American Merchant Ships and Sailors Part 13

There was, too, in those early days of the fisheries, a certain patriarchal relation maintained between owner and crew that finds no parallel in modern times. The first step upward of the fisherman was to the quarter-deck. As captain, he had a larger responsibility, and received a somewhat larger share of the catch, than any of his crew. Then, if thrifty, or if possessed of a shipyard at home, such as I have described, he soon became an owner. In time, perhaps, he would add one or two schooners to his fleet, and then stay ash.o.r.e as owner and outfitter, sending out his boats on shares. Fishermen who had attained to this dignity, built those fine, old, great houses, which we see on the water-front in some parts of New England--square, simple, shingled to the ground, a deck perched on the ridge-pole of the hipped roof, the frame built of oak shaped like a ship's timbers, with axe and adze. The lawns before the houses sloped down to the water where, in the days of the old prosperity, the owner's schooner might be seen, resting lightly at anchor, or tied up to one of the long, frail wharves, discharging cargo--wharves black and rotting now, and long unused to the sailor's cheery cry. There, too, would be the flakes for drying fish, the houses on the wharves for storing supplies, and the packed product, and the little store in which the outfitter kept the simple stock of necessaries from which all who shipped on his fleet were welcome to draw for themselves and their families, until their "ship came in." To such a fishing port would flock the men from farm and forest, as the season for mackerel drew nigh. The first order at the store would include a pair of buck (red leather) or rubber boots, ten or fifteen pounds of tobacco, clay pipe, sou'-westers, a jack-knife, and oil-clothes. If the sailor was single, the account would stop there, until his schooner came back to port. If he had a family, a long list of groceries, pork and beans, mola.s.ses, coffee, flour, and coa.r.s.e cloth, would be bought on credit, for the folks at home. It came about naturally that these folks preferred to be near the store at which the family had credit, and so the sailors would, in time, buy little plots of land in the neighborhood, and build thereon their snug shingled cottages. So sprung up the fishing villages of New England.

The boys who grew up in these villages were able to swim as soon as they could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful ditties of castaways on George's Bank. Often they were shipped as early as their tenth year, going as a rule in schooners owned or commanded by relatives. It was no easy life that the youngster entered upon when first he attained the dignity of being a "cut-tail," but such as it was, it was the life he had looked forward to ever since he was old enough to consider the future. He lived in a little forecastle, heated by a stuffy stove, which it was his business to keep supplied with fuel. The bunks on either side held rough men, not over nice of language or of act, smoking and playing cards through most of their hours of leisure. From time immemorial it has been a maxim of the forecastle that the way to educate a boy is to "harden" him, and the hardening process has usually taken the form of persistent brutality of usage--the rope's end, the heavy hand, the hard-flung boot followed swift upon transgression of the laws or customs of ship or forecastle. The "cut-tail" was everybody's drudge, yet gloried in it, and a boy of Gloucester or Marblehead, who had lived his twelve years without at least one voyage to his credit, was in as sorry a state among his fellow urchins as a "Little Lord Fauntleroy" would be in the company of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

The intimacies of the village streets were continued on the ocean. Fish supplanted marbles as objects of prime importance in the urchin's mind.

The smallest fishing village would have two or three boats out on the banks, and the larger town several hundred. Between the crews of these vessels existed always the keenest rivalry, which had abundant opportunity for its exhibition, since the conditions of the fishery were such that the schooners cruised for weeks, perhaps, in fleets of several hundred. Every maneuver was made under the eyes of the whole fleet, and each captain and sailor felt that among the critics were probably some of his near neighbors at home. Charles Nordhoff, who followed a youth spent at sea with a long life of honorable and brilliant activity in journalism, describes the watchfulness of the fleet as he had often seen it:

"The fleet is the aggregate of all the vessels engaged in the mackerel fishery. Experience has taught fishermen that the surest way to find mackerel is to cruise in one vast body, whose line of search will then extend over an area of many miles. When, as sometimes happens, a single vessel falls in with a large 'school,' the catch is, of course, much greater. But vessels cruising separately or in small squads are much less likely to fall in with fish than is the large fleet. 'The fleet' is therefore the aim of every mackerel fisherman. The best vessels generally maintain a position to the windward. Mackerel mostly work to windward slowly, and those vessels furthest to windward in the fleet are therefore most likely to fall in with fish first, while from their position they can quickly run down should mackerel be raised to leeward.

