There were five men all told in the fishing schooner Flying Star. I had known them all well, and had been shipmate with four of them. Captain Johnny Sparks was a Dutchman, a "squarehead," but a good seaman, and he had fished on the Hatteras Banks during three bluefish seasons. His vessel was a Provincetown specimen—what used to be termed the "Gloucester fisherman" type, before the decadence of that port in the industry which once made it famous had ended its shipbuilding.
She was a small vessel, much smaller than the modern Provincetown fisherman, which has a short foremast, a mainmast planted almost amidships, and sweeping canoe bows with overhang. No, she was of the old type—two sticks stuck upright in her at almost equal distances, marking her into three almost equal parts; a main-topmast sprung well forward and stayed well aft to steady the "whip" of long and continuous plunging into a lifting head sea. She was "chunky" in model, bows rather bluff, almost like a coaster, and her stern was of the old-time sawed-off pattern, sunk low in the water, an ugly stern for running in a heavy sea when the lift is quick and fast.
She was not worth over two thousand dollars, but Captain Johnny owned half of her, and he had no criticisms to make of her behavior in heavy weather. With a long, straight keel and full under-body, she was an excellent sea craft, provided she was properly handled.
I was mate of the passenger ship Prince Alfred with Bill Boldwin, running from New York to the West Indies, and as we ran on schedule we often fell in with the Hatteras fishermen twice during a voyage.
Johnny was fishing three miles north of the Diamond Shoal Lightship as we passed him on our voyage out. He stood upon his quarterdeck and waved to me. I was on the bridge, and bawled out I would have some fruit for him on the return trip. He nodded and waved his hand in appreciation, and his cook poked his head out of the galley and grinned. His boats were scattered along the shoal, all hauling up bluefish as fast as they could.
Four other vessels from New York were on the grounds, but I recognized none of them. Our passengers gazed at the small boats tossing as only light-built dories can toss in a lively sea; and they commented on the fishing.
As a rule, the average landsman thinks all fishing is done on the Grand or George's Banks. They get the idea from writers who know these waters well, and it never enters their heads that the northern banks are but a very small part of the great Atlantic fishing grounds, where the professional fisherman must toil to wrest his living from the salt sea.
It was due to a Gloucester Yankee, though, that the great fishing of Campeche Bank became known. Hove-to in a vicious norther a few score miles off Galveston, the "cod-hauler" was driven gradually off shore until he was far away from the land. Suddenly from a fathomless gulf—he had had the perseverance to keep his lead going at intervals—he fetched the ground in thirty fathoms, and gradually shoaled his water.
With a hook just above the lead, he soon began to haul up snappers, and he came running into port a few days later with his schooner loaded to her bearings with as prime fish as ever came out of the sea.
Captain Johnny had fished there a year, but owing to the slowness of the Flying Star he had given it up until the steam patrol boat had been put on to make the rounds and buy the fish on the grounds. It was Johnny who had gone into Sabine once for water when Dick Hollister was marshal.