G64 FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. [20] 



The harvest of the seas has drawn to the United States representa- 

 tives of nearly all countries, more particularly the maritime countries 

 of Europe. The crews of the New England fishing vessels are made up, 

 to a greater or less extent, of foreign-born men. Among these natives 

 of the British North American provinces predominate. It is not un- 

 common, however, for a single crew to be composed of men from five 

 or six different countries. As a rule, these men — provincials, Scandi- 

 navians, Danes, Germans, Portuguese, Irish, &c. — make excellent fish- 

 ermen, and often rise to command. 



Few negroes are employed in the New England food fisheries. Oc- 

 casionally a colored cook finds a situation on a fishing schooner, but it 

 rarely happens that a negro can find employment in any other capacity 

 on the vessels north of Cape Cod. On the other hand, the whaling ves- 

 sels of New England recruit a considerable portion of their crews from 

 f he negroes of the Canary Islands and elsewhere, from the Indians of 

 the Pacific islands — chiefly Kanakas of the Sandwich Islands ; from the 

 Gay Head tribe of Indians, and perhaps from various other sources 

 where colored men are obtained in somewhat less numbers. 



South of New York the fishermen are almost wholly American born. 

 In the Southern Atlantic States a large percentage of the fishermen 

 are negroes. On the west coast, Italians, Greeks, and Chinese pre- 

 dominate — of course excepting Alaska, where the native Aleuts are 

 almost the only fishermen. A few vessels, manned chiefly by New Eng- 

 land fishermen, engage in the cod fisheries from San Francisco, CaL, 

 making extended cruises to Cchotsk Sea and the Shumagin Islands on 

 the Alaskan coast. The typical New England sailor-fisherman ranks 

 ahead of all others in skill, daring, and enterprise. From the ranks of 

 his class have been drawn some of the most intelligent and successful 

 masters in our merchant marine, while it is worthy of mention that 

 skippers of fishing schooners left their little vessels during the war of 

 the Rebellion to join the Navy, in which service they filled honorable 

 and responsible positions. 



The clothing ordinarily worn by American fishermen has little to dis- 

 tinguish it from the apparel worn by any other class of sea-faring 

 men. There are none of the peculiar characteristics in dress which 

 are so noticeable in European countries, where fishermen can usually 

 be easily selected from other men simply by their costumes. When on 

 shore and off duty a New England fisherman might be mistaken for a 

 merchant, a mechanic, a lawyer, or indeed, as a representative of any 

 other class of landsmen, if judgment was to be based on the style of his 

 dress — his " shore togs," as he would term them, differing in no partic- 

 ular from those worn by men engaged in other pursuits. The jumper, 

 which is quite generally worn as a substitute for a light jacket or coat, 

 is a garment peculiar to the fishermen, or at least worn more exten- 

 sively by them than by any other class, though it is also worn to some 