"Thus, in a collection of from six hundred to a thousand vessels, cruising in one vast body, and spreading over many miles of water, is kept up a constant, though silent and imperceptible communication, by means of incessant watching with good spy-gla.s.ses. This is so thorough that a vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel 'alongside,'

technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading to the wind every available st.i.tch of canvas to force each little bark as quickly as possible into close proximity to the coveted prize."

To come upon the mackerel fleet suddenly, perhaps with the lifting of the fog's gray curtain, or just as the faint dawn above the tossing horizon line to the east began to drive away the dark, was a sight to stir the blood of a lad born to the sea. Sometimes nearly a thousand vessels would be huddled together in a s.p.a.ce hardly more than a mile square. At night, their red and green lights would swing rhythmically up and down as the little craft were tossed by the long rollers of old Atlantic, in whose black bosom the gay colors were reflected in subdued hues. From this floating city, with a population of perhaps ten thousand souls, no sound arises except the occasional roar of a breaking swell, the creaking of cordage, and the "chug-chug" of the vessel's bows as they drop into the trough of the sea. All sails are furled, the bare poles showing black against the starlit sky, and, with one man on watch on the deck, each drifts idly before the breeze. Below, in stuffy cabins and fetid forecastles, the men are sleeping the deep and dreamless sleep that hard work in the open air brings as one of its rewards. All is as quiet as though a mystic spell were laid on all the fleet. But when the sky to the eastward begins to turn gray, signs of life reappear. Here and there in the fleet a sail will be seen climbing jerkily to the masthead, and hoa.r.s.e voices sound across the waters. It is only a minute or two after the first evidence of activity before the whole fleet is tensely active. Blocks and cordage are creaking, captains and mates shouting. Where there was a forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the first rays of the rising sun. The schooners that have been drifting idly, are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other's bows, slipping out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical miracles. From a thousand galleys rise a thousand slender wreaths of smoke, and the odors of coffee and of the bean dear to New England fishermen, mingle with the saline zephyrs of the sea. The fleet is awake.

They who have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike--a group of somewhat dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name of captain, and bits of gossip about the craft. As the mountaineer identifies the most distant peak, or the plainsman picks his way by the trail indistinguishable to the untrained eye, so the fisherman, raised from boyhood among the vessels that make up the fleet, finds in each characteristics so striking, so individual, as to identify the vessel displaying them as far as a keen eye can reach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CUTTING OFF THEIR TAILS"]

The fishing schooners, like the whalers, were managed upon principles of profit-sharing. The methods of dividing the proceeds of the catch differed, but in no sense did the wage system exist, except for one man on board--the cook, who was paid from $40 to $60 a month, besides being allowed to fish in return for caring for the vessel when all the men were out in dories. Sometimes the gross catch of the boat was divided into two parts, the owners who outfitted the boat, supplying all provisions, equipment, and salt, taking one part, the other being divided among the fishermen in proportion to the catch of each. Every fish caught was carefully tallied, the customary method being to cut the tongues, which at the lose of the day's work were counted by the captain, and each man's catch credited. The boys, of whom each schooner carried one or two, marked their fish by cutting off the tails, wherefore these hardy urchins, who generally took the sea at the age of ten, were called "cut-tails." The captain, for his more responsible part in the management of the boat, was not always expected to keep tally of his fish, but was allowed an average catch, plus from three to five per cent. of the gross value of the cargo.

Not infrequently the captain was owner of the boat, and his crew, thrifty neighbors of his, owning their own houses by the waterside, and able to outfit the craft and provide for the sustenance of their wives and children at home without calling upon the capitalist for aid. In such a case, the whole value of the catch was divided among the men who made it.

At best, these shares were not of a sort to open the doors of a financial paradise to the men. The fisheries have always afforded impressive ill.u.s.trations of the iron rule of the business world that the more arduous and more dangerous an occupation is, the less it pays. It was for the merest pittance that the fishermen risked their lives, and those who had families at home drawing their weekly provender from the outfitter were lucky if, at the end of the cruise they found themselves with the bill at the store paid, and a few dollars over for necessaries during the winter.

