It was customary for the fishing fleet to rendezvous at some point on the east coast before the end of April and to proceed in company past the Scottish coast, and thence through the Pentland Firth or between the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The ships were laden with food to last the crews for the summer, supplies of salt for the preservation of the intended cargoes, and possibly also with cloth and other manufactured articles for trade with the natives. In time of war with Scotland it was necessary for the fleet to be wafted or convoyed until clear of the coasts of the northern kingdom, and even then stragglers were frequently snapped up. On arrival at the destination fishing for cod and ling was carried on throughout the summer or until the holds were full, and the return voyage was made before the end of September with the same precautions as before.
The English had by no means a monopoly of the fishery, and the various nations of the North Sea which sent out competing squadrons found them troublesome neighbours on the coast. In 1532 an extensive affray occurred between the English and the Hamburgers, and, in this or other affairs of the same kind, forty or fifty Englishmen were slain. On remonstrances being made to Frederick of Denmark, who, as sovereign of Iceland, was apparently expected by Henry VIII to preserve order on the coast, he replied by charging the English with being the authors of all the trouble. They claimed a fishing-place which had never been theirs; they reduced the people to bondage; they refused to pay tribute, and stole fish.[[173]]
Olaus Magnus, in his History of the Goths and Swedes, has a paragraph on the same subject:
‘Of the mutual slaughter of the merchants for the Harbours of Iceland.
‘It is a miserable spectacle of factors that fall foul one upon the other, either at home or abroad, and kill one another for gain, or put all their merchandise in danger to be lost, or to revenge their Kindred.... Amongst these the chief, as it is supposed, are the Bremers, or the cities of the Vandals, the Rostochians, Vismarians, and Lubeckers. And lastly the merchants of England and Scotland, who so stifly contend for the primacy and privilege of the Iceland ports to ride in, as if they fought a fight at sea; and so wound one another for gain, that whether one or the other gets the Victory, yet there is always ready one of the officers of the Treasury, who knows how to correct them both sufficiently, both in their moneys and bodies, either by ordinary or extraordinary Exaction.’[[174]]
The Scots, too, had need to look to their defences when the fleet was passing along their coast; for the fishermen, as James V complained in 1535, were in the habit of plundering the islands and catching the unfortunate inhabitants on the way north, to serve as slaves during the fishing season, and be landed again on the homeward voyage in the autumn.[[175]] The suggestion of slave-hunting is supported by an existing indenture of apprenticeship to an east-coast mariner of a boy, nine years old, brought from ‘Lowsybaye’ in Iceland. It was a rough trade with more than the usual maritime hardships of those times. In 1542, Norfolk, writing to the Council on some proposal to utilize the returned Iceland fleet for Government service, remarked that when the cargoes were discharged the vessels stank so horribly that no man not used to the same could endure it.
An interesting letter is preserved from the commissioners at York to the Council during the Scottish war of 1542. A design was on foot for a raid on the Orkneys and Shetlands, an idea which the commissioners wrote to discourage. Touching the isles of ‘Shotland and Orkeney’, they said, they were informed that Shotland was so distant that Englishmen who went yearly to Iceland dared not tarry on those coasts after St. James’s tide. They must pass through the Pentley Firth, the most dangerous place in Christendom, and Scottishmen who knew it best dared not venture to pass it at this season (October). Orkney was also very dangerous and full of rocks; the people lived by fishing and had little to devastate save oats and a few beasts, which were so wild that they could only be taken by dogs. The enterprise would not quit a tenth part of its cost, besides the danger of losing the ships.[[176]]
An accurate estimate of the extent of the Iceland trade is obtainable from certain lists which still exist of ships engaged. In 1528, 149 ships sailed for Iceland, exclusively from east-coast ports, which contributed as follows:[[177]] London, 8 ships; Harwich, Ipswich, Manningtree, Dedham, Sudbury, and Colchester, 14 ships; Woodbridge, 3; Aldborough, Sysewell, and Thorpe, 6; Dunwich, Walderswick, Southwold, Easton, and Covehythe, 32; Lowestoft, 6; Yarmouth, 30; Claye, Blakeney, and Cromer, 30; Wells, 6; Lynn, 10; and Boston, 4. Another list[[178]] shows that, in 1533, 85 ships returned from Iceland, belonging to the same ports, of which the southernmost was London, and the most northerly, Boston. These vessels were all small, ranging from 30 to 150 tons, although the latter figure was exceptional, 100 tons being the usual limit. In July 1557, owing to the naval activities of the French, it was necessary to furnish a squadron to protect the homeward-bound Iceland fleet. In addition to nine queen’s ships, twenty private vessels were demanded from ports on the east and south coasts as far westward as Dartmouth and Plymouth.[[179]] A force of this strength, in the then debilitated state of the national defences, would only have been employed to protect a convoy of the highest value.
On the other hand we find, in the lugubrious times of Edward VI, a complaint of the decay of the fishing industry. Whereas, it runs, in the twentieth year of Henry VIII (1528) 140 ships went to Iceland, now only 43 go, and a proportionate decrease is indicated in the fishing in the North Sea itself.[[180]] The causes assigned are non-observance of fish days owing to the progress of Protestantism, lack of enterprise on the part of the fishermen, and burdensome regulations as to sales. The Catholic reaction under Mary caused a revival of the trade, which special legislation in the next reign attempted to maintain by enjoining the eating of fish on certain days, although the religious incentive no longer existed.
As has been indicated, the Bristol mariners preferred to do their fishing on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, and desisted from the Iceland voyage after the opening up of the new regions. There is no categorical authority for this view, but it may be deduced from the non-appearance of Bristol in the documents quoted above and from the undoubted presence of English craft on the American coast quite early in the sixteenth century. The obscure operations of the Bristol adventurers subsequent to the Cabot discoveries have already been considered. The New Interlude, of approximately the date 1519, also refers to the Newfoundland fishery, while John Rut, in 1527, although he found only foreigners fishing there on his arrival, spoke of fishing as a matter of course and no novelty to the English. The first statutory mention of an English fishery in Newfoundland is contained in an Act of 1541–2 for the prohibition of the practice of buying fish at sea instead of catching it, which was alleged to be deleterious to the common weal. This Act was not to extend to the buying of fish in Iceland or ‘Newland’. In a map drawn up for Henry VIII, in 1542,[[181]] Newfoundland is inscribed: ‘The new fonde londe quhar men goeth a fisching.’ Again, in an Act of 1548, there occurs a reference to fishing by Englishmen in Newefoundelande’. Thenceforward the traffic was well established, and has given to the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts the claim to be the oldest of English settlements beyond the seas. From the beginning, however, the French, Spaniards, and Portuguese were keen competitors. In 1542 a French fleet of from 80 to 100 small vessels, returning from the fishery, were nearly all taken by the Spaniards; and to the present day St. Malo and other western ports of France send out every year wooden sailing craft which fish all the summer on the Newfoundland banks and return to divide the spoil in the autumn, the men being paid according to the profits of the trip.