The Bounty of the Chesapeake Part 7

These nets were designed for hauling ash.o.r.e by hand. It was not till much later that other nets, of the styles so familiar today, gill nets and pound nets in particular, came into general use.

Much longer seines than Washington needed were used as fish became scarcer. There are tales of them four and five miles long, actually able to block off the entire river, being used in the neighborhood of Mt. Vernon before control laws were enacted and enforced. The catches were enormous. Barges were heaped high with all sorts of fish and towed into Washington City where they were sold before they spoiled, for what they would bring.

Today the pollution for which Washington and Alexandria are responsible has destroyed most fish life within several miles of Mt. Vernon.

Like his fishing predecessors ever since Jamestown, Washington had his troubles with salt. One of his business letters ordering a supply complained: "Liverpool salt is inadequate to the saving of fish....

Lisbon is the proper kind."

He was only briefly touching on a subject that had vexed the Colonists since the beginning. Through the years the cry for more and better salt had gone up. The fishermen of Virginia needed salt for their fish as badly as the Hebrews in Egypt needed straw for their bricks. Although trading with foreign countries increased steadily, the question of a salt supply for Virginia remained unsolved.

As the 18th century had progressed, matters grew even worse. In 1763 the Virginia Committee of Correspondence had written urgently to its agent in London to apply to Parliament for an act to

allow to this Colony the same liberty to import salt from Lisbon or any other European ports, which they have long enjoyed in the Colonies and provinces of New England, New York and Pennsylvania.

This is a point that hath been more than once unsuccessfully labored; but we think it is so reasonable, that when it is set in a proper light, we shall hope for success. The reason upon which the opposition hath been supported, is this general one that it is contrary to the interest of Great Britain to permit her plantations to be supplied with any commodity, especially any manufacture from a foreign country, which she herself can supply them with. This we allow to be of force; provided the Mother Country can and does supply her plantations with as much as they want; but the fact being otherwise, we have been allowed to supply ourselves with large quant.i.ties from Cercera, Isle of May, Sal Tortuga and so forth. The course of this trade being hazardous, in time of war, this useful and necessary article hath been brought to us at a high price of late. The reason or pretence of granting this indulgence to the Northern Colonies, in exclusion of the Southern, we presume to be to enable them to carry on their fishery to greater advantage, the salt from the Continent of Europe being fitter for that purpose than the salt from Great Britain or that from any of the islands we have mentioned. But surely this reason is but weakly founded with respect to Pennsylvania, whose rivers scarcely supply them with fish sufficient for their own use; whereas the Bay of Chesapeake abounds with great plenty and variety of fish fit for foreign markets, as well as for ourselves, if we could but get the proper kind of salt to cure it. Herrings and shads might be exported to the West Indies to great advantage; and we could supply the British markets with finer sturgeon than they have yet tasted from the Baltic. And it is an allowed principle that every extension of the trade of the Colonies, which does not interfere with that of the Mother Country is an advantage to the latter; since all our profits ultimately center with her.

It was pointed out that the English merchants were not above sharp practices in filling orders for salt; they would reduce the amount shipped to individuals and provide the captain with all he could carry extra to be sold at high prices to needy buyers.

The plaint was just another of the rumblings of discontent contributing to the grand explosion of thirteen years later. The intricacies were entered into in detail by the Committee:

We have twelve different Colonies on the Continent of North America. Four of them, viz., Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and Newfoundland, have liberty to import salt from any part of Europe directly. The other eight, viz., Virginia, Maryland, East and West Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Nova Scotia, as well as all the West India Islands, are deprived of it.

At present those Colonies on whose behalf the pet.i.tion is given, are supplied with salt from the Isle of Mays in Africa, Sal Tortuga, and Turks Island in America, also a little from England; but are deprived of the only salt that answers best for the princ.i.p.al use, viz., to preserve fish and other provisions, twelve months, or a longer time. What they have from Great Britain is made from salt water by fire, which is preferred for all domestic uses.

The African or American salt is made from salt water by the sun; which is used for curing and preserving provisions. The first, made by fire, is found, by long experience, in warm climates, to be too weak; the provisions cured with it turn rusty, and in six or eight months become unfit for use. The second kind, by the quant.i.ty of alum, or some other vicious quality in it, is so corrosive, that in less than twelve months, the meat cured with it is entirely deprived of all the fat, and the lean hardened, or so much consumed, as to be of little service. The same ill qualities are found in these salts with regard to fish: wherefore the arguments used, that they ought to have English salt only, are as much as to say, they should be allowed to catch fish, or salt any provisions, but let their cattle and hogs die without reaping the advantage nature has given them.

