124 W. Up ham — Fishing Bank*. 



level but only in a single instance reach above it, forming 

 Sable Island. These plateaus, covered by water ranging 

 mostly from 10 to 50 fathoms in depth, sustain luxuriant sub- 

 marine vegetation, abundant molluscan life, and vast schools 

 of cod, haddock, mackerel, halibut, and other food fishes, 

 which almost from the time of first discovery and exploration 

 of this coast have caused its submerged plateaus to be the site 

 of important fisheries and thence to be known as Fishing- 

 Banks. 



In their order from southwest to northeast, the more exten- 

 sive of these plateaus are the St. George's, Western or Sable 

 Island, Banquerean, St. Pierre, and Green Banks, and, most 

 northeastern and by far the largest, the Grand Bank of New- 

 foundland. 



St. George's Bank, more frequently called simply George's 

 Bank by the Gloucester fishermen whose fleet of hundreds of 

 schooners is mostly employed in fishing there, extends a hun- 

 dred and seventy five miles east from Nantucket and Cape 

 Cod, being connected with the Nantucket shoals by an isthmus 

 which has about 40 fathoms of water. The area of St. 

 George's Bank above the 50 fathom contour line exceeds that 

 of the State of Massachusetts, and has a width of about a hun- 

 dred miles from northwest to southeast. George's Shoal, on 

 the northwestern part of this plateau, has two spots with only 

 12 feet of water ; while twenty miles w r est from that highest 

 portion of St. George's Bank, it rises again in the Cultivator 

 Shoal to 18 feet, or only 3 fathoms, below the sea level. 

 About these shoals the ground swells of great storms break 

 with nearly as much grandeur and danger to shipping as on a 

 coast line. The surface of the bank, as shown by the sound- 

 ings of the XI. S. Coast Survey, "is covered with pebbles and 

 small stones, excepting shallow portions and pot-holes, where 

 the material ground down by the sea has accumulated."* 



North of St. George's Bank, the Gulf of Maine occupies an 

 area of about 36,000 square miles, of which nearly a third part 

 exceeds 100 fathoms in depth, the average for the whole being 

 estimated not less than 'lb fathoms The maximum depth of 

 the western part of the Gulf of Maine is 180 fathoms, fuund 

 46 miles east of Cape Ann ; and of its eastern part, at a dis- 

 tance of a hundred miles east-southeast from the last, 199 

 fathoms, this being close north of George's Bank, in latitude 



* "Physical hydrography of the Gulf of Maine." Report of the U. S. Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, for the year ending June, 1879, pp. 175-190. " A plea for a 

 light on St. George's Bank." Appendix No. 1 1 , ibid., for year ending June, 1885, 

 pp. 483-485. The contour of the Fishing Banks, as here described, is shown by 

 Eldridge's Chart from Cape Cod to Belle Isle, 1887 (published by S. Thaxter & 

 Son, 125 State St., Boston). 



