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

cargoes of dried, lightly salted cod were conveyed to the extensive
markets of southern Europe. Though efforts to settle the island were
made from the 1620s, the merchants engaged in the fishery, anxious to
retain their customary rights to the shore, were consistently hostile to
such developments, and as a consequence it was not until the 1750s that a
viable permanent population began to develop. 223
The carriage of productive factors and cargoes, together with supplies
for the slowly growing resident population meant that the Newfoundland
fishery held significant trading and shipping ramifications. Moreover, in
generating earnings and employing seafaring labour deemed to be vital
to the state’s naval capability in wartime, 224 the Newfoundland trade was
afforded an important place in Britain’s imperial strategy. This political
prominence, of course, was heightened by the fact that other powers,
initially Spain and Portugal and then the French, also sought to exploit
the fishery and island of Newfoundland. 225 While these rivalries have
naturally proved of interest to political historians, they are also relevant
to the fishing historian for the British government and other interested
parties, in seeking to stimulate and defend the Newfoundland trade,
collected statistics relating to the capital stock and output of the fishery.
Though such data are fragmentary before the 1690s, they suggest that the
30-strong English fleet active off Newfoundland in 1574 had expanded
to over 300 ‘fishing ships’, producing over 300,000 quintals of dried cod,
in 1620 (1 quintal = 112 lb). From this high-water mark, the extent of the
fishery fluctuated through the seventeenth century in line with variable
fish stocks and the incidence of war, with a nadir of 32 ‘fishing ships’
being recorded in 1682. 226 As new operational modes were introduced
into the fishery, the business became generally more buoyant, the trend
being upwards from the 1730s with the output of the migratory fishery
reaching a climax of almost 350,000 quintals p.a. in 1784-1792. At this
point, however, this British-based element of the fishery collapsed
dramatically and the fishing effort thereafter was undertaken by the
island’s growing resident population.
223 Matthews, thesis; Starkey, ‘Devonians and the Newfoundland Trade’, 163-71.
224 Starkey, ‘West Country-Newfoundland Fishery’, 93-101.
225 Innis, Cod Fisheries.
226 Matthews, thesis; Starkey, ‘Devonians and the Newfoundland Trade’, 164.
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