In 1799, when the spokesmen of the fishery interests appeared before Congress to plead for aid, they brought papers from the town of Marblehead showing that the average earnings of the fishing vessels hailing from that port were, in 1787, $483; in 1788, $456; and in 1789, $273. The expenses of each vessel averaged $275. In the best of the three years, then, there was a scant $200 to be divided among the captain, the crew, and the owner. This was, of course, one of the leanest of the lean years that the fishermen encountered; but with all the encouragement in the way of bounties and protected markets that Congress could give them, they never were able to earn in a life, as much as a successful promoter of trusts nowadays will make in half an hour. The census figures of 1890--the latest complete figures on occupations and earnings--give the total value of American fisheries as $44,500,000; the number of men employed in them, 132,000, and the average earnings $337 a man. The New England fisheries alone were then valued at $14,270,000. In the gross total of the value of American fisheries are included many methods foreign to the subject of this book, as for example, the system of fishing from sh.o.r.e with pound nets, the salmon fisheries of the Columbia River, and the fisheries of the Great Lakes.

Mackerel are taken both with the hook and in nets--taken in such prodigious numbers that the dories which go out to draw the seine are loaded until their gunwales are almost flush with the sea, and each haul seems indeed a miraculous draught of fishes. It is the safest and pleasantest form of fishing known to the New Englander, for its season is in summer only; the most frequented banks are out of the foggy lat.i.tude, and the habit of the fish of going about in monster schools keeps the fishing fleet together, conducing thus to safety and sociability both. In one respect, too, it is the most picturesque form of fishing. The mackerel is not unlike his enemy, man, in his curiosity concerning the significance of a bright light in the dark. Shrewd shopkeepers, who are after gudgeons of the human sort, have worked on this failing of the human family so that by night some of our city streets blaze with every variety of electric fire. The mackerel fisherman gets after his prey in much the same fashion. When at night the lookout catches sight of the phosph.o.r.escent gleams in the water that tells of the restless activity beneath of a great school of fish the schooner is headed straightway for the spot. Perhaps forty or fifty other schooners will be turning their prows the same way, their red and green lights glimmering through the black night on either side, the white waves under the bows showing faintly, and the creaking of the cordage sounding over the waters. It is a race for first chance at the school, and a race conducted with all the dash and desperation of a steeple-chase. The skipper of each craft is at his own helm, roaring out orders, and eagerly watchful of the lights of his encroaching neighbors.

With the schooner heeled over to leeward, and rushing along through the blackness, the boats are launched, and the men tumble over the side into them, until perhaps the cook, the boy, and the skipper are alone on deck.

One big boat, propelled by ten stout oarsmen, carries the seine, and with one dory is towed astern the schooner until the school is overhauled, then casts off and leaps through the water under the vigorous tugs of its oarsmen. In the stern a man stands throwing over the seine by armsful. It is the plan of campaign for the long boat and the dory, each carrying one end of the net, to make a circuit of the school, and envelope as much of it as possible in the folds of the seine. Perhaps at one time boats from twenty or thirty schooners will be undertaking the same task, their torches blazing, their helmsmen shouting, the oars tossing phosph.o.r.escent spray into the air. In and out among the boats the schooners pick their way--a delicate task, for each skipper wishes to keep as near as possible to his men, yet must run over neither boats or nets belonging to his rival. Wonderfully expert helmsmen they become after years of this sort of work--more trying to the nerves and exacting quite as much skill as the "jockeying" for place at the start of an international yacht race.

