American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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"The fleet is the aggregate of all the vessels engaged in the mackerel
fishery. Experience has taught fishermen that the surest way to find
mackerel is to cruise in one vast body, whose line of search will then
extend over an area of many miles. When, as sometimes happens, a single
vessel falls in with a large 'school,' the catch is, of course, much
greater. But vessels cruising separately or in small squads are much less
likely to fall in with fish than is the large fleet. 'The fleet' is
therefore the aim of every mackerel fisherman. The best vessels generally
maintain a position to the windward. Mackerel mostly work to windward
slowly, and those vessels furthest to windward in the fleet are therefore
most likely to fall in with fish first, while from their position they can
quickly run down should mackerel be raised to leeward.

"Thus, in a collection of from six hundred to a thousand vessels, cruising
in one vast body, and spreading over many miles of water, is kept up a
constant, though silent and imperceptible communication, by means of
incessant watching with good spy-glasses. This is so thorough that a
vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel 'alongside,'
technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the
diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every
man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading
to the wind every available stitch of canvas to force each little bark as
quickly as possible into close proximity to the coveted prize."

To come upon the mackerel fleet suddenly, perhaps with the lifting of the
fog's gray curtain, or just as the faint dawn above the tossing horizon
line to the east began to drive away the dark, was a sight to stir the
blood of a lad born to the sea. Sometimes nearly a thousand vessels would
be huddled together in a space hardly more than a mile square. At night,
their red and green lights would swing rhythmically up and down as the
little craft were tossed by the long rollers of old Atlantic, in whose
black bosom the gay colors were reflected in subdued hues. From this
floating city, with a population of perhaps ten thousand souls, no sound
arises except the occasional roar of a breaking swell, the creaking of
cordage, and the "chug-chug" of the vessel's bows as they drop into the
trough of the sea. All sails are furled, the bare poles showing black
against the starlit sky, and, with one man on watch on the deck, each
drifts idly before the breeze. Below, in stuffy cabins and fetid
forecastles, the men are sleeping the deep and dreamless sleep that hard
work in the open air brings as one of its rewards. All is as quiet as
though a mystic spell were laid on all the fleet. But when the sky to the
eastward begins to turn gray, signs of life reappear. Here and there in
the fleet a sail will be seen climbing jerkily to the masthead, and hoarse
voices sound across the waters. It is only a minute or two after the first
evidence of activity before the whole fleet is tensely active. Blocks and
cordage are creaking, captains and mates shouting. Where there was a
forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the
first rays of the rising sun. The schooners that have been drifting idly,
are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other's bows, slipping
out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical
miracles. From a thousand galleys rise a thousand slender wreaths of
smoke, and the odors of coffee and of the bean dear to New England
fishermen, mingle with the saline zephyrs of the sea. The fleet is awake.

They who have sailed with the fleet say that one of the marvels of the
fisherman's mind is the unerring skill with which he will identify vessels
in the distant fleet, To the landsman all are alike--a group of somewhat
dingy schooners, not over trig, and apt to be in need of paint. But the
trained fisherman, pursing his eyes against the sun's glitter on the
waves, points them out one by one, with names, port-of-hail, name of
captain, and bits of gossip about the craft. As the mountaineer identifies
the most distant peak, or the plainsman picks his way by the trail
indistinguishable to the untrained eye, so the fisherman, raised from
boyhood among the vessels that make up the fleet, finds in each
characteristics so striking, so individual, as to identify the vessel
displaying them as far as a keen eye can reach.

[Illustration: "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.

[Illustration: 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!'

"I start up desperately in my narrow bunk, bringing my cranium in violent
contact with a beam overhead, which has the effect of knocking me flat
down in my berth again. After recovering as much consciousness as is
necessary to appreciate my position, I roll out of bed, jerk savagely at
my boots, and snatching up my cap and pea-jacket, make a rush _at_ the
companion-way, _up_ which I manage to fall in my haste, and then spring
into the hold for a strike-barrel.

