LIFE ON THE GRAND BANKS 
233 
is usually made in the quickest possible 
time. 
When the vessel has run her distance, 
the “spot” the skipper has been making 
for is found by the lead. The sounding 
lead is a fishing skipper’s other eye and 
he is usually an adept in determining his 
position by means of it. 
While there are many fishing captains 
who can navigate by solar and stellar ob¬ 
servations, yet the majority find their 
way about by dead-reckoning, using com¬ 
pass, chart, log, and lead, and their ac¬ 
curacy is often startling. 
The sample of the bottom brought up 
by the soap or tallow on the lead and the 
depth of water give most skippers an 
exact position after two casts. 
If the gear has been baited and the 
weather is favorable, the skipper sings 
out, “Dories over!” The dory-mates 
who hold the two top dories on the port 
and starboard “nests” prepare their boats 
for going overside by shipping the 
thwarts and jamming the bottom-plugs in. 
Oars, pen-boards, bailer, water-jar, 
bait-knife, gurdy-winch, bucket, gaff, sail 
and mast, and all other boat and fishing 
impedimenta are placed in .each little 
craft, and it is swung up out of the nest 
and overside by means of tackles depend¬ 
ing from the fore and main shrouds. 
SETTING THE LINES 
Two fishermen secure their tubs of 
baited lines and jump into the dory, which 
is allowed to drift astern. The painter 
is made fast to a pin in the schooner’s 
taffrail and the dory is towed along by 
the schooner. As the other dories are 
launched, they are dropped astern, made 
fast to each other, and towed by the 
schooner. 
When all the dories are overside, the 
skipper, at the wheel of the schooner, de¬ 
termines the direction in which he wants 
to set his lines, and the dories are let go, 
one at a time, as the vessel sails along. 
A schooner “running” ten dories will have 
them distributed at equal distances along 
a four or five-mile line and Number One 
dory is often out of sight from the posi¬ 
tion of Number Ten. 
When the last dory has been dropped, 
the skipper will either “jog” down the 
line again or remain hove-to in the 
vicinity of the weather dory while the 
men are fishing. 
A TYPICAL FISHING VESSEL SKIPPER 
In the dories, when the schooner has 
let them go, one fisherman ships the 
oars and pulls the boat in the direction 
given him by the skipper, while the other 
prepares the gear for “setting.” 
The end line of the first “tub” of baited 
long-line is made fast to a light iron 
anchor to which a stout line and buoy-keg 
is attached. This is thrown over into the 
water, and the fisherman, standing up in 
the stern of the dory with the tub of 
long-line before him, proceeds to heave 
the baited gear into the sea by means of a 
short stick which he holds in his right 
hand. 
BAITED LINES OVERBOARD 
With this “heaving stick” he dexter¬ 
ously whirls the coils of line and hooks 
out of the tub and the long-line goes to 
the sea-bottom. 
Three or four tubs, the lines joined 
together, may be set in this fashion, and 
another anchor and buoy is made fast to 
the last end. The long-line now lies on 
the bottom of the sea and is prevented 
from drifting or snarling up in bottom or 
tidal currents by the anchors at each end. 
The fishermen in the dory hang on to 
the last anchor until it is time to haul the 
gear, or they may leave it altogether and 