In all countries where a benefit can arise by fish or provisions, salt must be cheap; and as its value where made is from ten to twenty shillings the ton, so the carriage of it to America is often more than the real value: It is in order to save part of the expense of carriage, this application is made; for although some gentlemen do not seem to know it, yet we have liberty, by the present laws in force, to carry any kind of European salt to America, the ship first coming to an English port, in order to make an entry.

We have also liberty to bring it from any salt island in Africa or America; but by the Act of 15 Car. II. Chap. 7, salt is supposed to be included under the word commodity; whereby it is, with all European goods, prevented from being carried to America, unless first landed in England: the consequence whereof is, that English ships, which (I shall suppose) are hired to sail from London to Lisbon with corn, and thence proceed to America, have not the liberty to carry salt in place of ballast, and therefore under a necessity to pay above 10 sterling at Lisbon for ballast (that is to say, for sand), which they carry to America, or else return to England in order to get a clearance for the salt, which would be more expense than its value.

Now, had they liberty to carry salt directly to America, they would not only save the money paid for the sand, but also gain by the freight of salt perhaps 60 or 80 more. Thus on an average every ship that goes now empty from these ports to America, might clear 70 and there are above a hundred sail to that voyage every year.

This is an annual loss of 7,000 at least; and besides, as the ship loses no time in this case (salt being as soon taken in as sand), they could afford to sell the best salt as cheap in America as is now paid for the worst; for as a ship must make a long voyage on purpose to get, and make it in the salt islands, so the expense thereof is more than the value of the salt at Lisbon, St. Ibbes, and so forth.

The proponents of the pet.i.tion made out a strong case. They went into the grading of the kinds of salt obtained from the West Indies, Africa and Europe and a.s.serted that, inferior though some of them were, they nevertheless had been found to be "preferable to England salt for curing and preserving their fish":

To know the qualities of the different kinds of salt used in America may be an amus.e.m.e.nt to a speculative man; but seems entirely out of the question in this case; for whatever may be said on that head, long experience and the universal agreement of all from America, as well as former Acts of Parliament, show that the common white salt will not answer the uses it is chiefly wanted for there.

As to what is called Loundes's brine salt, that, and his many other projects, seemed to be formed on the same plan with Subtle's in _The Alchemist_, his scheme looking as if he only wanted the money, and left it to others to make the salt.

Salt can, without doubt, be made of any desired quality, but the price, the place of delivery, and the quant.i.ty to be had of so useful a commodity must also be regarded.

We can get salt at Sal Tortuga for the raking and putting it into our ships; but the expense of a voyage on purpose for it is greater than to buy it at a place from whence the freight may be all saved, and to have the best salt on the cheapest terms, is, no doubt the intention of this application, as it certainly was of the other Colonies that have obtained this privilege.

All the Virginians were asking, in effect, was the liberty to import from Europe what salt they wished!

As the moment of Independence neared, the stress grew greater. George Washington's Mt. Vernon overseer during the crucial years, his distant relative Lund Washington, addressed a letter to him in 1775:

The people are running mad about salt. You would hardly think it possible there could be such a scarcity. Five and six shillings per bushel. Conway's sloop came to Alexandria Monday last with a load.

A couple of months later the crisis was reached:

I have had 300 bushels more of salt put into fish barrels, which I intend to move into Muddy Hole barn, for if it should be destroyed by the enemy we shall not be able to get more. There is still fifty or sixty more bushels, perhaps a hundred in the house. I was unwilling to sell it, knowing we could not get more and our people must have fish. Therefore I told the people I had none.

Two more years of adversity went by. Lund wrote in 1778:

I was told a day or two past that Congress had ordered a quant.i.ty of shad to be cured on this river. I expect as everything sells high, shad will also. I should be fond of curing about 100 barrels of them, they finding salt. We have been unfortunate in our crops, therefore I could wish to make something by fish.

He proposed that he cure fish "for the Continent" and make "upwards of 200 pounds":

I have very little salt, of which we must make the most. I mean to make a brine and after cutting off the head and bellies, dipping them in the brine for but a short time, then hang them up and cure them by smoke, or dry them in the sun; for our people being so long accustomed to have fish whenever they wanted, would think it very bad to have none at all.

All ended well for that season. Lund wrote:

I have cured a sufficient quant.i.ty of fish for our people, together with about 160 or 170 barrels of shad for the Continent.

