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island's inshore waters one of the best fishing grounds in the world. l In sharp contrast
with the riches of the ocean, the land has little to offer: it is rocky and patched with
innumerable ponds and lakes, its thin soil limiting agricultural activity to a few places.
This rugged landscape is covered by a wide variety of low berry shrubs and stunted trees;
the cold ocean winds sweep through this poor vegetation and strip spruce trees to bareness.
Inland, the island is covered by thick forests, which to this day remain a wilderness area.
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Staning from the fifteenth century, Newfoundland was visited regularly by the fishing
nations of Europe. Basque, Portuguese, French, Dutch and English fis'hing crews all came
in the Slimmer to reap the lush harvest of fish, lobster, seals and whales. But, the major
economic interest was cod because it could best be salt-dried and shipped back; for its sake
Newfoundland became the base for an international fishery off her shores. 2 For a long
time, it was better from almost everyone's point of view to commute rather than to settle
there. All the goods and provisions needed in the fishery had to {,;ome from Europe, the
mechants and ship captains all lived in Europe, and there also lay all the markets for fish.
The fishing news, therefore, installed merely temporary selliements to process and store
their catches until their return to the homelands at the end of the fishing season. On arrival
in Spring, they first had to install "fishing rooms" consisting of "stages" (piers for
unloading fish with sheds as storage for the salt and fishing supplies) and "flakes" (large
racks 10 spread the fish on to dry). Despite its six thousand miles of shores, "good
shoreline" is rare in Newfoundland. These would be places having enough level land to
build facilities and get to the boats, not too many "sunkers" (submerged or half-submerged
rocks) and protected from the pounding storms and ice.) It is only competition for these
places along with the time and work involved in their constmction that justified that a few
servants or "winter crews" were occasionally lefl behind during the winter to maintain and
guard these fadlities from others' fishing vessels.
I a.M. Story, "Newfoundland: Fishermen, Hunters, Planters, and Merchanls," Chris/mas
Mumming in Newfoundland: Essays in Anthropology, Folklore and lIis/ory, cd. II. Halper!
:lJ1d a.M. Slory (Toronto: U of Tor01l1O P, 1969) 10.
20.0. ROlhlley, Newfoundland: A lIi.flOry, Historical Booklet no. 10 (OHawa: Canadian
Hislorical Association, 1964) 27.
3aerald M. Sider, Culture and Class in An/hropology and /lis/ory: A Newfoundland
I/lu.ma/ion (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) 15.