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was looked forward to with great excitement. Besides procuring cash income. its
challenge made it a rite of initiation for young men, "a spring ritual in which men slew and
were slain."! The firsl schooner went to the ice off Labrador in 1794, and although it was
los1 in the ice with all hands, it was followed by many others. More than a thousand
Newfoundlanders lost their life in this now practically extinct advenlure.2
3.2.5.3. The Bank Fishery
75
The increasing size of the boalS used in the seal fishery led 10 a deep-se•• fishery
prosecuted on the Banks. The banking vessels ("bankers") operated orf the principal south
coast pons, and went to the Grand Banks and George's Bank, lying between 100 and 300
miles offshore. Except for sealing. the Bank fishery was the only fishing industry which
could be prosecUied during winter owing to the absence of ice down the southcoasl. The
bankers left home for the Banks in February and from there went up to L1brador in late
August; returning around the 15th October, these fishennen spent most of the year away
from home.
These schooners ("bankers") were built to contend with the worst of Atlantic
stonns; they carried a crew of sixteen to twenty-eight men and up to twelve or fourteen
dories. These crews, unlike the inshore fishennen, remained at sea for two 10 three
weeks. Once on the Banks, the dories were hauled off the ship, the men got into them in
pairs, and the schooner remained cruising around in the vicinity. Each dory carried four
tubs of trawl which were set up to over two miles from the parent ship. Dorymen usually
underran their trawls three times a day; and, after recovering their trawls, the schooner
picked them up. When dorymen returned to the vessel with the first load, they became
the dressing and salting crews. Back in pon after a journey on the Banks, the men still
had to unload the fish, wash it and place it on the beaches or the flakes.3
Bank fishing was often proclaimed to be the sea's most dangerous QCcupation. There
were a variety of ways in which men, in the ordinary course of its operation, could suffer
injury and death. As the men were paid according to the cargo brought aboard, they tended
to load their dories so deeply that the water was actually lapping the edges of the gunnels.
1John R. SCOIt. MThe Function of Folklore in the InLerrelalionship of Ihe Newfoundland Seal
Fishery and the Home Communilies of the Sealers. M MA lhesis. MUN, 1975. 141.
2Brown 13.
3Kelland 155·57.