One of the most interesting diarists of Revolutionary days was young Nicholas Cresswell, an Englishman of 24 when he arrived in America for a three-years visit. He was in Leesburg, Virginia, in December 1776 when he recorded this occurrence:

A Dutch mob of about forty hors.e.m.e.n went through the town today on their way to Alexandria to search for salt. If they find any they will take it by force.... This article is exceedingly scarce; if none comes the people will revolt. They cannot possibly subsist without a considerable quant.i.ty of this article.

The raiders were pacified by an allotment of three pints of salt per man.

A vivid picture of what the lack of salt entailed was given by Cresswell in April 1777:

Saw a seine drawn for herrings and caught upwards of 40,000 with about 300 shad fish. The shads they use but the herrings are left upon the sh.o.r.e useless for want of salt. Such immense quant.i.ties of this fish is left upon the sh.o.r.e to rot, I am surprised it does not bring some epidemic disorder to the inhabitants by the nauseous stench arising from such a ma.s.s of putrefaction.

A fishery by-product of importance to early Virginians, lime, was of interest to Washington. It was extensively obtained by burning oyster sh.e.l.ls.

Early Virginia masonry shows that such lime was mixed in mortar and it was usually of poor quality, perhaps because of crude facilities for burning. Today's sh.e.l.l lime is much in demand in agriculture and its price is higher than mined lime. George Washington found that for the purpose of building it left much to be desired. He wrote to Henry Knox from Mt. Vernon in 1785:

I use a great deal of lime every year, made of the oyster sh.e.l.ls, which, before they are burnt, cost me twenty-five to thirty shillings per hundred bushels; but it is of mean quality, which makes me desirous of trying stone lime.

He was paying about seven cents a bushel for sh.e.l.ls, which seems high for those days of abundant oysters and cheap labor. Until recently the Virginia market price was very little more.

Washington's probing, weighing mind slighted no phase of his fishery.

About to fertilize crops with fish experimentally, he wrote to his overseer: "If you tried both fresh and salt fish as a manure the different aspects of them should be attended to." A few weeks later, after watching results, he wrote: "The corn that is manured with fish, though it does not appear to promise much at first, may nevertheless be fine.... It is not only possible but highly probable."

This opinion was abundantly confirmed years later when vast quant.i.ties of menhaden were converted into guano for crops by Atlantic coast factories, a practice changed only when livestock-nutrition studies showed that menhaden sc.r.a.p was too valuable a protein source to be spread on land. The fish referred to by Washington were in all probability river-herring, or alewives, used as fertilizer at such times as they were caught in greater abundance than the food market could absorb.

The probable yield of his fish trade was always carefully calculated, even when the pressure of national affairs required his absence from home. From Philadelphia we find him writing to his manager about a fish merchant's offer: "Ten shillings per hundred for shad is very low. I am at this moment paying six shillings apiece for every shad I buy." He usually tried to get at least twelve shillings a hundred for his shad, which were salted prior to marketing, although there were instances when he let them go for as little as one pence apiece. The extraordinary price of six shillings for one shad cited by him in Philadelphia is hard to explain. It probably referred to a fresh one caught early in the season and prepared especially for his table.

Though records of the average weight of shad in those days are lacking, seven pounds is a fair estimate, and it may have been greater. The weights now seldom exceed three or four pounds, because in the more recent years of intensive fishing, shad have been widely caught up as they returned from the ocean to sp.a.w.n for the first time. Shad, along with other anadromous, or "up-running," fish are born near the head-waters of rivers, and seek the ocean for feeding and growth.

Unlike salmon they do not perish after one sp.a.w.ning and the oftener they return, the larger they are. What conservationists call "escapement," or the freedom to get back to the ocean from the rivers, is considered vital to their survival in quant.i.ty.

All through the two-score years of fishing at Mount Vernon, Washington suffered, judging by his unceasing preoccupation with minor details, from the lack of a fishing foreman to whom he could entrust the operation with any confidence. Letters toward the close of his life bearing on this subject are still replete with reminders concerning trifles which would have been routine for any competent boss. The fish runs start about March; therefore, in January he finds it necessary to write; "It would be well to have the seines overhauled immediately, that is, if new ones are wanting, or the old ones requiring much repair, they may be set about without loss of time." He must even look beyond his own help for the skill necessary to put his nets in order.

"I would have you immediately upon the receipt of this letter send for the man who usually does this work for me.... Let him choose his twine (if it is to be had in Alexandria) and set about them immediately."

Abundance of fish created a bottleneck:

In the height of the fishery they are not prepared to cure or otherwise dispose of them as fast as they could be caught; of course the seines slacken in their work, or the fish lie and spoil when that is the only time I can make anything by the seine, for small hauls will hardly pay the wear and tear of the seine and the hire of the hands.

However, then as now, fishing was a gamble: