Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 28

One writer calls the fishery "a great nursery of the marine, from whence a constant supply of men, inured to the perils of the sea, are constantly ready for the service of their country." Supposing this doctrine correct, it becomes an interesting question where the sailors of future navies are to come from? The whale-fishery has been fairly beaten out of the field by oil-spouting rocks. Why should we brave the perils of the Arctic circle when by sinking a tube in Pennsylvania we may strike a fellow of a thousand barrels, and wax rich while asleep?

New London, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Edgartown have answered. The cod and mackerel fisheries have dwindled into like insignificance, say Marblehead, Gloucester, and all fishing ports along sh.o.r.e. When these towns, once so exclusively maritime, found the fishery slipping through their fingers, they took up shoe-making, and at present you will see plenty of Crispins, but not many blue-jackets, in Marblehead. Cobbling is now carried on in the barn-lofts, fish-houses, and cottages. Yet this change of condition is not met, as in the failing whale-fishery, by a supply from a different source; fish continues to be as highly esteemed and in greater request than ever; it is the supply, not the demand, that is diminishing.

There are some of those larger shoe-factories in the town where hides are received at the front door, and are delivered at the back, in an incredibly short time, ready for wear. The young men I saw in long ap.r.o.ns at the benches had none of the rugged look of their fathers.

Their white arms showed little of the brawn that comes from constant handling of the oar. The air of the work-shop was stifling, and I gladly left it, thinking these were hardly the fellows to stand by the guns or reef-tackles. One old man with whom I conversed bitterly deplored that shoe-making had killed fishing, and had made the young men, as he phrased it, "nash," which is what they say of fish that the sun has spoiled. At the time I was there shoe-making itself was suffering from a depression of trade, and many of the inhabitants appeared to be in a state of uncertainty as to their future that, I imagine, may become chronic. One individual, while lamenting the decline of business, brightened up as he said, "But I understand they an't much better off at Beverly."

The decline of the cod-fishery is attributed to the use of trawls, and to the greed that kills the goose that has laid the golden egg. Formerly fish were taken with hand-lines only, over the side of the vessel. Then they began to carry dories, in which the crew sought out the best places. The men lost in fogs or bad weather while looking for or visiting their trawls swell the list of casualties year by year. Fitting out fishing-vessels, instead of being the simple matter it once was, has become an affair of capital, the trawls for a vessel sometimes costing fifteen hundred dollars.

Dougla.s.s gives some particulars of the fishery, as practiced in his own and at an earlier day. He says the North Sea cod, and those taken on the Irish coast were considered better than the American fish, but were inadequate to the supply. No fish were considered merchantable in England or Ireland less than eighteen inches long from the first fin to the beginning of the tail. In Newfoundland they worked their fish "belly down;" in New England they were worked with their backs downward, to receive more salt, and add to their weight. The stock-fish of Norway and Iceland were cured without salt, by hanging them in winter upon sticks called by the Dutch "stocks"--this may have been the origin of our dun-fish. The fish made in Marblehead for Spain were known as "Bilboa drithe," and could be held out horizontally by the tail. Those cured for the western market were called "Albany drithe," from the fact that Albany was the head-quarters of that trade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNLOADING FISH.]

To quote from Dougla.s.s, he says: "In 1746 Marblehead ships off more dried cod than all the rest of New England besides. Anno 1732 a good fish year, and in profound peace, Marblehead had about one hundred and twenty schooners of about fifty tons burden, seven men aboard, and one man ash.o.r.e to make the fish, or about one thousand men employed, besides the seamen who carry the fish to market. Two hundred quintals considered a fare. In 1747 they have not exceeding seventy schooners, and make five fares yearly to I. Sables, St. George's Banks, etc."

M. Rochefoucauld Liancourt, who visited New England in 1799, making a tour of the coast as far as the Pen.o.bscot, says at that time the vessels were usually of seventy tons, and had a master, seven seamen, and a boy.

The owner had a quarter, the dryer on the coast an eighth, and the rest was shared by the master and seamen, in proportion to the fish they had taken. Every man took care of his own fish.

