704 HISTOEY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



ermen did not engage ill lobstering, as nearly all the lobsters found in these waters were females, 

 which had no pale in the Boston markets. In 1847 I employed some of our fishermen to catch me 

 two loads, which I carried to New York. The next year they engaged regularly in the fishery, and 

 I carried 25,000 lobsters to Boston and New York. Two years later the Connecticut smacks dis- 

 continued fishing and bought of our lobstermen. This new fishery gave employment to a great 

 many men during the summer. Lobsters were very abundant, and continued to be so until about 

 fifteen years ago, since when they have rapidly decreased in numbers from year to year until now 

 they are nearly all gone. All of our fishermen in those earlier times used the so called hoop pots. 

 Fifteen to twenty years ago, and before then, the fisherman would go out perhaps at midnight, 

 anchor his boat near the shore, on the edge of the ground, and put over his pots, some half dozen 

 in number. From time to time he would haul them up and empty them of their contents. If lob- 

 sters were abundant, it would keep him busy all the time, and he would return to town by 8 or 9 

 o'clock in the morning with perhaps one or two hundred in number. The price for many years 

 was 2 cents each. The hoop-pots have since been abandoned for the. more economical ones made 

 of laths. At present the lobster fishery is carried on only by old men who cannot engage in 

 harder kinds of work. In 18SO only eight, men were thus engaged, and they made an average 

 stock of about $CO each." 



During the cholera season of 1849, according to Captsiin Atwood, the sale of lobsters in New 

 York and Boston was entirely discontinued, and the fishery was interrupted, buyers breaking off 

 from their contracts. 



NOETH TRURO, MASS. Pi ior to ten years ago (or before 1870), many New London smacks came 

 to this vicinity for lobsters. At that time the hoop-net pots were still in general use, the fishermen 

 of the vicinity using only as many as they could manage from their small boats, hauling them con- 

 tinuously. The smacktnen, however, set a great many in all directions, marking their positions 

 with buoys. About 1860 it was not uucommon for a boat load to be sold at the rate of a cent 

 apiece. Lobsters are very scarce at present. 



BOSTON, MASS. According to Capt. E. M. Oakes, the first regular lobster dealer in Boston was 

 a Mr. Benjamin Simpson, who kept a re staurant in the basement of a house at the south end. He 

 nsed to go out in the harbor, in a little boat, and catch them in the vicinity of Castle Fort, and 

 then peddle them about the city. In the course of three or four years a Mr. Newcomb also went 

 into the business, hiring men to catch the lobsters, which he carried up to the city in a small 

 smack, of 10 tons (o. m.), called the Eoxana. The lobsters were boiled and peddled through the 

 streets by venders, who received about 25 per cent, on their sales. Boston began using lobsters 

 through the entire summer, fall, and winter, in 1855, Mr. Martin M. Johnson having been ihe first 

 man to continue their sale beyond the sp ring and early summer. He was also very instrumental 

 in starting, at about the same time, the important lobster trade between Boston and New York. 

 In 1856 several Boston firms bought lobsters during the entire year, making a few shipments to 

 New York. 



An item in the Boston Journal, in 1857, states that there were at that time only three lobster- 

 boiling establishments in Boston. During March, April, May, and June, 200,000 lobsters were 

 boiled there. The quantity of lobsters brought in during the year 1856 was about 1,200,000, by 

 count, worth $60,000 to the fishermen, and $84,000 to the retail trade. Two hundred men were 

 then catching for the Boston market. The lobsters came mainly from the region of Cohasset, 

 and were carried in fifteen smacks, each with a crew of five men, and seven additional men to 

 tend the pots. There was a dory to each man, and they handled fifty pots apiece. " The man in 

 the dory rows among his traps, takes out the lobsters, pushes a wooden plug into the joint of 