"And now the mainsail is up, the jib down, and the captain is throwing
bait. It is not yet quite light, but we hear other mainsails going up all
round us. A cool drizzle makes the morning unmistakably uncomfortable, and
we stand around half asleep, with our sore hands in our pockets, wishing
we were at home. The skipper, however, is holding his lines over the rail
with an air which clearly intimates that the slightest kind of a nibble
will be quite sufficient this morning to seal the doom of a mackerel.

"'There, by Jove!' the captain hauls back--'there, I told you so!
Skipper's got him--no--aha, captain, you haul back too savagely!'

"With the first movement of the captain's arm, indicating the presence of
fish, everybody rushes madly to the rail. Jigs are heard on all sides
plashing into the water, and eager hands and arms are stretched at their
full length over the side, feeling anxiously for a nibble.

"'Sh--hish--there's something just passed my fly--I felt him,' says an old
man standing alongside of me.

"'Yes, and I've got him,' triumphantly shouts out the next man on the
other side of him, hauling in as he speaks, a fine mackerel, and striking
him off into his barrel in the most approved style.

"Z-z-zip goes my line through and deep into my poor fingers, as a huge
mackerel rushes savagely away with what he finds not so great a prize as
he thought it was. I get confoundedly flurried, miss stroke half a dozen
times in hauling in as many fathoms of line, and at length succeed in
landing my first fish safely in my barrel, where he flounders away 'most
melodiously,' as my neighbor says.

"And now it is fairly daylight, and the rain, which has been threatening
all night, begins to pour down in right earnest. As the heavy drops patter
on the sea the fish begin to bite fast and furiously.

"'Shorten up,' says the skipper, and we shorten in our lines to about
eight feet from the rail to the hooks, when we can jerk them in just as
fast as we can move our hands and arms. 'Keep your lines clear,' is now
the word, as the doomed fish slip faster and faster into the barrels
standing to receive them. Here is one greedy fellow already casting
furtive glances behind him, and calculating in his mind how many fish he
will have to lose in the operation of getting his second strike-barrel.

"Now you hear no sound except the steady flip of fish into the barrels.
Every face wears an expression of anxious determination; everybody moves
as though by springs; every heart beats loud with excitement, and every
hand hauls in fish and throws out hooks with a methodical precision, a
kind of slow haste, which unites the greatest speed with the utmost
security against fouling lines.

"And now the rain increases. We hear jibs rattling down; and glancing up
hastily, I am surprised to find our vessel surrounded on all sides by the
fleet, which has already become aware that we have got fish alongside.
Meantime the wind rises, and the sea struggles against the rain, which is
endeavoring with its steady patter to subdue the turmoil of old ocean. We
are already on our third barrel each, and still the fish come in as fast
as ever, and the business (sport it has ceased to be some time since),
continues with vigor undiminished. Thick beads of perspiration chase each
other down our faces. Jackets, caps, and even over-shirts, are thrown off,
to give more freedom to the limbs that are worked to their utmost.

"'Hillo! Where are the fish?' All gone. Every line is felt eagerly for a
bite, but not the faintest nibble is perceptible. The mackerel, which but
a moment ago were fairly rushing on board, have in that moment disappeared
so completely that not a sign of one is left. The vessel next under our
lee holds them a little longer than we, but they finally also disappear
from her side. And so on all around us.

"And now we have time to look about us--to compare notes on each other's
successes--to straighten our backbones, nearly broken and aching horribly
with the constant reaching over; to examine our fingers, cut to pieces and
grown sensationless with the perpetual dragging of small lines across
them--to--'There, the skipper's got a bite! Here they are again, boys, and
big fellows, too!' Everybody rushes once more to the rail, and business
commences again, but not at so fast a rate as before. By-and-by there is
another cessation, and we hoist our jib and run off a little way, into a
new berth.

"While running across, I take the first good look at the state of affairs
in general. We lie, as before said, nearly in the center of the whole
fleet, which from originally covering an area of perhaps fifteen miles
each way, has 'knotted up' into a little space, not above two miles
square. In many places, although the sea is tolerably rough, the vessels
lie so closely together that one could almost jump from one to the other.
The greatest skill and care are necessary on such occasions to keep them
apart, and prevent the inevitable consequences of a collision, a general
smash-up of masts, booms, bulwarks, etc. Yet a great fish-day like this
rarely passes off without some vessel sustaining serious damage. We thread
our way among the vessels with as much care and as daintily as a man would
walk over ground covered with eggs; and finally get into a berth under the
lee of a vessel which seems to hold the fish pretty well. Here we fish
away by spells, for they have become 'spirty,' that is, they are
capricious, and appear and disappear suddenly."