As early as 1631 Governor Matthew Cradock established a fishing station at Marblehead, in charge of Isaac Allerton, whose name appears fifth on the celebrated compact of the Pilgrims, signed at Cape Cod, November 11th, 1620.[154] Winthrop mentions in his journal that as the _Arabella_ was standing in for Naumkeag, on the 12th of June, 1630, Mr. Allerton boarded her in a shallop as he was sailing to Pemaquid. Moses Maverick lived at Marblehead with Allerton, and married his daughter Sarah. In 1635 Allerton conveyed to his son-in-law all the houses, buildings, and stages he had at Marblehead. In 1638 Moses was licensed to sell a tun of wine a year.

In Winthrop's "Journal," under the date of 1633, is the following with reference to this plantation:[155]

"_February_ 1.--Mr. Cradock's house at Marblehead was burnt down about midnight before, there being then in it Mr. Allerton, and many fishermen whom he employed that season, who all were preserved by a special providence of G.o.d, with most of his goods therein, by a tailor, who sat up that night at work in the house, and, hearing a noise, looked out and saw the house on fire above the oven in the thatch."[156]

While retracing my steps back to town, I pictured the harbor in its day of prosperity. A hundred sail would have given it a degree of animation quite marvelous to see. Six hours a hundred sharp prows point up the harbor, and six they look out to sea. Above the tapering forest of equal growth are thrust the crossed spars of ships from Cadiz, in Spain.

Innumerable wherries dart about, rowed by two men each; they are strongly built, for baiting trawls on the banks and in a sea is no child's play. The cheery cries, rattling of blocks, and universal bustle aboard the fleet announce the preparations for sailing. At the top of the flood up go a score of sails, and round go as many windla.s.ses to a rattling chorus. Anchors are hove short in a trice. The vessels first under way draw out from among the fleet, clear the mouth of the harbor, and in a few minutes more are flinging the seas from their bows with Marblehead Light well under their lee.

I do not know who first discovered Marblehead. The vague idea a.s.sociates it with a heap of sterile rocks, inhabited by fishermen speaking an unintelligible jargon. Though not twenty miles from the New England metropolis, and notwithstanding its past is interwoven with every page of our historic times, less is known of it than would seem credible to the intelligent reader. A faithful chronicle of its fortunes would, no doubt, be sufficiently curious, though many would, I fear, prefer the stories of Tyre and Carthage. But Marblehead is unique; there is nothing like it on this side of the water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GROUP OF ANTIQUES.]

I was struck, on entering the place, with Whitefield's observation when he asked where the dead were buried; for the great want appears to be earth. But a further acquaintance revealed more pleasant inclosures of turf, orchards, and garden-spots than its gaunt crags seemed capable of sustaining. The town may be said to embrace two very dissimilar portions, of which the larger appears paralyzed with age, and the other the outgrowth of a newer and more thriving generation. It is with the old town I have to do.

I preferred to commit myself to the guidance of the narrow streets, and drift about wherever they listed. The stranger need not try to settle his topography beforehand. He would lose his labor. It was only after a third visit that I began to have some notions of the maze of rocky lanes, alleys, and courts. Caprice seemed to have governed the location of a majority of the houses by the water-side, and the streets to have adjusted themselves to the wooden anarchy; or else the idea forced itself upon you that the houses must have been stranded here by the flood, remaining where the subsiding waters left them; for they stand anywhere and nowhere, in a ravine or atop a cliff, crowding upon and elbowing each other until no man, it would seem, might know his own. How one of those ancient mariners rolling heavily homeward after a night's carouse could have found his own dwelling, is a mystery I do not undertake to solve.

M. De Chastellux, who had a compliment ready-made for every thing American, was accosted when in Boston with the remark,

"Marquis, you find a crooked city in Boston?"

"Ah, ver good, ver good," said the chevalier; "it show de _liberte_."

I found Washington Street a good base of operations. A modern dwelling is rarely met with between this thoroughfare and the water. On State (formerly King) Street there is but one house less than a century old, and the frame of that one was being raised the day Washington came to town. Even he was struck by the antiquated look of the buildings. The long exemption from fire is little less than miraculous, for a building of brick or stone is an exception. Old houses, gambrel-roofed, hip-roofed, and pitch-roofed, with an occasional reminiscence of London in Milton's day, are ranged on all sides; little altered in a hundred years, though I should have liked better to have chanced this way when the porches of some were projecting ten feet into the street. I enjoyed losing myself among them; for, certes, there is more of the crust of antiquity about Marblehead than any place of its years in America.

