Vol. XL, No. 1 



WASHINGTON 



July, 1921 



TME 



NATHONAL 

 ^APMDC 



COPYRIGHT. 1 92 1, BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. WASHINGTON. D. C. 



LIFE ON THE GRAND BANKS 



An Account of the Sailor- Fishermen Who Harvest the 

 Shoal Waters of North America's Eastern Coasts 



By Frederick William Wallace 



With Illustrations from Photographs by tJie Author 



IT HAD been blowing a hard Decem- 

 ber gale for two clays and the big 

 liner was rolling and pitching enough 

 to interfere with the comfort and equa- 

 nimity of the thousand or more passen- 

 gers aboard her. The few hardy ones who 

 appeared at table bragged of their per- 

 formance in lounge and smoking-room 

 and opined it was quite; a storm; the vast 

 number of the prostrate Vowed it was a 

 hurricane. 



In the lift of a squall of snow some 

 one, peering through the great windows 

 of the lounge, declared he saw a ship, a 

 small schooner, close alongside. A rush 

 was made for hats and wraps and the 

 small party of those whom seasickness 

 did not claim ventured out on the wind- 

 and-spray-swept promenade deck to view 

 the tiny craft which had the temerity to 

 brave such winter weather so many miles 

 offshore. 



The writer happened to be coming 

 home from Havre, and one glance at the 

 schooner to windward served to recognize 

 an old friend. She was a Bank fisher- 

 man, from Gloucester or Lunenburg pos- 

 sibly, and she was bound west for home, 

 under heavy-weather canvas. 



Passing within a cable's length of our 

 rolling and wallowing leviathan, the little 

 ioo-ton schooner was storming along 

 with a broil of white water shearing 



away from her sharp, round stem, and 

 her reefed sails were as stiff and as white 

 as marble, in the weight of the gale. 



She would top a mighty Western Ocean 

 gray-back with the graceful spring of a 

 steeple-chaser, bowsprit pointing to the 

 gray skies and red-painted underbody 

 showing clean to the heel of the foremast ; 

 then with an easy plunge, like a porpoise 

 diving, she leaped over the cresting surge 

 and drove down into the trough w r ith but 

 the^, masts and upper parts of the sails 

 showing- above the bluey-green of the 

 combers. 



"She's a yacht," remarked some one 

 admiringly. 



"Pretty daring yachtsmen to be sailing 

 in that little vessel so far out on the 

 ocean," commented another. 



WHAT THE SEAMAN MEANS BY "SAILOR." 



"They're sailors aboard that craft," ob- 

 served a business man to the grizzled 

 chief officer, who had been cajoled from 

 his watch below by the sight. 



"Aye," he returned slowly, "they're 

 sailors all right. She's an American 

 fisherman homeward bound." And he 

 stared at her for a minute or two, until 

 she vanished in a flurry of snow. 



In this age of steel hulls and steam 

 and motor propulsion, the term "sailor" 

 is often misapplied. All who are em- 



