268 THE OCEAN RIVER 



tent. Therefore honorable and worthy countrymen [he con- 

 cludes] let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for 

 it will afford as good gold as the Mines of Guiana or Potassie, 

 with less hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility." 



Captain John Smith, with his immense gift of common 

 sense, correctly gauged the true wealth of the New England 

 coastal waters, but he did put it a little on the easy side. It is 

 time we took a brief look at the actual set-up along the shores 

 in from the Banks and see how those that mined the silver of 

 the deeps handled their difficult if profitable task. All nations 

 wished to dominate the fishing wealth of the Stream's edge 

 along the Banks. Roughly there were certain things favoring 

 the English. The French and Spanish colonial systems were 

 developed largely under strict governmental control, and after 

 the brief Huguenot supremacy in France no colonization was 

 permitted other than Catholic. The English was much more a 

 straight commercial enterprise, without particular emphasis 

 on Church or State; time played into English hands when the 

 day of the traders superseded the day of the gentlemen adven- 

 turers. 



Just as the Mediterranean poured its vessels west and south 

 along the Equatorial Current under the favoring trade winds 

 to the Caribbean, so the rough and clouded waters of the 

 Channel each year in February and March assembled a fleet 

 of vessels great and small, outfitted for the western fisheries of 

 the Banks. Newfoundland was the new hunting ground for 

 west England and the French seaports. The cod challenged 

 the herring as the great staple fish. The French fleet, as a rule, 

 got off to an early start. Both fleets had to buck the roughest 

 waters and the most cantankerous weather in the northern 

 hemisphere, but the captains and the men were long trained 

 in a hard school and their ships were rugged — they averaged 

 from sixty to three hundred tons burden and carried small 

 boats and gear for a six months' journey over and back, if nee- 



