162 FISHEEMEN OP THE UNITED STATES. 



them at all. 1 sold 300 quintals at $2 a quintal to one dealer in Albany, and another Albany 

 man took half the rest on condition that I would ship the remainder, -which I did, and got $1.71 a 

 quintal for them. So on that Grand Bank voyage I made only $50. 



In 1840 mackerel were extremely scarce. People who had been whaling at the Azores said 

 that they were plenty there, and large ones, so I conceived the idea of going to the Azores in 

 search of mackerel. We fitted out the vessel and I went there with a crew of five men, all 

 sharesmen. We found no mackerel there, but a sort of bonito, probably the Auxis rocliei, so I got 

 home as quick as I could. So we hauled up until winter and then we fished in the gully for 

 halibut. Only one other vessel, the Adrian, was fishing there, and we did very well. We had 

 the monopoly of the Boston market, for at that time the Gloucester vessels did not begin the 

 halibut fishery until the 1st of March. Sometimes we got 10 cents a pound for the fish. 



In 1841 I was still in the Lticy Mary, and in the spring we went off Monomoy and Chatham 

 and fished for shad. This was a new kind of fishery. Years before, when I used to go there for 

 bait, I saw a man catching shad, but could get no information from him, and it was evident that 

 he tried to be shy. In 1840 we mistrusted they were catching shad there, and two or three vessels 

 went down there from Provincetown, and fished with others from Chatham and got a good many. 

 In 1841 great preparations were made for catching shad, and vessels went there from Connecticut, 

 Ehode Island, and all around. A petition was sent to the legislature to prevent out States folks 

 from fishing. The law passed, but the fishermen came nevertheless. The law must have scared 

 the shad away, for none came there that year. We found no shad at Monomoy, so we went over 

 to Nantucket. We got a few in the course of our absence of three or four weeks, or we should 

 have made a broken voyage. The Lucy Mary was high boat, for we ventured out in rougher 

 weather than the others. We had four boats and eight men, and made about $60 to a share, my 

 brother and I. Shad were worth about $7 a barrel, and weighed 3 or 4 pounds each. They 

 came late in May and early June, and were not there more than a fortnight. When fishing for 

 them we went out in small boats and drifted, each boat carrying about 800 yards of gill-net, 

 which we made ourselves on purpose. The year before everybody had done well. After the shad 

 had left we returned and engaged in the mackerel fishing. This year, before the nets were set, 

 mackerel had been seen outside the cape, and we concluded to drift for them as we had for shad, and 

 made a good thing of it. We used common mackerel nets, each boat setting ten nets of 60 yards 

 each. We used to put -them over and let them drift all night, and in doing this we found an ever- 

 lasting sight of whiting, which were very troublesome. We sometimes had to draw in our nets 

 for fear that we should catch so many whiting we couldn't haul them out the next day. We used 

 to get tons and tons of them. They had always been plenty and staid until the bluefish tipped 

 them out. We made perhaps $100 in mackerel netting, sending them to Boston fresh, and paying 

 a quarter for carrying them. After the spring mackerel net-fishing was over, we fitted the Tiucy 

 Mary for the Gulf of Saifif Lawrence. We shipped a crew of seven men, all sharesmen. This was 

 one of the awful scarce years for mackerel, and only 55,000 barrels were packed in the whole State. 

 We went direct to the Magdalen Islands, fished down to the eastern end and staid there and kept 

 catching a few on the ledges. They were good mackerel what we did catch. We kept hearing 

 from the west shore of the gulf that there were no mackerel there. We staid until October and 

 then came out with 100 barrels. That was as well as we could have done at anything, for mack- 

 erel were considerable high. We got a good price and made about $100 apiece. In the winter 

 we went halibuting again. 



In 1842 I got a letter from Dr. D. H. Storer, of Boston, saying that he was preparing a book 

 on the fisheries of Massachusetts, and asking about the torpedo, which he had heard occurred on 



