ssell. But the romance of
the typical sailor's life is that which grows out of a ceaseless
struggle with the winds and waves, out of world-wide wanderings, and
encounters with savages and pirates. It is the romance which makes up
melodrama, rather than that of the normal life. The early New England
fishermen, however, were something more than vagrants on the surface of
the seas. In their lives were often combined the peaceful vocations of
the farmer or woodsman, with the adventurous calling of the sailor. For
months out of the year, the Maine fisherman would be working in the
forests, felling great trees, guiding the tugging ox-teams to the frozen
rivers, which with spring would float the timber down to tidewater. When
winter's grip was loosened, he, like the sturdy logs his axe had shaped,
would find his way to where the air was full of salt, and the owners of
pinks and schooners were painting their craft, running over the rigging,
and bargaining with the outfitters for stores for the spring cruise.
From Massachusetts and Rhode Island farms men would flock to the little
ports, leaving behind the wife and younger boys to take care of the
homestead, until the husband and father returned from the banks in the
fall, with his summer's earnings. His luck at fishing, her luck with
corn and calves and pigs, determined the scale of the winter's living.
Some of the fishermen were not only farmers, as well, but ship-builders
and ship-owners, too. If the farm happened to front on some little cove,
the frame of a schooner would be set up there on the beach, and all
winter long the fisherman-farmer-builder would work away with adze and
saw and hammer, putting together the stout hull that would defend him in
time against the shock of the north-east sea. His own forest land
supplied the oak trees, keelson, ribs, and stem. The neighboring sawmill
shaped his planks. One lucky cruise as a hand on a fishing boat owned by
a friend would earn him enough to pay for the paint and cordage. With
Yankee ingenuity he shaped the iron work at his own forge--evading in
its time the stupid British law that forbade the colonists to make
nails or bolts. Two winters' labor would often give the thrifty builder
a staunch boat of his own, to be christened the "Polly Ann," or the
"Mary Jane"--more loyal to family ties than to poetic euphony were the
Yankee fishermen--with which he would drive into the teeth of the
north-east gale, breaking through the waves a