An air of snug and substantial comfort hung about many of the older houses, and some localities betokened there was an upper as well as a nether stratum of society in Marblehead. Fine old trees flourished in secluded neighborhoods, where the bra.s.s door-knockers shone with unwonted l.u.s.tre. I think my fingers itched to grasp them, so suggestive were they of feudal times when stranger knight summoned castle-warden by striking with his sword-hilt on the oaken door. Fancy goes in unbidden at their portals, and roves among their cramped corridors and best rooms, peering into closets where choice china is kept, or rummaging among the curious lumber of the garrets, the acc.u.mulations of many generations. On the whole, the dwellings represent so far as they may a singular equality of condition. It is only by turning into some court or by-way that you come unexpectedly upon a mansion having about it some relics of a former splendor. Though Marblehead has its Billingsgate, I saw nothing of the squalor of our larger cities; and though it may have its Rotten Row, I remarked neither lackeys nor showy equipages.

There are few sidewalks in the older quarter. The streets are too narrow to afford such a luxury, averaging, should say, not more than a rod in width in the older ones, with barely room for a single vehicle.

The pa.s.ser-by may, if he pleases, look into the first-floor sitting-rooms, and see the family gathered at its usual occupations.

Whether it be a greater indiscretion to look in at the windows than to look out of them, as the matrons and maidens are in the habit of doing when a stranger is in the neighborhood is a question I willingly remand to the decision of my readers; yet I confess I found the temptation too strong to be resisted. In order to protect those houses at the street corners, a ma.s.sive stone post is often seen imbedded in the ground; but to give them a wide berth is impossible, and I looked for business to be brisk at the wheelwright's shop.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEE STREET.]

Again, as the street encounters a ledge in its way, one side of it mounts the acclivity, ten, twenty feet above your head, while the other keeps the level as before. Such accidental looking-down upon their neighbors does not, perhaps, argue moral or material pre-eminence; but, for all that, there may be a shilling side. One thing about these old houses impressed me pleasantly; though many of them were guiltless of paint, and on some roofs mosses had begun to creep, and a yellow rust to cover the clapboards, there were few windows that did not boast a goodly show of scarlet geraniums, fuchsias, or mignonnette, with ivy cl.u.s.tering lovingly about the frames, making the dark old cas.e.m.e.nts blossom again, and glow with a wealth of warm color.

I was too well acquainted with maritime towns to be surprised at finding fishing-boats, even of a few tons burden, a quarter of a mile from the water. They might even be said to crop out with remarkable frequency.

Some were covered with boughs, their winter protection; others were being patched, painted, or calked, preparatory for launching, with an a.s.siduity and solicitude that can only be appreciated by the owners of such craft. On the street that skirts the harbor I saw a fisherman just landed enter his cottage, "paying out," as he went, from a coil of rope, one end being, I ascertained, fastened to his wherry. I remember to have seen in Mexico the _vaqueros_, on alighting from their mules, take from the pommel of their saddles some fathoms of braided hair-rope, called a lariat, and, on entering a shop or dwelling, uncoil it as they went. The custom of these Marblehead fishermen seemed no less ingenious.

In a sea-port my instinct is for the water. I have a predilection for the wharves, and, though I could well enough dispense with their smells, for their sights and sounds. The cross-ways in Marblehead seem in search of the harbor as they go wriggling about the ledges. I should say they had been formed on the ancient foot-paths leading down to the fishing stages. At the head of one pier, half imbedded in the earth, was an old honey-combed cannon that looked as if it might have spoken a word in the dispute with the mother country, but now played the part of a capstan, and truant boys were casting dirt between its blistered lips. In Red Stone Cove there lay, stranded and broken in two, a long-boat, brought years ago from China, perhaps, on the deck of some Indiaman. Its build was outlandish; so unlike the wherries that were by, yet so like the craft that swim in the turbid Yang Tse. I took a seat in it, and was carried to the land of paG.o.das, opium, and mandarins. Its sheathing of camphor-wood still exhaled the pungent odor of the aromatic tree. On either quarter was painted an enormous eye that seemed to follow you about the strand. In all these voyages some part of the Old World seems to have drifted westward, and attached itself to the sh.o.r.es of the New.

