. A narrative history of the town of Cohasset, Massachusetts . rench and English from across the ocean andby settlers in America. Clumsy sailing craft with highsterns, like the accompanying illustration, sailed fromCohasset with some of our ancestors each season for thecodfishing grounds. No early records of this industry are known to exist,but the annual catch for the hundred years interveningbetween 1737 and 1837 may have been worth more thana thousand dollars. At any rate, in the year 1837,* whenmackerel fishing had come to usurp almost the exclusive * Barbers Historical Collections, p. 455
. A narrative history of the town of Cohasset, Massachusetts . rench and English from across the ocean andby settlers in America. Clumsy sailing craft with highsterns, like the accompanying illustration, sailed fromCohasset with some of our ancestors each season for thecodfishing grounds. No early records of this industry are known to exist,but the annual catch for the hundred years interveningbetween 1737 and 1837 may have been worth more thana thousand dollars. At any rate, in the year 1837,* whenmackerel fishing had come to usurp almost the exclusive * Barbers Historical Collections, p. 455. 395 196 HISTORY OF COHASSET. attention of our fishermen, there were, nevertheless,seven hundred and fifty quintals of cod taken, whichwere valued at two thousand two hundred and fiftydollars. When we remember that the codfishing at Cohassethad dwindled to nearly nothing by the year 1840, so thatvery few people remember its existence, while the enor-mous sum of four thousand four hundred quintals was thecatch of one season upon record, we may feel sure that. Codfishing off the Banks, 1780 and later. the years between 1737 and 1837 could tell some prettybig fish stories for so small a town. Elisha Doane, who came here in 1786, had muchmoney invested in codfishing, and his old account bookstell some transactions that prove the magnitude of thisextinct enterprise of the town. The larger schooners went to the Grand Banks of New-foundland, the Bay of Chaleur, and Prince Edward Island THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 397 in April or May and stayed there fishing until September,catching and salting the fish. The method of these northern fisheries was at first tofish from the sides of the schooner; but later, an eighty-ton schooner, with her crew of twelve or fourteen, wouldanchor in some harbor while small boats with two menin each would sail and row to the fishing grounds. Theyused hand lines. The fish were taken to the shore,cleaned and washed, and then salted down. Afterwardsmany of them wer
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