A Virginian born in 1792, Col. T. J. Randolph of Edgehill near Charlottesville, was asked to search his earliest memories in order to record 18th century fishing conditions. He wrote a letter in 1875 to the newly-constituted Virginia fish commissioners describing an era well-nigh incredible to today's Tidewater fishermen:
Shad were abundant in the Rivanna at my earliest recollection, say prior to 1800. They penetrated into the mountains to breed. I have heard the old people, when I was young, speak of their descending the rivers in continuous streams in the fall, as large as a man's hand. The old ones so weak, that if they were forced by the current against a rock they got off with difficulty. Six miles north of Charlottesville three hundred were caught in one night with a bush seine. A negro told me he had caught seventeen in a trap at one time. I recollect the negroes bringing them to my mother continually. An entry of land near Charlottesville about 1735 crossed the Rivanna for two or three acres as a fishing shore. The dams absolutely stopped them, but they had greatly declined before their erection. In 1810 every sluice in the falls at Richmond was plied day and night by float seines. I never heard of rockfish above the falls, and supposed they were confined to Tidewater.... Rockfish were hunted on the Eastern Shore on horseback with spears. The large fish coming to feed on the creek shores, overflowed by the tide, showed themselves in the shallow water by a ripple before them. They were ridden on behind and forced into water too shallow for them to swim well, and were speared. I inferred from this fact that they confined themselves to the Tidewater. When young, I have heard the old people speak of an abundance of other fish. The supposition was that the clearing of the country, and consequent muddying of the streams, had destroyed them.
By sluicing the dams, and prohibiting fishing in sluices, or trapping, or anything that should bar their progress, I do not see why the shad should not return.
The shad have never returned to the up-country. But they still visit the vast inland waters below the Fall line, sometimes so abundantly that the price declines, as it did so recently as 1956, to where the fishermen can scarcely make a profit. Other fish referred to by the first Virginians continue to return, and will do so as long as our outreaching civilization does not deprive them of the natural conditions they need for survival.
The years closely following the Revolution brought profound readjustment in American commerce. Observations on whaling, a minor but vital home industry, filled many pages of a 1788 communication of Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, one of his confreres in the shaping of national policy. After sketching the uses of whale oil, its economic position and its history, he took up the particular problem facing the people of Nantucket, perhaps the foremost whalers in America. As long as they had been subjects of the British Empire they had been able to sell their oil duty-free in England. Now as aliens they must pay the same tariff charged other foreign traders. This meant the difference between a profitable and unprofitable enterprise. A few Nantucket seamen had even transferred to Nova Scotia in order to become British citizens again and thus receive exemption from whale-oil import duty. This trend alarmed the French in particular, who could visualize thousands of the United States' best sailors going over to their enemies the English. The remedy was suggested: make France the most attractive market for U.S. whale oil. At the same time, English whaling had been government subsidized and could undercut competition.
The international chess game went briskly on, to the concern of Jefferson and the well-wishers of the infant Union. Before the Revolution England had fewer than 100 vessels whaling, while America had more than 300. But by 1788 England had 314 and America 80. Such was the result of the conflict, aided by the bounty paid by Britain to its own whalers. Jefferson hoped that the United States producers could develop a market in France, in part, by bartering oil for the essential work clothes which hitherto had been bought for cash in England. But he warned that without some kind of subsidy American whalers could neither compete with foreign countries nor make a living commensurate with other pursuits. The growing nation's sea-faring men would decrease to the point where the country's sea power would be in question.
As Secretary of State in 1791, Jefferson reported to Congress on the two principal American fisheries of the day, both oceanic. "The cod and whale fisheries," he began, "carried on by different persons, from different ports, in different vessels, in different seas, and seeking different markets, agree in one circumstance, as being as unprofitable to the adventurer as important to the public." Once prosperous, he said, they were now in embarrassing decline.
He traced the history of the cod fisheries back to 1517, in which year as many as 50 European ships were reported fishing off the Newfoundland banks at one time. In 1577 there were 150 French vessels, 100 Spanish and 50 Portuguese. The British limped far behind with 15. The French gradually took over as they claimed more and more territory in the region. Other nations dropped out, except England, whose cod fleet at the beginning of the seventeenth century had increased to about 150 vessels. These in due course were largely supplanted by the New England colonists. When France lost Newfoundland to England in 1713 the English and Colonial fisheries spurted ahead. By 1755 their fleets and catches equaled those of the French, and in 1768 passed them. Jefferson's statistics present an impressive picture of the fishing activity of that time and place, especially when compared with the unorganized Chesapeake fisheries just then coming of age.
In 1791 he said there were 259 French vessels totaling 24,422 tons and employing 9,722 seamen. Their catch: 20 million pounds that year. There were 665 American vessels with 25,650 tonnage, 4,405 seamen and a catch of around 40 million pounds. England's ships, tonnage and men were not given. However, her estimated catch nearly equaled that of France and America combined. Thus the Northern fishing grounds in their palmy days accounted for well over 100 million pounds of cod a year.
It is worth remarking that the size of today's New England cod fishery is not radically different from the pre-Revolutionary one described by Jefferson. Boats, men and catch remain about the same on the average.