IS93-] 43 [Upham. 
St. George's Bank, more fre<|ueiitly called simply George's 
Bank by the Gloucester fishermen whose fleet of hundreds of 
schooners is mostly employed in fishing there, extends a hundred 
and seventy-five miles east from Nantucket and Cape Cod, being 
connected with the Nantucket slioals 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 hundred miles from 
northwest to southeast. George's Shoal, on the northwestern 
part of this plateau, has two spots witli only 12 feet of water; 
while twenty miles west from tliat 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 soundings of the U. 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 75 fathoms. The maximum depth of the western 
part of the Gulf of Maine is 180 fathoms, found forty-six miles 
east of Cape Ann ; and of its eastern part, at a distance of a 
hundred miles east-southeast from the last, 199 fathoms, this 
being close north of George's Bank, in latitude 42° 20' and longi- 
tude 67° 20'. At the mouth of this gulf, between the northeast- 
ern border of George's Bank and Brown's Bank, of comparatively 
small area, which lies halfway thence to Cape Sable, N. S., the 
soundings are from 150 to 170 fathoms. 
Brown's Bank is covered by water from 26 to 50 fathoms deep, 
and on its north side water of 60 to 80 fathoms divides it from 
Nova Scotia. Three other small plateaus lie within the next 
hundred and fifty miles eastward. 
1 "Physical hydrography of the Gulf of Maine." Report of the U. S. coast and 
seodetic survey, for the year ending June, 1879, p. 175-190. "A plea for a light on 
St. George's Bank,' Appendix No. 11, ihid., for year ending June, 1885, p. 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). 
