American Merchant Ships and Sailors

by Willis J. Abbot

"THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CUTTING OFF THEIR TAILS"

The fishing schooners, like the whalers, were managed upon principles of profit-sharing. The methods of dividing the proceeds of the catch differed, but in no sense did the wage system exist, except for one man on board—the cook, who was paid from $40 to $60 a month, besides being allowed to fish in return for caring for the vessel when all the men were out in dories. Sometimes the gross catch of the boat was divided into two parts, the owners who outfitted the boat, supplying all provisions, equipment, and salt, taking one part, the other being divided among the fishermen in proportion to the catch of each. Every fish caught was carefully tallied, the customary method being to cut the tongues, which at the lose of the day's work were counted by the captain, and each man's catch credited. The boys, of whom each schooner carried one or two, marked their fish by cutting off the tails, wherefore these hardy urchins, who generally took the sea at the age of ten, were called "cut-tails." The captain, for his more responsible part in the management of the boat, was not always expected to keep tally of his fish, but was allowed an average catch, plus from three to five per cent. of the gross value of the cargo. Not infrequently the captain was owner of the boat, and his crew, thrifty neighbors of his, owning their own houses by the waterside, and able to outfit the craft and provide for the sustenance of their wives and children at home without calling upon the capitalist for aid. In such a case, the whole value of the catch was divided among the men who made it. At best, these shares were not of a sort to open the doors of a financial paradise to the men. The fisheries have always afforded impressive illustrations of the iron rule of the business world that the more arduous and more dangerous an occupation is, the less it pays. It was for the merest pittance that the fishermen risked their lives, and those who had families at home drawing their weekly provender from the outfitter were lucky if, at the end of the cruise they found themselves with the bill at the store paid, and a few dollars over for necessaries during the winter. In 1799, when the spokesmen of the fishery interests appeared before Congress to plead for aid, they brought papers from the town of Marblehead showing that the average earnings of the fishing vessels hailing from that port were, in 1787, $483; in 1788, $456; and in 1789, $273. The expenses of each vessel averaged $275. In the best of the three years, then, there was a scant $200 to be divided among the captain, the crew, and the owner. This was, of course, one of the leanest of the lean years that the fishermen encountered; but with all the encouragement in the way of bounties and protected markets that Congress could give them, they never were able to earn in a life, as much as a successful promoter of trusts nowadays will make in half an hour. The census figures of 1890—the latest complete figures on occupations and earnings—give the total value of American fisheries as $44,500,000; the number of men employed in them, 132,000, and the average earnings $337 a man. The New England fisheries alone were then valued at $14,270,000. In the gross total of the value of American fisheries are included many methods foreign to the subject of this book, as for example, the system of fishing from shore with pound nets, the salmon fisheries of the Columbia River, and the fisheries of the Great Lakes.

Mackerel are taken both with the hook and in nets—taken in such prodigious numbers that the dories which go out to draw the seine are loaded until their gunwales are almost flush with the sea, and each haul seems indeed a miraculous draught of fishes. It is the safest and pleasantest form of fishing known to the New Englander, for its season is in summer only; the most frequented banks are out of the foggy latitude, and the habit of the fish of going about in monster schools keeps the fishing fleet together, conducing thus to safety and sociability both. In one respect, too, it is the most picturesque form of fishing. The mackerel is not unlike his enemy, man, in his curiosity concerning the significance of a bright light in the dark. Shrewd shopkeepers, who are after gudgeons of the human sort, have worked on this failing of the human family so that by night some of our city streets blaze with every variety of electric fire. The mackerel fisherman gets after his prey in much the same fashion. When at night the lookout catches sight of the phosphorescent gleams in the water that tells of the restless activity beneath of a great school of fish the schooner is headed straightway for the spot. Perhaps forty or fifty other schooners will be turning their prows the same way, their red and green lights glimmering through the black night on either side, the white waves under the bows showing faintly, and the creaking of the cordage sounding over the waters. It is a race for first chance at the school, and a race conducted with all the dash and desperation of a steeple-chase. The skipper of each craft is at his own helm, roaring out orders, and eagerly watchful of the lights of his encroaching neighbors. With the schooner heeled over to leeward, and rushing along through the blackness, the boats are launched, and the men tumble over the side into them, until perhaps the cook, the boy, and the skipper are alone on deck. One big boat, propelled by ten stout oarsmen, carries the seine, and with one dory is towed astern the schooner until the school is overhauled, then casts off and leaps through the water under the vigorous tugs of its oarsmen. In the stern a man stands throwing over the seine by armsful. It is the plan of campaign for the long boat and the dory, each carrying one end of the net, to make a circuit of the school, and envelope as much of it as possible in the folds of the seine. Perhaps at one time boats from twenty or thirty schooners will be undertaking the same task, their torches blazing, their helmsmen shouting, the oars tossing phosphorescent spray into the air. In and out among the boats the schooners pick their way—a delicate task, for each skipper wishes to keep as near as possible to his men, yet must run over neither boats or nets belonging to his rival. Wonderfully expert helmsmen they become after years of this sort of work—more trying to the nerves and exacting quite as much skill as the "jockeying" for place at the start of an international yacht race.

