42- 



court, and heard the complaints of one hundred and seventy masters 

 of English vessels. The abuses seem to have been flagrant. The 

 captains l»ad been accustomed to leave their boats and salt on the coast, 

 hoping to find them at the beginning of the next season, but m many- 

 cases not a vestige remained of either. The bait prepared for the next 

 day's fishing was frequently stolen out of the nets ; the forests were 

 often wantonly set fire to; the large stones used in pressing the fish 

 were sunk at the mouth of the harbors; and httle or no regard was 

 paid to the Sabbath. Whitbourne's courts and juries were the first, 

 probably, under the authority of England, in the New World. 



Many thousand persons were employed as catchers and curers, and 

 the fishery was in a flourishing condition. Besides the vessels of foreign 

 flags we found "then on that coast," says he, " of your Majestie's sub- 

 jects, two hundred and fifty sail of ships, great and small."* In the 

 paper from which I have cited he speaks of a settlement of the 

 " Worshipfull WilUam Vaughan, of Tawacod, in the county of Car- 

 marthen, doctor of the civil law," who had "undertaken to plant a 

 circuit in the Newfoundland," and who " in two severall years had sent 

 thither divers men and women;" and he adds, that "there are many 

 other worthy persons, adventurers in the said plantations, whose names 

 are not herein mentioned ;" concluding with an appeal to his country- 

 men to sustain the colonies of which he had given an account, because 

 (rf the "great increase of shipping and mariners, and the employment 

 and enriching of many thousands of poore people which now live charge- 

 able to the parishioners," and for other reasons. 



Leaving here the Newfoundland fishery, for the present, we turn to 

 adventures on the coast of New England. The Englishman who made 

 the first direct voyage across the Atlantic was Bartholomew Gosnold, 

 who explored our shores in 1602, and, catching codfish near the 

 southern cape of Massachusetts, gave the name which it still bears. 

 He was followed by the celebrated John Smith in 1614, who took 

 "forty thousand" fish, which he dried, and "seven thousand" which 

 he " corned," or pickled, in the waters of Maine, and purchased a large 

 quantity of furs of the natives. The profits of his voyage were up- 

 wards of seven thousand dollars. 



Four ships firom London and four firom Plymouth came in 1616. 

 They obtained full fares, and sold their fish in Spain and the Canary 

 Islands at high prices. The numb.er increased rapidly. At the time 

 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth the island of Monhegan, in Maine, 

 had become a noted fishing station. In 1622 no less than thirty-five 

 ships from London and the west coimties of England made profitable 

 voyages to our shores. "Where in Newfoundland," says Smith, a 

 common fisherman "shared six or seven pounds," in New England, 

 he "shared fourteen pounds." This was a great difference; and it is 

 to be remembered that the profit of the merchant who furnished the 



* Eiehard Mather, who came over to Massachusetts in 1635, kept a journal of the voyage. 

 When on the Bank of Newfoundland, " on the end of it nearer to New England," he records 

 seeing " mighty fishes rollmg and tumhling in the waters, twice as long and big as an ox." 

 He saw, too, " mighty whales spewing up water in the air, like the smoke of a chimney, and 

 making the sea about them white and hoary, as is said in Job : of such iucredible bigness that 

 I will never wonder that the body of Jonas could be in the belly of a whale." 



