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FRESH-HALIBUT FISHERY. ot 
Captain Marr also states that no large fares of halibut have been taken on George’s since 
1848. He thinks that the halibut at that time ‘shifted off” into deep water. 
The following statement, communicated by H. A. 8S. Dearbon to the secretary of the State of 
Massachusetts, was printed in the Boston Courier, and again appeared in the Gloucester Telegraph 
of March 9, 1839: 
“Before the construction of the Providence and Stonington Railroad the whole number of 
halibut annually caught and brought into Cape Ann did not exceed 2,500, which were nearly all 
sold fresh, for immediate consumption; for not having been in demand when cured in any manner 
by salt for the domestic or foreign markets, but few were prepared for that purpose; in fact, so 
worthless were they considered as salted fish that the owners of the vessels employed in the fish- 
eries generally instructed the crews to cut adrift all halibut which were drawn up, and every year 
many thousands had been thus turned back to the deep with a fatal wound. But such was now 
the facility for transporting them fresh to the New York market, at least 16,000 were taken and 
a large portion of them sent to that city by the railroads and steamboats. The average weight of 
each being 50 pounds, the whole quantity amounts to 800,000 pounds, and as the common price 
paid to fishermen is 2 cents per pound, this new source of revenue yields an income of $16,000. 
‘Formerly the halibut was only caught late in the spring and during the summer and autumnal 
months, on the south shoals of Nantucket, along the coast of Cape Cod, in Barnstable Bay, on 
Cashe’s Ledge, and some other places, where they were most abundant at certain seasons of the 
year, and always in deep water, being considered, as it is termed, a bottom fish. But since the 
demand for this American turbot,.as it may with propriety be called (for it much resembles that 
delicious fish in form and flavor), has so vastly increased, the fishermen have made explorations 
in search of other haunts, and, to their great astonishment, found them in immense quantities on 
George’s Bank, early in March ; and what was still more surprising, and a fact wholly unknown 
to them, they appeared in extensive shoals on the surface of the water like mackerel, and were 
taken with 3 or 4 fathoms of line, instead of from 26 to 70, which they had been accustomed to use 
time out of mind in the bottom fishing. The Cape Ann vessels take from 290 to 500 each trip, 
weighing from 20 to 100 pounds.” 
In 1848, according to Capt. Epes W. Merchant, halibut were so abundant on George’s Bank, 
east of the Cultivator Shoal, in 25 to 40 fathoms, that they followed the books of the fishermen to the 
surface. Persons on the deck of the vessel could touch them with their hands as they swam about 
and could gaff them from the surface without difficulty. Vessels could easily catch a fare of 50,000 
pounds of fish in two days. Captain Merchant had a vessel which caught a fare in forty-eight hours. 
Capt. Israel Friend, of Gloucester, tells us that in 1848 he was one of the crew of the schooner 
Baltic, in which he sailed for George’s in March. They fished with hand-lines, but found halibut so 
plenty that four of the crew kept their lines on deck and did not fish, but employed themselves in 
assisting to gaff in the halibut that were hauled up by the others. In this way they caught a full 
fare—240 halibut in number—in one day. The fish were then dressed and iced, and taken to Boston 
for a market. 
Captain Marr thinks that in early days halibut were exceedingly abundant on George’s Bank. 
He has seen a “solid school of them as thick as a school of porpoises” feeding on “lant.” At 
another time “the whole surface of the water as far as you could see was alive with halibut; we 
fished all night and we did not catch a single codfish. The halibut would not let the hooks touch 
the bottom; we caught 250 in three hours; the crews of some vessels would go and cut the fins ofi 
the fish and let their bodies go. No wonder that they were broken up. We thought they were 
always going to be so. Never made no calculations that we were going to break them up. The 