When the slow task of drawing together the ends of the seine until the fish are fairly enclosed in a sort of marine ca.n.a.l, a signal brings the schooner down to the side of the boats. The mackerel are fairly trapped, but the glare of the torches blinds them to their situation, and they would scarcely escape if they could. One side of the net is taken up on the schooner's deck, and there clamped firmly, the fish thus lying in the bunt, or pocket between the schooners, and the two boats which lie off eight or ten feet, rising and falling with the sea. There, huddled together in the shallow water, growing ever shallower as the net is raised, the shining fish, hundreds and thousands of them, bushels, barrels, hogsheads of them, flash and flap, as the men prepare to swing them aboard in the dip net. This great pocket of cord, fit to hold perhaps a bushel or more, is swung from the boom above, and lowered into the midst of the catch. Two men in the boat seize its iron rim, and with a twist and shove scoop it full of mackerel. "Yo-heave-oh" sing out the men at the halliards, and the net rises into the air, and swings over the deck of the schooner. Two men perched on the rail seize the collar and, turning it inside out, drop the whole finny load upon the deck. "Fine, fat, fi-i-ish!" cry out the crew in unison, and the net dips back again into the corral for another load. So, by the light of smoky torches, fastened to the rigging, the work goes on, the men singing and shouting, the tackle creaking, the waves splashing, the wind singing in the shrouds, the boat's bow b.u.mping dully on the waves as she falls. To all these sounds of the sea comes soon to be added one that is peculiar to the banks, a sound rising from the deck of the vessel, a mult.i.tude of little taps, rhythmical, m.u.f.fled, soft as though a corps of clog-dancers were dancing a lively jig in rubber-soled shoes. It is the dance of death of the hapless mackerel. All about the deck they flap and beat their little lives away.

Scales fly in every direction, and the rigging, almost to the masthead, is plastered with them.

When the deck is nearly full--and sometimes a single haul of the seine will more than fill it twice--the labor of dipping is interrupted and all hands turn to with a will to dress and pack the fish. Not pretty work, this, and as little pleasing to perform. Barrels, boards, and sharp knives are in requisition. Torches are set up about the deck. The men divide up into gangs of four each and group themselves about the "keelers," or square, shallow boxes into which the fish to be dressed are bailed from the deck. Two men in each gang are "splitters"; two "gibbers." The first, with a dextrous slash of a sharp knife splits the fish down the back, and throws it to the "gibber," who, with a twist of his thumb--armed with a mitt--extracts the entrails and throws the fish into a barrel of brine. By long practise the men become exceedingly expert in the work, and rivalry among the gangs keeps the pace of all up to the highest possible point.

All through the night they work until the deck is cleaned of fish, and slimy with blood and scales. The men, themselves, are ghastly, besmeared as they are from top to toe with the gore of the mackerel. From time to time, full barrels are rolled away, and lowered into the hold, and fresh fish raised from the slowly emptying seine alongside. Until the last fish has been sliced, cleaned, plunged into brine, and packed away there can be little respite from the muscle grinding work. From time to time, the pail of tepid water is pa.s.sed about; once at least during the night, the cook goes from gang to gang with steaming coffee, and now and then some man whose wrist is wearied beyond endurance, knocks off, and with contortions of pain, rubs his arm from wrist to elbow. But save for these momentary interruptions, there is little break in the work. Meanwhile the boat is plunging along through the water, the helm lashed or in beckets, and the skipper hard at work with a knife or gibbing mitt. A score of other boats in a radius of half a mile or so, will be in like case, so there is always danger of collision. Many narrow escapes and not a few accidents have resulted from the practice of cleaning up while under sail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FISHING FROM THE RAIL]

The mackerel, however, is not caught solely in nets, but readily takes that oldest of man's predatory instruments, the hook. To attract them to the side of the vessel, a mixture of clams and little fish called "porgies," ground together in a mill, is thrown into the sea, which, sinking to the depths at which the fish commonly lie, attract them to the surface and among the enticing hooks. Every fisherman handles two lines, and when the fishing is good he is kept busy hauling in and striking off the fish until his arms ache, and the tough skin on his hands is nearly chafed through. Sometimes the hooks are baited with bits of clam or porgy, though usually the mackerel, when biting at all, will snap with avidity at a naked hook, if tinned so as to shine in the water. Mr. Nordhoff, whose reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes this method of fishing and its results graphically:

"At midnight, when I am called up out of my warm bed to stand an hour's watch, I find the vessel pitching uneasily, and hear the breeze blowing fretfully through the naked rigging. Going on deck, I perceive that both wind and sea have 'got up' since we retired to rest. The sky looks lowering, and the clouds are evidently surcharged with rain. In fine the weather, as my predecessor on watch informs me, bears every sign of an excellent fishday on the morrow. I accordingly grind some bait, sharpen up my hooks once more, see my lines clear, and my heaviest jigs (the technical term for hooks with pewter on them) on the rail ready for use, and at one o'clock return to my comfortable bunk. I am soon again asleep, and dreaming of hearing fire-bells ringing, and seeing men rush to the fire, and just as I see 'the machine' round the corner of the street, am startled out of my propriety, my dream, sleep, and all by the loud cry of 'Fish!'

