THE STRUGGLE FOE EXISTENCE 53 



fishing station in the town. It is reported that Mr. Aller- 

 ton was fishing there with eight boats a short time after 

 his arrival, 1 and that a ship's loading of fish was cured 

 there in 1632 or 1633. 2 Mathew Cradock, a wealthy Lon- 

 don merchant, though he never came to Massachusetts, es- 

 tablished a station at Mystic, and built a house at 

 Marblehead which was occupied by Allerton and fisher- 

 men in his employ. 3 A fishing station was set up at Scitu- 

 ate in 1633. 



In addition to shallops and pinnaces, the kind of craft 

 most generally in use by the early colonists, the fishermen 

 and merchants now began to build more sea-worthy boats 

 and barques. A vessel was built in Boston in 1633 called 

 the Trial; another of one hundred and twenty tons was 

 built by the people of Marblehead three years later. 

 Salem followed with one of three hundred tons in 1640, 

 and with another in 1642. The first vessel built at 

 Plymouth seems to have been a barque of forty or fifty 

 tons, in 1641, built at a cost of two hundred pounds. 



The settlers at Salem and other nearby places had to 

 pass through experiences of suffering and death not unlike 

 that of the Plymouth colonists. About one hundred of the 

 people of Salem died before the close of the year 1630. 

 Among the number was the first minister of Salem, the 

 Rev. Francis Higginson, who has left for us a glow- 

 ing account of the treasures of the sea as found in Mas- 

 sachusetts Bay. 



"The abundance of sea-fish," he writes, "are almost be- 

 yond believing, and sure I should scarce have believed it, 

 except as I had seen it with my own eyes. I saw great 

 store of whales and grampusses, and such abundance of 

 mackerels that it would astonish one to behold, likewise 



1 Roads, History of Marblehead, p. 8. 



2 Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, I, p. 133. 

 Sabine, p. 124. 



