The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

across large expanses of sea. Moreover, various operational linkages
between the different activities can be detected. Fishermen, of course,
were highly mobile, and poor prospects in one area generally led to a
shift in the fishing effort to more promising grounds. For instance, men
from Newton Ferrers, near Plymouth, fished off Newfoundland between
1617 and 1621, off northern New England in 1622 and 1623, off Ireland
from 1624 to 1626 and again in 1631, before resorting once again to the
Grand Banks in 1633 and 1634. 220 Assuming such flexibility was
widespread—and the available evidence suggests that it was—it is
hardly surprising that techniques applied in one area should be
transferred to other fisheries. This seems to have occurred when the
process of drying cod on shore-based flakes, used extensively in Iceland
in the fifteenth century, emerged as a central feature of Britain’s
Newfoundland fishery a century or so later. Likewise, the seasonal,
migratory pattern of the Newfoundland trade which quickly took root
before 1600 formed the basis initially of the New England fishery in the
1610s and 1620s. 221
At a broader level, the distant-water fisheries constituted an important
factor in the social, economic and political development of the Atlantic
region. The quest for fish led men, and eventually women, to new,
distant territories and thereby played a significant role in the processes of
migration, emigration and colonisation. Westcountrymen, for instance,
sought cod, hake and ling off Ireland, encouraging men such as William
Hull and his followers to settle in Munster. It was the abundance of cod
in the Gulf of Maine that led fishermen to investigate, utilise (as fishing
stations), and then settle northern New England. 222 And it was the
exploitation of the cod fishery that placed such a distinctive stamp on the
development of Newfoundland from the sixteenth century. Here, the
migratory basis of the business pertained until the late eighteenth
century, serving in many respects to retard the colonisation of the island.
Each spring, the productive factors—vessels, labour, provisions,
salt—necessary to prosecute the fishery were transported to
Newfoundland; temporary bases for fishing ‘rooms’ were then
established on the island’s shores to dry the catch; and in the autumn,
220 T Gray, ‘Devon’s Fisheries’, 141.
221 Innis, Cod Fisheries.
222 T Gray, thesis.
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