"I start up desperately in my narrow bunk, bringing my cranium in violent contact with a beam overhead, which has the effect of knocking me flat down in my berth again. After recovering as much consciousness as is necessary to appreciate my position, I roll out of bed, jerk savagely at my boots, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up my cap and pea-jacket, make a rush _at_ the companion-way, _up_ which I manage to fall in my haste, and then spring into the hold for a strike-barrel.

"And now the mainsail is up, the jib down, and the captain is throwing bait. It is not yet quite light, but we hear other mainsails going up all round us. A cool drizzle makes the morning unmistakably uncomfortable, and we stand around half asleep, with our sore hands in our pockets, wishing we were at home. The skipper, however, is holding his lines over the rail with an air which clearly intimates that the slightest kind of a nibble will be quite sufficient this morning to seal the doom of a mackerel.

"'There, by Jove!' the captain hauls back--'there, I told you so!

Skipper's got him--no--aha, captain, you haul back too savagely!'

"With the first movement of the captain's arm, indicating the presence of fish, everybody rushes madly to the rail. Jigs are heard on all sides plashing into the water, and eager hands and arms are stretched at their full length over the side, feeling anxiously for a nibble.

"'Sh--hish--there's something just pa.s.sed my fly--I felt him,' says an old man standing alongside of me.

"'Yes, and I've got him,' triumphantly shouts out the next man on the other side of him, hauling in as he speaks, a fine mackerel, and striking him off into his barrel in the most approved style.

"Z-z-zip goes my line through and deep into my poor fingers, as a huge mackerel rushes savagely away with what he finds not so great a prize as he thought it was. I get confoundedly flurried, miss stroke half a dozen times in hauling in as many fathoms of line, and at length succeed in landing my first fish safely in my barrel, where he flounders away 'most melodiously,' as my neighbor says.

"And now it is fairly daylight, and the rain, which has been threatening all night, begins to pour down in right earnest. As the heavy drops patter on the sea the fish begin to bite fast and furiously.

"'Shorten up,' says the skipper, and we shorten in our lines to about eight feet from the rail to the hooks, when we can jerk them in just as fast as we can move our hands and arms. 'Keep your lines clear,' is now the word, as the doomed fish slip faster and faster into the barrels standing to receive them. Here is one greedy fellow already casting furtive glances behind him, and calculating in his mind how many fish he will have to lose in the operation of getting his second strike-barrel.

"Now you hear no sound except the steady flip of fish into the barrels.

Every face wears an expression of anxious determination; everybody moves as though by springs; every heart beats loud with excitement, and every hand hauls in fish and throws out hooks with a methodical precision, a kind of slow haste, which unites the greatest speed with the utmost security against fouling lines.

"And now the rain increases. We hear jibs rattling down; and glancing up hastily, I am surprised to find our vessel surrounded on all sides by the fleet, which has already become aware that we have got fish alongside.

Meantime the wind rises, and the sea struggles against the rain, which is endeavoring with its steady patter to subdue the turmoil of old ocean. We are already on our third barrel each, and still the fish come in as fast as ever, and the business (sport it has ceased to be some time since), continues with vigor undiminished. Thick beads of perspiration chase each other down our faces. Jackets, caps, and even over-shirts, are thrown off, to give more freedom to the limbs that are worked to their utmost.

"'Hillo! Where are the fish?' All gone. Every line is felt eagerly for a bite, but not the faintest nibble is perceptible. The mackerel, which but a moment ago were fairly rushing on board, have in that moment disappeared so completely that not a sign of one is left. The vessel next under our lee holds them a little longer than we, but they finally also disappear from her side. And so on all around us.

"And now we have time to look about us--to compare notes on each other's successes--to straighten our backbones, nearly broken and aching horribly with the constant reaching over; to examine our fingers, cut to pieces and grown sensationless with the perpetual dragging of small lines across them--to--'There, the skipper's got a bite! Here they are again, boys, and big fellows, too!' Everybody rushes once more to the rail, and business commences again, but not at so fast a rate as before. By-and-by there is another cessation, and we hoist our jib and run off a little way, into a new berth.