Here it was a Portuguese from the Tagus, or a Spaniard of Alicante; elsewhere a Norwegian, Swede, or Finn, grafted on a strange clime and way of life.

The men I saw about the wharves, in woolen "jumpers" and heavy fishing boots, had the true "guinea-stamp" of the old Ironsides of the sea. To see those lumberings fishermen in the streets you would not think they could be so handy, or tread so lightly in a dory. I saw there an old foreign-looking seaman, one of those fellows with short, bowed legs, drooping shoulders, contracted eyelids, and hands dug in their pockets, who may be met with at all hours of the day and night hulking about the quays of a shipping town. This man eyed the preparations of amateur boatmen with the contemptuous curiosity often vouchsafed by such personages in the small affair of getting a pleasure-boat under way. One poor fellow, who kept a little shop where he could hear the wash of the tide on the loose pebbles of the cove, told me he had lost his leg by the cable getting a turn round it. Though they have a rough outside, these men have hearts. His skipper, he said, had put about, though it was a dead loss to him, and sailed a hundred miles to land his mutilated shipmate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUCKER'S WHARF--THE STEPS.]

How did Marblehead look in the olden time? Its early history is allied with that of Salem, of which it formed a part until 1648. Francis Higginson, who came over in 1629, says, in that year, "There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred, whereof two hundred of them are settled at Nehumkek, now called Salem; and the rest have planted themselves at Masathulets Bay, beginning to build a town there which wee do call Cherton or Charles Town." His New England's "Plantation" is curious reading. I have observed in my researches that these old divines are often fond of drawing the long bow, a failing of which Higginson, one of the earliest, seems conscious when he asks in his exordium, "Shall such a man as I lye? No, verily!"

William Wood, describing the place in 1633, says of it: "Marvil Head is a place which lyeth 4 miles full south from Salem, and is a very convenient place for a plantation, especially for such as will set upon the trade of fishing. There was made here a ship's loading of fish the last year, where still stand the stages and drying scaffolds." In 1635, the court order that "there shal be a Plantacion at Marblehead."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREGORY STREET.]

John Josselyn looked in here in 1663. "Marvil, or Marblehead," he says, is "a small harbour, the sh.o.r.e rockie, on which the town is built, consisting of a few scattered houses; here they have stages for fishermen, orchards, and gardens half a mile within land, good pastures, and arable land."

It had now begun to emerge from the insignificance of a fishing village, and to a.s.sume a place among the number of maritime towns. In 1696 a French spy makes report: "Marvalet est compose de 100 ou 120 maisons pescheurs ou il peut entrer de gros vaisseaux."

In 1707-'8 Marblehead was represented to the Lords of Trade as a smuggling port for Boston, for which it also furnished pilots. A few years earlier (1704) Quelch, the pirate, had been apprehended there, after having scattered his gold right and left. But it was not until an order had come from the Governor and Council at Boston that he was arrested, nor had there been a province law against piracy until within a few years.[157] Seven of Quelch's gang were taken by Major Stephen Sewall; and the inhabitants of Marblehead were required to bring in the gold coin, melted down, and silver plate they had not been unwilling to receive.

It was, no doubt, owing to the lawless habits introduced that the character of the sea-faring population partook of a certain wildness--such as good Parson Barnard inveighs against--manifesting itself in every-day transactions, and infusing into the men an adventurous and reckless spirit which fitted them in a measure for deeds of daring, and gave to the old sea-port no small portion of the notoriety it enjoys.

Mr. Barnard speaks of the earlier cla.s.s of fishermen as a rude, swearing, fighting, and drunken crew. The Rev. Mr. Whitwell, in his discourse on the disasters of 1770, does not give them a better character. "No wonder," he says, "the children of such parents imitate their vices, and, when they return from their voyages, have learned to curse and d.a.m.n their younger brothers." He continues to pour balm into their wounds in this wise: "We hope we shall hear no more cursing or profaneness from your mouths.... Instead of spending your time in those unmanly games which disgrace our children in the streets, we trust you will be seriously concerned for the salvation of your souls."

Austin, in his "Life of Elbridge Gerry," speaks of the fishermen as a sober and industrious cla.s.s; but the testimony of local historians is wholly opposed to his a.s.sertion.[158] They pa.s.sed their winters in a round of reckless dissipation, or until the arrival of the fishing season set half the town afloat again. It was then left in the hands of the women, the elders, and a few merchants. There is much in the annals of such a community to furnish materials for history, or, on a lesser scale, hints for romance. Captain Goelet, who was here in 1750, estimated the town to contain about four hundred and fifty houses.

