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Show Rhe Fishing Industry of New England, II Founded by Basques in 1500, Is Oldest I And One of Most Colorful in U. S. Today I 'I .I m M ' VipieXi 4s" fV H, sftpP H fi II si A" A typical scene on the piers at Gloucester, Mass., at the turn of the century showing mackerel ready for shipment. ! Indies. Clipper ships took cargoes car-goes of fish to the Indies and there exchanged them for sugar, molasses or rum. These products prod-ucts in turn were taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves which were sold to the Southern colonies or exchanged for tobacco. Fish for Appeasement. Meanwhile, Massachusetts was branching out in other directions. The first state in the colonies to ts Bv ELMO SCOTT WATSON 'leased by Western Newspaper Union.) rOHEY say that in this machine age there is M 1 little romance and ad- venture in modern business. Yet, amid many of the nail na-il ' tion's great industries which J have lost much of their "col-W" "col-W" or" through mechanization, jO jjgre is one that is still large-jy large-jy y hand-operated and in which ( jB 5 individuality of those who xAI f0How that trade remains in-t in-t j tact. That is the great New Hi j England fishing industry. V i I' iS Probably tlie oldest contin-J contin-J vj uously operated industry in the J United States today for it goes t back nearly 450 years to that sum-mer sum-mer day about the year 1500 when " J a small group of Basque fisher- men set out from a little coastal I town in France in their small VSai fishing boat. They had little luck J on their usual fishing grounds and 'Ay es the days went by ventured f ar-ther ar-ther and farther away from wa-V wa-V ters they knew. However, even In new waters lines and nets were 6till drawn up empty. This was Iheir livelihood and it was necessary neces-sary that they find a fishing ground which would yield them a full boatload before they returned re-turned home. They continued their search for "Jj1'- more lucrative fishing waters and m after many weeks they came to a strange coast where trees were ' green and flowers were bloom-, bloom-, tag. They set their nets and cast ! ' their lines and in an almost uri-i"'t uri-i"'t believably short time the boat j itT" was filled. They set sail for home orair and upon their arrival regaled liywa their fellow fishermen with sto-'le sto-'le resi-' ries of their astounding luck in waters "on the other side of the iti-' sea-" ! priA - ''lus was krn an industry which was to play its important role in the colonization and devel-p. devel-p. opment of the New World and to nljp: provide the archives of New Eng-IjjJp Eng-IjjJp land . with many historic sea ercE-- saSas- jiint As an indication of the poten- ail:: tial wealth of the early New Eng- :ondiit;: land fishing industry, Gosnold, jotfci first navigator on the coast, 3 km caught so many cod that one voy- ;ste!;. age of six months yielded him louldii. , 2,100 pounds in money. Where- s. j-.-: upon he remarked, "What sport lie ft doth yield a more pleasing con- jrwo:: tent and less hurt or charge than the e angling with a hook crossing the Jsfej; sweet air from isle to isle, over age: the silent sterse of a calm sea." oil Doughty Capt. John Smith of hen z. Virginia paid tribute to the indus- lens try with these words, "Let not the re to:; meanness of the word 'fish' dis- three- taste you, for it will afford as ofiir good gold as the wines of Guiana jew and Potassie with less hazard and rs, ri charge and more certainty and raise.- facility." on m : By 1504 the Basques were fish- anjoa ing regularly along the New Eng- gofp-: land coast. As word spread k otoi- among other fishermen of the Old tliec World of this fabulous fishing than- ground, the adventurous Basques per a: were joined by men of other na- ;est('l tions. When the explorer Verra- cnes- zano landed south of the Pisca- hich f- taqua river near Boston he found ; mi: fisheries carried on by French, ither. Basques and Portuguese, shave: Historic records of Massachu- from - setts show that by 1615 there were 1 noi: 400 French and Portuguese and did: 200 English sails along the coast bH of New England. In 1623 a fish- it ing vessel attempting to land at neb-' a settlement on the Maine coast im 6' was unable to complete the land- ;, did ing and "the master thought it All; good to pass into Massachusetts tree Bay." He left 14 men and re- 0 fee- turned to his home port in Spain, ittlet Next year the same vessel re-ulder: re-ulder: turned and left 32 men. Thus jre v was established the village of acle Gloucester where much of the :ive early history of the Massachu-or Massachu-or setts fishing industry was to be written. our " By 1639 fish had become a ule-';; medium of exchange and were )on being used as money. It was also anf '- due to fishing that all the arts of navigation flourished. In this 1 "Ij.- iame year the General Court of be Massachusetts recognized the ans' contributions its fishermen were if f(' making to the development of the y Je- New world by relieving them of military duty. I W . In 1643 the citizens of the then rt"1' small village of Boston held a J an s ebration and the whole citizen- :g;: S"'P turned out to pay honor to df ', the launching of the "Trial," first is vessel to be built in that city. ,i Designed to carry on trade be- 1 8 . Ween the Old and New worlds, A the "Trial" was forerunner of a tef tag line of clipper ships which pea" ' made colorful history for another !ra'fL, century or so. Loaded with a n,V cLarg of salted and smoked fish, jb the "Trial" set sail for Balboa lisi and Malaga. On her return trip ivet- she brought wine, fruit, oil, iron, rePe,. and wool. it a' :s At the beginning of the Eight- ua"1 eenth century New England was beginning its trade with the West Boston fishing world and are ac- i corded the same admiration and popular homage as a big league j baseball star or a college football hero. They live well, these men who take the ever-present dangers of the sea in their daily stride, and they live with the carefree gaiety