"While running across, I take the first good look at the state of affairs in general. We lie, as before said, nearly in the center of the whole fleet, which from originally covering an area of perhaps fifteen miles each way, has 'knotted up' into a little s.p.a.ce, not above two miles square. In many places, although the sea is tolerably rough, the vessels lie so closely together that one could almost jump from one to the other.

The greatest skill and care are necessary on such occasions to keep them apart, and prevent the inevitable consequences of a collision, a general smash-up of masts, booms, bulwarks, etc. Yet a great fish-day like this rarely pa.s.ses off without some vessel sustaining serious damage. We thread our way among the vessels with as much care and as daintily as a man would walk over ground covered with eggs; and finally get into a berth under the lee of a vessel which seems to hold the fish pretty well. Here we fish away by spells, for they have become 'spirty,' that is, they are capricious, and appear and disappear suddenly."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAWLING FROM A DORY]

Three causes make the occupation of those fishermen who go for cod and halibut to the Newfoundland Banks extra hazardous--the almost continual fog, the swift steel Atlantic liners always plowing their way at high speed across the fishing grounds, heedless of fog or darkness, and the custom of fishing with trawls which must be tended from dories. The trawl, which is really only an extension of hand-lines, is a French device adopted by American fishermen early in the last century. One long hand-line, supported by floats, is set at some distance from the schooner. From it depend a number of short lines with baited hooks, set at brief intervals. The fisherman, in his dory, goes from one to the other of these lines pulling them in, throwing the fish in the bottom of the boat and rebaiting his hooks. When his dory is full he returns with his load to the schooner--if he can find her.

That is the peril ever present to the minds of the men in the dory--the danger of losing the schooner. On the Banks the sea is always running moderately high, and the great surges, even on the clearest days, will often shut out the dories from the vision of the lookout. The winds and the currents tend to sweep the little fishing-boats away, and though a schooner with five or six dories out hovers about them like a hen guarding her chickens, sailing a triangular beat planned to include all the smaller boats, yet it too often happens that night falls with one boat missing.

Then on the schooner all is watchfulness. Cruising slowly about, burning flares and blowing the hoa.r.s.e fog-horn, those on board search for the missing ones until day dawns or the lost are found. Sometimes day comes in a fog, a dense, dripping, gray curtain, more impenetrable than the blackest night, for through it no flare will shine, and even the sound of the braying horn or tolling bell is so curiously distorted, that it is difficult to tell from what quarter it comes. No one who has not seen a fog on the Banks can quite imagine its dense opaqueness. When it settles down on a large fleet of fishermen, with hundreds of dories out, the peril and perplexity of the skippers are extreme. In one instant after the dull gray curtain falls over the ocean, each vessel is apparently as isolated as though alone on the Banks. A dory forty feet away is invisible. The great fleet of busy schooners, tacking back and forth, watching their boats, is suddenly, obliterated. Hoa.r.s.e cries, the tooting of horns and the clanging of bells, sound through the misty air, and now and then a ghostly schooner glides by, perhaps sc.r.a.ping the very gunwale and carrying away bits of rail and rigging to the accompaniment of New England profanity. This is the dangerous moment for every one on the Banks, for right through the center of the fishing ground lies the pathway of the great steel ocean steamships plying between England and the United States.

Colossal engines force these great ma.s.ses of steel through sea and fog.

Each captain is eager to break a record; each one knows that a reputation for fast trips will make his ship popular and increase his usefulness to the company. In theory he is supposed to slow down in crossing the Banks; in fact his great 12,000-ton ship rushes through at eighteen miles an hour. If she hits a dory and sends two men to their long rest, no one aboard the ocean leviathan will ever know it. If she strikes a schooner and shears through her like a knife through cheese, there will be a slight vibration of the steel fabric, but not enough to alarm the pa.s.sengers; the lookout will have caught a hasty glimpse of a ghostly craft, and heard plaintive cries for help, then the fog shuts down on all, like the curtain on the last act of a tragedy. Even if the great steamship were stopped at once, her momentum would carry her a mile beyond the spot before a boat could be lowered, and then it would be almost impossible to find the floating wreckage in the fog. So, usually, the steamships press on with unchecked speed, their officers perhaps breathing a sigh of pity for the victims, but reflecting that it is a sailor's peril to which those on the biggest and staunchest of ships are exposed almost equally with the fishermen. For was it not on the Banks and in a fog that the blow was struck which sent "La Bourgogne" to the bottom with more than four hundred souls?

