e. They were
fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate community of
interests, a race of pure native or English stock, deserving this tribute
which was paid to them in Congress: "Every person on board our fishing
vessels has an interest in common with his associates; their reward depends
upon their industry and enterprise. Much caution is observed in the
selection of the crews of our fishing vessels; it often happens that every
individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties of friendship; our
fishermen are remarkable for their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank
with the most skillful navigators."

Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners
loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back
naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned
trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from one
forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the stormy,
freezing Banks, the young Gloucester-man would sign on for a voyage to
Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become a mate or
master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was maintained a
school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent and efficient
officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were mostly recruited
from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England until the term
"Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own.

Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and ways
are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing vessel
still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor is being
installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The Gloucester
fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still
drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, and her crew
still divide the earnings, share and share, as did their forefathers a
hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England strain of blood no
longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova Scotia
"Blue-noses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet they are alike for
courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the
calling are undimmed.

There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected the
fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against our
Canad