"They were," he said, "all wood and clapboarded, the generality miserable buildings, mostly close in with the rocks, with rocky foundations very Cragy and Crasey. The whole towne is built upon a rock, which is heigh and steep to the water. The harbour is sheltered by an island, which runs along parallel to it and brakes off the sea. Vessells may ride here very safe; there is a path or way downe to the warf, which is but small, and on which is a large Ware House where they land their fish, etc.

From this heigh Cliffty sh.o.r.e it took its name. I saw abt 5 topsail vessels and abt 10 schooners or sloops in the harbour; they had then abt 70 sail schooners a-fishing, with about 600 men and Boys imployd in the fishery: they take vast quant.i.tys Cod, which they cure heere. Saw several thousand flakes then cureing. The place is noted for Children, and Nouriches the most of any place for its bigness in North America; it's said the chief cause is attributed to their feeding on Cod's heads, etc., which is their Princ.i.p.all Dish. The greatest distaste a person has to this place is the stench of the fish, the whole air seems tainted with it. It may in short be said it's a Dirty Erregular, Stincking place.'"[159]

The fortunes of the place were now greatly altered. The obscure fishing village had become a bustling port, with rich cargoes from Spain and the Antilles lying within its rock-bound sh.o.r.es. Ships were being built in the coves, and substantial mansions were going up in the streets--in whose cellars, as I have heard, were kegs of hard dollars, salted down, as one might say, like the staple of Marblehead.

John Adams, then a young lawyer on the circuit, enters in his diary, under date of 1766, the brief impression of a first visit to Marblehead:

"14, _Thursday_.--In the morning rode a single horse, in company with Mrs. Cranch and Mrs. Adams, in a chaise to Marblehead. The road from Salem to Marblehead, four miles, is pleasant indeed (so I found it). The gra.s.s plats and fields are delightful, but Marblehead differs from Salem. The streets are narrow and rugged and dirty, but there are some very grand buildings."

As John Adams saw it so does the stranger of to-day, ignoring such modern improvements as railway, gas-works, telegraph, and factories, and sticking closely to the skirts of the old town.

I should say Marblehead might still a.s.sert its t.i.tle to the number of children it "nourishes." Certainly they seemed out of all proportion to the adult population. Instinct guides them to the water from their birth, and they may be seen paddling about the harbor in stray wherries or clambering up the rigging of some collier, in emulation of their elders. Even their talk has a salty flavor. I recollect an instance, which must lose by the relation. A young scape-grace having incurred the maternal displeasure, and then taken to his heels to escape chastis.e.m.e.nt, the good-wife gave chase, brandishing a broomstick aloft, and breathing vengeance on her unnatural offspring. Having the wind fair and a heavy spread of petticoat, she was rapidly gaining on the youngster, when a comrade, who was watching the progress of the race with a critical eye, bawled out, "Try her on the wind, Bill; try her _on the wind_."

A sailor on sh.o.r.e is not unlike Napoleon's dismounted dragoon: he is emphatically a fish out of water. One talked of "making his horse fast;"

another complained that his neckerchief was "tew taut;" and a third could not understand which way to move a boat until his companion called out, "Haul to the west'ard, can't ye?"

If not insular, your genuine Marbleheader is the next thing to it. The rest of the world is merged with him into a place to sell his fish and buy his salt. Even Salem, Beverly, and the parts adjacent draw but little on his sympathy or his fellowship: in short, they are not Marblehead. During the Native American excitement of 18--, the Marbleheaders entered into the movement with enthusiasm. A caucus being a.s.sembled to nominate town officers, one old fisherman came into the town hall in his baize ap.r.o.n, just as he had got out of his dory. He glanced over the list of officers with an approving grunt at each name until he came to that of Squire Fabens. Now Squire Fabens, though a Salem man born, had lived a score of years in Marblehead, had married, and held office there. Turning wrathfully to the person who had given him the ticket, the fisherman tore it in pieces, exclaiming as he did so, "D'ye call that a Native American ticket? Why, there's Squire Fabens on it; he an't a Marbleheader!"