82 FISHBEMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 



iutensifled that spirit of self-reliance, independence, and national power to which the conflict of from 

 1775 to 1783 was a natural and necessary resultant." 



The Boston Journal of Commerce of January 25, 1879, in speaking of some of the old whalers 

 sunk in Charleston Harbor during the late war between the States, gives the following account of 

 the capture of one of them from the British : 



" The Corea came from England during the Revolution, bound for New York with army stores. 

 Putting into Long Island in a storm, a small vessel with nearly one hundred fishermen put out to 

 capture her, and, with only four men and a boy on deck, anchored on the fishing grounds, and 

 were apparently busy fishing when a gun from the Corea summoned her crew to run down to her, 

 and when alongside a part of the crew were made to bring their fish on board. While the English 

 sailors were looking at their prize one of the fishermen threw some fish on the schooner's deck 

 and the armed men swarmed up from the hold and on board of the Corea, which was taken to New 

 Bedford, and eventually became a whaler." 



During the war of the rebellion the Navy of the North, as has already been stated, received 

 large accessions from among the fishermen of New England. Two or three companies of infantry 

 were recruited at Gloucester, the members of which were chiefly fishermen. 



Capt. F. J. Babson, collector of customs for the port of Gloucester, gives the following concise 

 statement of the relation which Gloucester has held, and still holds, to the United States as an ele- 

 ment in its system of coast defenses: "For the defense of the Union in the late war it is esti 

 mated that- fifteen hundred men went into the service from Gloucester, two-thirds at least being 

 seafaring men or fishermen. The availability of fishermen for offensive war on a foreign nation 

 must be computed on the privateering basis. At least fifty swift-sailing steamers for privateering 

 could obtain crews in Gloucester in one week, while service in the regular Navy is not, and never 

 will be, popular with our people. Our men desire chances for promotion, such as is possible in 

 the volunteer service in the Army, and the country, if she ever fights, must fight a war of the 

 people, by the people, and for the people." 



There is an almost complete lack of statistics showing to what degree our fishermen rendered 

 service during the late war. It may be taken for granted that fishing towns furnished their full 

 quota to the Army for these wars, no distinction in the drafts between mariners and landsmen, 

 while all of them contributed a greater or less nnmber of men to the naval forces of the north. 

 Most of the men entering the Navy, as well as a large number of those who joined the Army, 

 were volunteers. The extent to which fishermen were employed in the Navy is not under- 

 stood, even by persons, not residents of fishing communities, who profess to be well informed on 

 such matters. The fishermen usually went to large recruiting stations, such as those in Boston or 

 New York, and no record was made of their former occupation. After the war had closed, scarcely 

 a fishing vessel sailed from Gloucester or any other large fishing port which had not in its crew 

 several veterans. 



The following account of the resistance of a whaling captain to being captured by the Confed 

 erate privateer Shenandoah, as recorded in the newspapers of the time, serves to illustrate the 

 dogged determination and courage of a New England whaleman. 



Capt. Thomas G. Young, of the Favorite, of Fairhaven, a man between sixty and seventy years 

 old, who had all his property invested in his vessel, loaded his bomb guns and other weapons and 

 took his stand on top of the cabin of his doomed vessel, and, when the Shenandoah's boat came along- 

 side, drove her off by threatening to fire upon her. Captain Waddell, of the Shenandoah, ordered 

 his gunner to train a gun on the Favorite and fire low j but Young's subordinates, having in vain 