[Illustration: TRAWLING FROM A DORY]

Three causes make the occupation of those fishermen who go for cod and
halibut to the Newfoundland Banks extra hazardous--the almost continual
fog, the swift steel Atlantic liners always plowing their way at high
speed across the fishing grounds, heedless of fog or darkness, and the
custom of fishing with trawls which must be tended from dories. The trawl,
which is really only an extension of hand-lines, is a French device
adopted by American fishermen early in the last century. One long
hand-line, supported by floats, is set at some distance from the
schooner. From it depend a number of short lines with baited hooks, set at
brief intervals. The fisherman, in his dory, goes from one to the other of
these lines pulling them in, throwing the fish in the bottom of the boat
and rebaiting his hooks. When his dory is full he returns with his load to
the schooner--if he can find her.

That is the peril ever present to the minds of the men in the dory--the
danger of losing the schooner. On the Banks the sea is always running
moderately high, and the great surges, even on the clearest days, will
often shut out the dories from the vision of the lookout. The winds and
the currents tend to sweep the little fishing-boats away, and though a
schooner with five or six dories out hovers about them like a hen guarding
her chickens, sailing a triangular beat planned to include all the smaller
boats, yet it too often happens that night falls with one boat missing.
Then on the schooner all is watchfulness. Cruising slowly about, burning
flares and blowing the hoarse fog-horn, those on board search for the
missing ones until day dawns or the lost are found. Sometimes day comes in
a fog, a dense, dripping, gray curtain, more impenetrable than the
blackest night, for through it no flare will shine, and even the sound of
the braying horn or tolling bell is so curiously distorted, that it is
difficult to tell from what quarter it comes. No one who has not seen a
fog on the Banks can quite imagine its dense opaqueness. When it settles
down on a large fleet of fishermen, with hundreds of dories out, the peril
and perplexity of the skippers are extreme. In one instant after the dull
gray curtain falls over the ocean, each vessel is apparently as isolated
as though alone on the Banks. A dory forty feet away is invisible. The
great fleet of busy schooners, tacking back and forth, watching their
boats, is suddenly, obliterated. Hoarse cries, the tooting of horns and
the clanging of bells, sound through the misty air, and now and then a
ghostly schooner glides by, perhaps scraping the very gunwale and carrying
away bits of rail and rigging to the accompaniment of New England
profanity. This is the dangerous moment for every one on the Banks, for
right through the center of the fishing ground lies the pathway of the
great steel ocean steamships plying between England and the United States.
Colossal engines force these great masses of steel through sea and fog.
Each captain is eager to break a record; each one knows that a reputation
for fast trips will make his ship popular and increase his usefulness to
the company. In theory he is supposed to slow down in crossing the Banks;
in fact his great 12,000-ton ship rushes through at eighteen miles an
hour. If she hits a dory and sends two men to their long rest, no one
aboard the ocean leviathan will ever know it. If she strikes a schooner
and shears through her like a knife through cheese, there will be a slight
vibration of the steel fabric, but not enough to alarm the passengers; the
lookout will have caught a hasty glimpse of a ghostly craft, and heard
plaintive cries for help, then the fog shuts down on all, like the curtain
on the last act of a tragedy. Even if the great steamship were stopped at
once, her momentum would carry her a mile beyond the spot before a boat
could be lowered, and then it would be almost impossible to find the
floating wreckage in the fog. So, usually, the steamships press on with
unchecked speed, their officers perhaps breathing a sigh of pity for the
victims, but reflecting that it is a sailor's peril to which those on the
biggest and staunchest of ships are exposed almost equally with the
fishermen. For was it not on the Banks and in a fog that the blow was
struck which sent "La Bourgogne" to the bottom with more than four hundred
souls?

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