of those to whom physical hazards haz-ards are all in the day's work. Oddly enough, they eat little fish. Steak is a favorite meat, with plenty of vegetables and fruits, and woe to the cook whose pies .emerge from the oven with other than a crisp flaky crust. When auction of the catches has been concluded the work of unloading un-loading the boats begins. Each boat on its trip out takes on a load of shaved ice in which to pack the fish as soon as caught. This method brings the catch into port as fresh as it came from the nets. Unloaded in huge baskets bas-kets and transferred to carts, the fish are rushed into big packing pack-ing and distribution plants. Here they are made ready for millions who, until modern methods of mass merchandising took fresh fish 1,500 miles inland, had little opportunity to enjoy seafood except ex-cept in a smoked, salted or canned state. This method of distribution dis-tribution has also removed fish from the status of a "Friday only" food item and now many families far away from the sea-coast sea-coast enjoy fresh fish several times a week. Meet Blue-Eyed Reba. Exploring the activities on the fish pier you may be surprised to find a slender, blue-eyed woman in the thick of the auction or inspecting in-specting a basket load of fish swinging onto the pier from a boat, for in such an atmosphere one does not ordinarily expect to find a woman. She is Reba Onig-man, Onig-man, who is in her eighth year as the only woman fish commission merchant in the world. Miss Onigman will tell you that she is "in a business that stinks." However, How-ever, she will add in the next breath that "there's romance in the fish business," and she would not "give it up for the world." Miss Onigman's daily schedule might dismay a good many less hardy women. She is up at five-thirty five-thirty o'clock and down on the pier by six. From then on she is "just one of the men." She sells her fish at the auction, inspects the catches that come in on consignment con-signment for her and operates in a quietly business-like fashion that has won her the respect of the weather-beaten men with whom she deals. Winter finds her clad in high rubber boots and a Sou'wester. In summer she looks as dainty and fresh as though she were just starting off for some purely social feminine activity. Her blouse is crisply fresh and more likely than not a blue bow is tucked away in curly black hair lightly frosted with premature gray. Another colorful personality whom you may meet in a morning's morn-ing's round of the fish pier is the commission merchant who started start-ed off merely peddling a few packages of fish from door to door. Then he persuaded a captain cap-tain or two to let him handle a day's catch. Today, he is one of the wealthy men of the industry. indus-try. Thus, the fish industry goes. Fortunes are frequently made within the space of a few short months. The men who are its keystones the sturdy simple fishermen fish-ermen who "still speak the language lan-guage of their Portuguese, French and Spanish forefathers still lead lives filled with the color and adventure which are the heritage of those who "farm the sea." The boats set forth with the early tide and slip back into port at sunset or dawn. The great industry which served as a foundation for this country's earliest ear-liest trading continues to flourish and to provide the nation with one of its most important sources of food. , Miss Reba Onigman has the distinction of being the only woman wom-an fish commission merchant in the world. She operates at the Boston Fish pier. have a mint, it coined what became be-came known as the "pine tree" shilling pieces in 1652. Whereupon Where-upon Charles II of England became be-came displeased because he was not given a share of the profits. Massachusetts promptly sent appeasement ap-peasement in the form of "ten barrels of cranberries, two hogsheads hogs-heads of samp and 3,000 codfish." At the beginning of the Eighteenth Eight-eenth century cod fishing was in a prosperous condition. The annual an-nual production was about 330,000 quintals and the value of the fish exported was about $700,000, there being 400 fishing vessels of about 50 tons each in Massachusetts Massachu-setts alone. By 1731 more than 7,000 men were employed in the New England fisheries. A report re-port of the Massachusetts fisheries fish-eries made in 1837 shows what strides the industry was making. The total value of the cod and mackerel caught that year amounted to $3,208,866 and the number of vessels engaged in fishing fish-ing was 12,290, while the number of men employed had risen to 16,722. Today, the New England fishing industry has reached such proportions propor-tions that the annual catches amount to 670,000,000 pounds in round figures with a value of $20,000,000. Products manufactured manufac-tured from the catch amount to an additional $24,000,000. Center Cen-ter of this great activity is Boston Bos-ton where the "Stock Exchange" of the New England industry has headquarters and where the great fish plants pack, ice and ship millions mil-lions of fresh fish annually. Activity at the Boston fish pier gets under way officially at seven o'clock in the morning when the auction opens. In a huge unadorned un-adorned room with its ceiling running run-ning up the four stories of the building, the auctioneers stand on a railed platform in the center. Around the platform cluster the buyers and it is they who decide the fortunes of the "farmers of the sea." For, the prices they bid for the catch determine the earnings of the men manning the fishing boats, who operate on shares. Heroes of the Pier. Many of these men are direct descendants of the Basque, Portuguese Por-tuguese and Spanish sailors who first made their way to the "other side of the sea" in the Sixteenth century. Many still live m the same sturdy houses of wood and stone built by their earlier ancestors ances-tors There is keen rivalry among them for fishing honors of year. The crew of the boat hat chalks up the biggest ea ch become the glamour boys of the |
