Farmers and Fishermen by Daniel Vickers

Author:Daniel Vickers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 1. Taxable Wealth of Eighteenth-Century Married Salem Fishermen

Not only was work on the banks physically tough, it was also dangerous—far more so than the inshore fishery had ever been. Although the ketches and schooners that sailed out of Essex County were suited to heavy weather, storms on the open sea were more severe and shelter harder to obtain than they were inshore. Lying to in a March gale on the Sable Island Bank with the rigging encrusted in ice, fishermen had to keep their craft head on to the wind, or an onrushing wave with its foaming crest towering over the masthead might bury them forever. And such disasters did occur. Mortality figures from the nineteenth century in a fishery that had not changed a great deal show that only one vessel out of a hundred and four men out of a thousand were likely to be lost in an average year; but many years defied the norm. In a series of late winter gales between 1765 and 1770, at least forty-two vessels from Essex County went down and close to three hundred men drowned. These storms were disastrous, not only for fishermen, but for their families, who depended on the money they earned. As the history of the Brimblecome clan illustrates, the drowning of a household head could cast a shadow of poverty over his family for decades. Although few fishermen spoke openly of the terror of facing death in an Atlantic storm, it undoubtedly preyed on their minds.58

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