Who Went Fishing? Migration and Labor in Gloucester's Fleet

The City of Gloucester's Lost at Sea register was compiled by the city's volunteer Archives Committee and is dated July 29, 2010. It builds on research done for the memorial plaques at the Fisherman's Statue. It lists more than 6,600 entries from the early 1700s onward. The city's own page says the list is unavoidably incomplete. Each entry gives a name, a date, often a vessel, the compilers' sources and short notes such as age, family, birthplace or residence. Each entry is also coded by type of voyage: F for fishing, T for trading and U for unknown. For this lesson we built our own table from the register's facts. We kept only entries coded F (fishing) from three samples: 1876, 1895 and 1910 to 1912. We pooled three years for the last sample because single years after 1900 have fewer entries. We left out entries coded F? (fishing uncertain), entries about anyone under 18 and anything after 1950. We did not include names. That leaves 449 entries: 206 for 1876, 131 for 1895 and 112 for 1910 to 1912. Remember: each row is one death. It is not a count of everyone who fished.

The register prints birthplaces in many forms: a country (b.Sweden), a province (b.NS), a village and province (b.Arichat,CB) or a village alone (b.Pubnico). To count them, we put each one into a normalized birthplace and then a region. These are the rules we used. You may disagree with some of them; that is part of the lesson. Rule 1. Use the birthplace after "b." only. Ignore residence ("res.") unless it is printed together with birth as "b.&res." Rule 2. If a province, state or country is printed after the place, use it. Arichat,CB becomes Nova Scotia; Westport,Maine becomes Maine. Rule 3. CB (Cape Breton) is coded as Nova Scotia, because Cape Breton Island is part of Nova Scotia. Rule 4. If no province, state or country is printed, assign one only when the place name exists in just one province or state (Pubnico, Grand Manan, Provincetown). Write a note saying the region was not printed. Rule 5. If the place name could belong to more than one state or country (Lisbon, Lowell, Manchester, Rockport), code it Unclear. Do not guess. Rule 6. Western Island and Western Islands are coded Portugal (Azores). Rule 7. If the entry gives no birthplace, code it Not given. Not given is counted, never dropped. Rule 8. Regions: Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland); United States (Maine, Massachusetts, other states); Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland); Portugal and the Azores; Britain and Ireland (England, Scotland, Ireland); Other Europe (France, Russia); Unclear; Not given. Rule 9. Percentages for a region use the number of entries that give a birthplace (everything except Not given) as the denominator. The share of Not given uses all entries in the sample.

About this source: This report was prepared by the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries with the 1880 census. Its writers gathered estimates from fishing ports. On pages 14 and 15 it quotes a letter written in 1875 by Gloucester's collector of customs, the federal official who registered vessels at the port. Document A. Letter of Capt. Fitz J. Babson, collector of customs at Gloucester, to the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, 1875 (p. 14): "For some years there has been a large immigration of male adults coming from the Provinces to engage in the fisheries of Gloucester. They are mostly young men and unmarried. The superior class of vessels belonging to this port employed in the fisheries, the liberal and excellent quality of provisions furnished by the owners, the prompt settlement and payment in cash for the fares obtained instead of payment in goods, &c., which is the usual manner of payment to fishermen at other places, the rapid promotion to the command of a fine schooner consequent upon skill and success, all conspire to draw the ambitious young seamen from the Provinces. "These immigrants make up to a large degree the crews of our fishing vessels, and hence the loss of life falls principally upon them." The same letter continues (p. 15): "Of the seven thousand men employed in the fisheries at this port three-fourths are not natives of the town" Document B. The 1887 report's own estimates, describing about 1880 (pp. 6 and 7): "Most numerous of these are the natives of the British Provinces, of whom there are at least 4,000 employed in the fisheries of New England, Gloucester reporting 1,600" "There are probably not less than 2,000 Portuguese, chiefly natives of the Azores and the Cape de Verde Islands." Of these, the report counts "in Gloucester 250." "Gloucester has 140 men of British birth, a large proportion of whom are Irish" "Gloucester has nearly 400 Scandinavians among its fishermen and about 70 Frenchmen." Glossary the Provinces: the British colonies north of New England, chiefly Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. fares: a vessel's catch from one trip, and the money it brought. provisions: food and supplies for the voyage. &c.: an old way of writing etc.