Salt cod was an essential element in the web of early Atlantic commerce, but cod were not harvested on an industrial scale until the mid-1800s. As waves of immigrants reached America, the nation’s cities, industries, and population all grew. Commercial fisheries grew with them.

Our Lady of Good Voyage

Portuguese families in Gloucester have worshiped at Our Lady of Good Voyage Church since 1893. The statue on the second level shows the church’s namesake holding a boat in her left hand, symbolizing a safe voyage.

Courtesy of the Cape Ann Historical Association

Widows’ Home

This house was built for fishermen’s widows in Gloucester around 1870. It had ten apartments of three rooms each. Rent for each apartment was $3 per month.

“When will the slaughter cease?”

In 1882, Capt. Joseph Collins asked this question in Gloucester’s newspaper, the Cape Ann Weekly Advertiser. Too many fishermen perished at sea, and Collins and others lobbied for new schooner designs featuring deeper, more stable hulls and sail plans that didn’t require a long bowsprit, the spar that projected forward from the bow.

It’s Good for You

Cod liver oil was a byproduct of the cod fishery. The oil contains essential vitamins and helped prevent rickets, a common disease among malnourished children in the late 1800s. Children dreaded the taste of their daily dose, and this sample from the early 1900s recommends three doses a day.

Gift of Mario Casinelli

The George’s Bank Cod Fishery

Fishermen using hand-lines stood at the rail of the schooner, each fishing a single line that had a spreader and two hooks. One fishermen is using a gaff to bring in a fish, one is cutting out the cod’s tongue—the method used to keep track of how many fish were caught by each fisherman—and the third is tending his line. George’s Bank fishermen used about 900 feet of line. Hauling in a pair of cod by hand took about thirty minutes.

McManus Knockabouts

Thomas A. McManus, a Boston-born son of Irish immigrants, designed a safer fishing schooner. The hull of his vessel was short and deep, with a rockered keel for stability. McManus made this half model and displayed it for a year in his Boston shop before Capt. William Thomas of Portland, Maine, decided to have a full-sized vessel built to the lines. The Helen B. Thomas was launched in 1902 and was the first of many schooners called “knockabouts” that were built without bowsprits.

Hand-line

This hand-line—a reel with fishing line, a sinker, and hooks—was the type used in the 1880s.

Gift of the U.S. Fish Commission

The Bank Trawl-Line Cod Fishery

In the 1850s fishermen started working from small boats called dories, using long lines baited with many hooks. Fishermen caught significantly more cod working from dories that were carried aboard schooners to the fishing grounds.

Drawing by H. W. Elliott and Capt. J. W. Collins, about 1882

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The Dauntless

The fishing schooner Dauntless is shown equipped for dory trawling, with nests of dories stacked amidships. At the fishing grounds, the dories were lowered with two men in each, and the dory mates set their trawl line, which typically had 1,200 to 1,600 baited hooks. To haul in the catch, they had to steer the dory, lift the line into the boat, and remove the fish. The dory mates returned to the schooner to off-load the fish.

Hook

Imagine having to bait and fish 1,600 of these on a single fishing line. That was one of the jobs of a dory fisherman, day in and day out, for months at a time.

Gift of Peter Nelson, from the schooner Grace L. Fears

Fish Knife

Gloucester fishermen typically baited their trawl lines with small fish such as menhaden or capelin. They used knives like this to prepare slivers of bait.

The Schooner Fredonia

The Fredonia’s deep hull, narrow beam, and fine lines represent the pinnacle of design for deepwater fishing schooners. It influenced the design of many other fishing vessels. In December 1896, while fishing on the Grand Banks, the Fredonia was hit by a heavy sea and sank. Two of its 23-man crew perished; the rest were rescued by a passing steamer.

Oilskin Hat

Grand Banks fishermen toiled in all kinds of weather. To protect themselves from the icy winds and spray, they wore felt-lined rubber boots and jackets and hats made of oiled canvas. This flannel-lined oilskin hat was new when it was displayed in an exhibit of fishermen’s clothing in London in 1883.

Nippers

The fishermen’s nippers were knit of woolen yarn and stuffed with woolen cloth. Fishermen were able to grasp and hold a fishing line better if they wore woolen nippers on their hands.

Cook’s Bell

This bell was used aboard a Gloucester schooner to summon fishermen to their meals. Daily meals started with breakfast before dawn, dinner as the main meal, and a hearty supper. Frequent “mug-ups,” or coffee breaks, usually consisted of coffee or tea and leftover snacks. On larger schooners, the cook served meals in two shifts.

Gift of the U.S. Fish Commission

Feeding the Crew

Cook George W. Scott kept a journal on the fishing schooner Ocean King during a voyage out of Gloucester to the Grand Banks in 1879. Among the provisions brought aboard for a four-month voyage were:

• 210 Hogsheads of salt (for salting the cod)
• 5 Barrels beef
• 1 Barrel pork
• 1 Barrel hams
• 10 Barrels flour
• 330 Pounds of sugar
• 50 Gallons molasses
• 15 Bushels potatoes
• 200 pounds butter
• and including all other things usuly [sic] found in a grocery store

Fox & Geese Board, 1880s

Fishermen passed the time on long voyages playing Fox & Geese and other simple board games. This game requires two players. The fox (a single token) has to remove the geese (multiple tokens) before they surround him.

Foghorn, 1880s

Getting lost in the fog was a dory man’s nightmare. Dories were equipped with foghorns that the dory mates used to signal their location. In foggy weather, men aboard the schooner would sound a more powerful fog horn operated with a pump or bellows to let the dory men know the vessel’s location.

Cod Coffin

In 1992, Canada declared a moratorium on cod fishing in its Atlantic coastal waters. Fisherman Dan Murphy of Dunville, Newfoundland, made this cod-in-a-coffin to express his view of the decision and its impact on his livelihood. He sold these coffins at a local flea market.