A few Pilgrims left Plymouth and returned to the Cape and settled in the Eastham area. So, too, did this windmill. It was built in Plymouth in the 1600s and was moved to Eastham in 1793. The mill was used in producing flour. Some mills were used to pump seawater as a part of saltworks.
The cod has always been what Captain John Smith described in 1616 as “the maine staple” of the New England fishing industry. More than a century before the Mayflower landed, fleets of small ships from Holland, Portugal, and the Basque region of Spain had braved the North Atlantic annually to fish the rich spawning grounds of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, salting their fish ashore and returning with their catch to European ports. It is more than likely that the first European visitors to Provincetown Harbor—originally called Cape Cod Harbor—were Portuguese fishermen who came ashore to cure, or “make,” cod on the long sandy stretches there. Some permanent European settlements may even have existed there in the 1500s.
If the Plymouth settlers were unskilled as fishermen, they were smart enough to sell the rights to fish to others, and in 1670 a tax on the Provincetown fisheries was established as a means of funding public schools in Plymouth. As Thoreau put it, schools of fish were used to provide schools for children. As early as 1730, however, Cape fishing captains were making voyages to the Grand Banks in a “triangle trade:” taking salted cod to the West Indies, exchanging fish for molasses and rum, and bringing them back to the mainland where they were sold to finance new and larger ships for more fishing trips. But during the 18th century most fishing remained inshore, or close to shore, and part-time. Cape Codders remained half-farmers, half-fishermen, and most took only enough for themselves and local markets.
The British embargo on shipping during the American Revolution was disastrous for the Cape’s nascent fishing industry, but after the war it began to come into its own. Shorter and more profitable runs were made in smaller boats, and lightly salted “fresh” fish was brought directly back for sale in Boston. Fish flakes—low wooden slatted platforms on which split cod was salted and sun-dried—became the common method of curing fish. Because of its capacious harbor, “where a thousand sail may safely anchor,” and its extensive sandy beaches providing ideal sites for fish flakes, Provincetown soon became a magnet for the Cape’s burgeoning fish exports. From a mere ten houses in 1755, it boasted a thousand residents in 1802, and by 1840 the Cape-tip community had become the preeminent fishing port on Cape Cod, harboring more than 100 cod trawlers. When Thoreau visited its narrow streets in 1849, he counted over 200 mackerel schooners alone.
The whaler Charles W. Morgan can be toured today at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.
One of the major events in the growth of the Cape’s fishing industry was the opening up of the Georges Banks in 1821. Much closer than Newfoundland’s Grand Banks, but just as fertile, this vast glacial deposit, the work of the same ice sheets that formed Cape Cod, had long been shunned because of its dangerous shoals and currents. But the rising price of cod and halibut tempted more and more fishing captains to its waters. By the mid-1800s a distinctive “banker” version of the Provincetown schooner had evolved, sleeker and faster than the old tub-hulled vessels, giving greater maneuverability on the shoals and greater speed in getting the fish to market first for the best prices. The schooners also began carrying dories aboard. These small, double-ended, highly seaworthy boats were launched from the mother ship with two-man crews, who set out hundreds of yards of hooked lines on floats, hauled in their catch by hand, and waited to be picked up at the end of the day. Deep-sea dory fishing, though it greatly increased the yield of each voyage, also increased the risks for the crews, especially if, as frequently happened, these small rowboats became separated from the schooners in fog or squalls.
After the Civil War the industrial revolution hit the fishing market. Greater concentrations of capital, larger boats, more expensive gear and faster transportation for landed fish were required. Most Cape towns did not possess the resources, the anchorage, or the facilities to compete. They turned instead to local handlining, trap, and weir fishing, or, as in Wellfleet’s case, began to develop local shellfish industries. But Provincetown, reinvigorated by the arrival of the railroad in 1873 and by an influx of Portuguese fishermen from the Azores in the late 1800s, remained a prominent New England fishing port until the end of the century, when the increasing demands of capital investment and labor forced the town to yield to the ports of Boston and Gloucester.
Today Provincetown, Chatham, and several of the other Cape towns still support small but tenacious fleets of local draggers, trawlers, and lobster boats. Declining stocks, smaller quotas, oil spills, competition from foreign “factory ships,” and ever-more-expensive gear have made it even harder for the small fisherman to stay in business. But the independence, challenge, the hope of a “big haul,” and the unexplainable lure of the sea continue to attract local residents to this ancient profession, and it is likely they will continue to do so as long as there are fish to catch.