[Ill.u.s.tration: STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE]

Ordinarily there is but short shrift for the helpless folks on a fishing vessel when struck by a liner. The keen prow cuts right through planking and stout oak frame, and the dissevered portions of the hull are tossed to starboard and to port, to sink before the white foam has faded from the wake of the destroying monster. They tell ghoulish tales of bodies sliced in twain as neatly as the boat itself; of men asleep in their bunks being decapitated, or waking, to find themselves struggling in the water with an arm or leg shorn off. And again, there are stories of escapes that were almost miraculous; of men thrown by the shock of collision out of the foretop of the schooner onto the deck of the steamship, and carried abroad in safety, while their partners mourned them as dead; of men, dozing in their bunks, startled suddenly by the grinding crash of steel and timbers, and left gazing wide-eyed at the gray sea lapping the side of their berths, where an instant before the tough oak skin of the schooner had been; of men stunned by some flying bit of wood, who, all unconscious, floated on the top of the hungry waves, until as by Divine direction, their inert bodies touched the side of a vagrant dory and were dragged aboard to life again. The Banks can perform their miracles of humanity as well as of cruelty.

Few forms of manual work are more exacting, involve more physical suffering and actual peril to life, than fishing with trawls. Under the happiest circ.u.mstances, with the sky clear, the sea moderately calm, and the air warm, it is arduous, muscle-trying, nerve-racking work. Pulling up half a mile of line, with hooks catching on the bottom, big fish floundering and fighting for freedom, and the dory dancing on the waves like mad, is no easy task. The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory rheumatism. But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or in a nipping winter's wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman's lot is a bitter one.

The method of setting and hauling the trawls has been well described by Mr. John Z. Rogers, in "Outing," and some extracts from his story will be of interest to readers:

"The trawls were of cod-line, and tied to them at distances of six feet were smaller lines three feet in length, with a hook attached to the end. Each dory had six trawls, each one eighteen hundred feet long. The trawls were neatly coiled in tubs made by sawing flour barrels in two, and as fast as they were baited with pieces of herring they were carefully coiled into another tub, that they might run out quickly without snarling when being set.

"The last trawl was finished just before supper, at five o'clock. After supper the men enjoyed a Half-hour smoke, then preparations were made to set the gear, as the trawls are called. The schooner got well to windward of the place where the set was to be made, and the first dory was lowered by a block and tackle. One of the men jumped into it, and his partner handed him the tubs of gear and then jumped in himself. The dory was made fast to the schooner by her painter as she drifted astern, and the other dories were put over in the same manner.

When all the dories were disposed of the first one was cast off.

One of the men rowed the boat before the wind while the other ran out the gear. First, he threw over a keg for a buoy, which could be seen from some distance. Fastened to the buoy-line at some sixty fathoms, or three hundred and sixty feet from the keg, was the trawl with a small anchor attached to sink it to the bottom. When this was dropped overboard the trawl was rapidly run out, and as fast as the end of one was reached it was tied to the next one, thus making a line of trawl ten thousand eight hundred feet long, with eighteen hundred hooks attached. After the schooner had sailed on a straight course a few hundred yards, the captain cast off the second dory, then along a little farther the third one, and so on till the five boats were all setting gear in parallel lines to each other.

When all set this gear practically represented a fishing line over _ten miles_ long with nine _thousand hooks_ tied to it."

The trawls thus set were left out over night, the schooner picking up the dories and anchoring near the buoy of the first trawl. At daybreak the work of hauling in was begun:

"All the dories were made fast astern and left at the head of their respective trawls as the schooner sailed along. One of the men in each dory, after pulling up the anchor, put the trawl in the roller--a grooved wooden wheel eight inches in diameter.

This was fastened to one side of the dory. The trawl was hauled in hand over hand, the heavy strain necessarily working the dory slowly along. The fish were taken off as fast as they appeared.