When the slow task of drawing together the ends of the seine until the fish are fairly enclosed in a sort of marine canal, a signal brings the schooner down to the side of the boats. The mackerel are fairly trapped, but the glare of the torches blinds them to their situation, and they would scarcely escape if they could. One side of the net is taken up on the schooner's deck, and there clamped firmly, the fish thus lying in the bunt, or pocket between the schooners, and the two boats which lie off eight or ten feet, rising and falling with the sea. There, huddled together in the shallow water, growing ever shallower as the net is raised, the shining fish, hundreds and thousands of them, bushels, barrels, hogsheads of them, flash and flap, as the men prepare to swing them aboard in the dip net. This great pocket of cord, fit to hold perhaps a bushel or more, is swung from the boom above, and lowered into the midst of the catch. Two men in the boat seize its iron rim, and with a twist and shove scoop it full of mackerel. "Yo-heave-oh" sing out the men at the halliards, and the net rises into the air, and swings over the deck of the schooner. Two men perched on the rail seize the collar and, turning it inside out, drop the whole finny load upon the deck. "Fine, fat, fi-i-ish!" cry out the crew in unison, and the net dips back again into the corral for another load. So, by the light of smoky torches, fastened to the rigging, the work goes on, the men singing and shouting, the tackle creaking, the waves splashing, the wind singing in the shrouds, the boat's bow bumping dully on the waves as she falls. To all these sounds of the sea comes soon to be added one that is peculiar to the banks, a sound rising from the deck of the vessel, a multitude of little taps, rhythmical, muffled, soft as though a corps of clog-dancers were dancing a lively jig in rubber-soled shoes. It is the dance of death of the hapless mackerel. All about the deck they flap and beat their little lives away. Scales fly in every direction, and the rigging, almost to the masthead, is plastered with them.

When the deck is nearly full—and sometimes a single haul of the seine will more than fill it twice—the labor of dipping is interrupted and all hands turn to with a will to dress and pack the fish. Not pretty work, this, and as little pleasing to perform. Barrels, boards, and sharp knives are in requisition. Torches are set up about the deck. The men divide up into gangs of four each and group themselves about the "keelers," or square, shallow boxes into which the fish to be dressed are bailed from the deck. Two men in each gang are "splitters"; two "gibbers." The first, with a dextrous slash of a sharp knife splits the fish down the back, and throws it to the "gibber," who, with a twist of his thumb—armed with a mitt—extracts the entrails and throws the fish into a barrel of brine. By long practise the men become exceedingly expert in the work, and rivalry among the gangs keeps the pace of all up to the highest possible point. All through the night they work until the deck is cleaned of fish, and slimy with blood and scales. The men, themselves, are ghastly, besmeared as they are from top to toe with the gore of the mackerel. From time to time, full barrels are rolled away, and lowered into the hold, and fresh fish raised from the slowly emptying seine alongside. Until the last fish has been sliced, cleaned, plunged into brine, and packed away there can be little respite from the muscle grinding work. From time to time, the pail of tepid water is passed about; once at least during the night, the cook goes from gang to gang with steaming coffee, and now and then some man whose wrist is wearied beyond endurance, knocks off, and with contortions of pain, rubs his arm from wrist to elbow. But save for these momentary interruptions, there is little break in the work. Meanwhile the boat is plunging along through the water, the helm lashed or in beckets, and the skipper hard at work with a knife or gibbing mitt. A score of other boats in a radius of half a mile or so, will be in like case, so there is always danger of collision. Many narrow escapes and not a few accidents have resulted from the practice of cleaning up while under sail.

FISHING FROM THE RAIL

The mackerel, however, is not caught solely in nets, but readily takes that oldest of man's predatory instruments, the hook. To attract them to the side of the vessel, a mixture of clams and little fish called "porgies," ground together in a mill, is thrown into the sea, which, sinking to the depths at which the fish commonly lie, attract them to the surface and among the enticing hooks. Every fisherman handles two lines, and when the fishing is good he is kept busy hauling in and striking off the fish until his arms ache, and the tough skin on his hands is nearly chafed through. Sometimes the hooks are baited with bits of clam or porgy, though usually the mackerel, when biting at all, will snap with avidity at a naked hook, if tinned so as to shine in the water. Mr. Nordhoff, whose reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes this method of fishing and its results graphically:

"At midnight, when I am called up out of my warm bed to stand an hour's watch, I find the vessel pitching uneasily, and hear the breeze blowing fretfully through the naked rigging. Going on deck, I perceive that both wind and sea have 'got up' since we retired to rest. The sky looks lowering, and the clouds are evidently surcharged with rain. In fine the weather, as my predecessor on watch informs me, bears every sign of an excellent fishday on the morrow. I accordingly grind some bait, sharpen up my hooks once more, see my lines clear, and my heaviest jigs (the technical term for hooks with pewter on them) on the rail ready for use, and at one o'clock return to my comfortable bunk. I am soon again asleep, and dreaming of hearing fire-bells ringing, and seeing men rush to the fire, and just as I see 'the machine' round the corner of the street, am startled out of my propriety, my dream, sleep, and all by the loud cry of 'Fish!'