Many historians have examined the various and complex histories of the oceans’ great fisheries. Within this larger fisheries history, the North Atlantic has been one of the primary geographies of historical investigation.

The North Atlantic codfish has captured the imagination of writers for hundreds of years. The mighty codfish emerged as one of the most important commodity trades in the Atlantic world and built many of the great merchant houses of England.¹ No doubt, the cod reigned supreme in human exploitative efforts to gain wealth and protein from the vastness of the oceans. But in all our

efforts to examine...

Throughout the fishing season of 1836, Liverpool (Nova Scotia) fish merchant Philip Carten traveled through the small fishing villages of western Nova Scotia. Like other Nova Scotia fish merchants, Carten sought out inshore fishermen from whom he could purchase baitfish, principally herring or mackerel, in order to outfit his offshore fishing vessels for a voyage to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. This offshore fishery depended upon inshore fishermen to supply the bait needed for their voyages, thereby allowing them to concentrate their efforts strictly on the catching of ground fish such as cod and halibut. By 1836 this system had...

Throughout the fall of 1876, Gloucester fishing firms prepared their fleet for the departure to the winter herring fisheries along the coast of Newfoundland. The company of John Pew and Son prepared two well-equipped schooners for the voyage. Both theOntario, mastered by Peter McAuley, and theNew England, mastered by John Dago, outfitted their crews with purse-seine nets. They left Gloucester in late November and arrived in Fortune Bay, Newfoundland, a few weeks later. They proceeded to Long Harbor, where they joined a fleet of twenty-six American schooners and approximately one hundred local vessels and boats, all of which...

On the morning of May 6, 1886, local inhabitants of Digby, Nova Scotia, watched as an unknown fishing schooner entered the gut and passed by the docks.¹ As the schooner slowly drifted past, the local fishermen of Digby turned their eyes to the stern of the vessel, eager to know her name. To their disappointment, a piece of canvas was draped over the schooner’s stern, which covered the larger portion of the name and port of registry. Later, many of these locals testified they could only make out “DAV” or perhaps “DAVID J.”² The unidentified schooner continued past Digby and...

The protracted debates surrounding the repeal of the 1871 Treaty of Washington and the failed 1888 treaty clearly demonstrated to many that baitfish had emerged as a complex diplomatic issue in Anglo-American relations. The United States Navy, the Royal Navy, and the Canadian Marine Police all sent armed vessels to enforce their own interpretations concerning the rights of American fishermen to purchase bait and supplies, hire crew, and transship cargo in Canadian and British ports in the northwest Atlantic. Politicians and diplomats attempted to solve the issue through legislation, treaties, modi vivendi, and licenses, to little avail. These methods failed...

After the 1910 decision at The Hague, the bait trade between American and Canadian fishermen continued in its usual manner. Americans were permitted to enter local waters to purchase bait and supplies so long as they did not interfere with the exclusive rights of local fishermen to harvest the catch themselves. After a hundred years of diplomatic communications, three treaties, three failed treaties, and a series of modi vivendi, the actual operations of the bait trade had changed very little. The reason for this is because local fishermen succeeded, by about 1830, in creating and enforcing their own informal codes...