Chistian IV of Den- 

 mark, who claimed the Iceland seas as his own. 



The observance of the interdictions as to flesh on fish-days was 

 deemed of great moment, and among the tracts of the time was one 



