194 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
All old mackerel flshermaTi, who went south two years later, is quoted as follows: 
I coiumenced inackere] fisbiag in 1819; Iniilt a jiinkey and went south; chopped our bait; 
worked sometimes all night; called 125 to 150 Ijarrels a good trip for three or four weeks ; sold no 
mackerel fresh in those days ; all salted. The first trip was usually sold iu New York; the next one 
brought home to Gloucester. 
From that time, for a iieriod of thirty or forty years, larger or smaller numbers of 
vessels sailed south aunually from Gloucester, Frovincetown, Newbury port, Anuis- 
quam, and other places. In 1859, however, it was announced that “the practice of 
going south for mackerel has almost died out of late years, and this year there are 
but three or four vessels iu the business.”* About this time the purse seine began 
to be a rather common form of apparatus iu the capture of mackerel, and the southern 
spring fishery was resumed and became more extensive than ever before. 
In the early days of this fishery all of the vessels engaging therein were fitted out 
with salt and barrels and landed their fish iu a salted condition at the principal New 
England ports. Occasionally vessels fishing in the vicinity of New York landed fares 
of fresh fish in that city, but the custom of salting practically all of the catch con- 
tinued to be observed uninterruptedly until a comparatively recent date, gradually 
giving place, in the later years of the fishery, to a directly opposite iiractice. New 
York proving to be a reliable market for fresh mackerel, and the price received being 
such as to warrant the fishermen in selling their fish fresh, the owners of the vessels 
began to encourage their crews to dispose of as much of their catch iu that way as 
the market would take. This action was iulluenced by the well-known fact that has 
since been much discussed, that the spring mackerel is a better food-fish when fresh 
than when salted, and that the fish packed in the southern fishery, owing to their poor 
quality, never commanded the price or had the demand that the mackerel taken later 
in the year did. The practice became more general, irntil at the time of the suspen- 
sion of the fishery, and for a number of years preceding that event, most of the vessels 
engaged in the business with the intention of selling their entire catch fresh, while a 
few fitted out with a limited supply of salt and barrels to enable them to care for 
small quantities of fish that would not warrant a run to market unless in the immediate 
vicinity of j)ort. In lien of the former outfit, the vessels emiiloyed iu the fresh- mackerel 
fishery were iirovided with large ice-bins in which to store the fish and a supply of ice 
with which to preserve them prior to arrival at the market. 
For a great many years prior to 1860 the smacks of Connecticut and New York 
engaging iu the line fishery for cod, bluefish, and other species to supply the markets 
of New York City, made a practice of taking mackerel in the spring when the schools 
were in the vicinity of Sandy Hook, and of preserving them alive in their wells while 
running to the city, where they Avere transferred to the live-cars of the dealers pending 
sale. This fishery was never very extensive and was discontinued about 1860. 
During the next five years the receipts of fresh mackerel at New York were very 
small, but about 1865 vessels sailing from Gloucester began to laud occasional fares 
taken off Sandy Hook and by 1870 from twenty to thirty cargoes of fresh mackerel 
Avere brought in aunually, although most of the southern fleet continued to salt the 
catch and carry it to the various New England ports. It is recorded that iu 1872 the 
schooner Dreadnaug]i,t, of Portland, Me., was fitted with a purse seine to engage exclu- 
sively in the southern fresh-mackerel fishery and Avas the first vessel that did not 
Cape Aim Advertiser, May 20, 1859. 
