USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 22
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Many died in the prison-ships at New York. But since that period, as migra- tions from the township have been rare though formerly frequent, the inhabi- tants have increased. The meeting-house is painted and in good repair. The inhabitants in general are very constant in their attendance on public worship. There is one water-mill and three wind-mills for the grinding of Indian corn and rye. The elderly men and small boys remain at home to cultivate the ground ; the rest are at sea, except occasionally, two thirds of the year. The women are generally employed in spinning, weaving and knitting.
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Doctor Freeman often visited Truro, took an interest in her prosperity, and understood the people. He was inter- ested in all the Cape towns and wrote a description of several, which may be found in the Historical Collection, signed J. F.
The great gain of the ocean mentioned by Doctor Freeman was generally accepted, but actual tests prove to the contrary. Undoubtedly there have been years when the gain by the bank line would be fully the distance stated ; nearly fifty feet ; but this is usually followed by many years of low average.
A winter of severe easterly gales will wash down the bank to almost a perpendicular ; during that year the bank will crumble away to its natural angle of about forty-five degrees, which in some places will be three or four lengths of fence, or perhaps twenty or thirty feet. It may be five or ten years before another great inroad is made.
I can demonstrate that for the last fifty years the average annual loss on the Truro coast has not been over five or ten feet. But at this slow pace, in five hundred years there would be little left of Cape Cod, as a mile would have disap- peared. These remarks are confined to the northern part of the Cape, and do not conflict with what we have said in our Chapter on Geology, referring to the southern part, where the currents have a wild freedom.
It was once not uncommon for the old men to tell their sons that they had hoed corn where ships then sailed. Soc- rates complained that their fathers had done all the brave deeds, and had not taught them the same, so that they had no great stories to tell their sons. The old Cape Cod fathers, bound to keep good the stories they received, repeated their fathers' as their own, introducing a kind of mild mythology.
As the encroachment of the ocean on the back side of the Cape is of considerable scientific importance, my observations are partially confirmed by comparison with reliable statements from other exposed coasts and headlands. Margate and Ramsgate, exposed points on the Kentish coast, show what is termed "remarkable encroachments from the ocean since the reign of Henry VIII., " but when reduced show about the same average which I have noticed.
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Referring to Doctor Freeman's statement of an attempt in the early history of Truro to make a harbor at the Pond Landing, we call attention to the second attempt.
An act was passed in 1806, incorporating Jason Ayers (the Truro physician) and others as the "Truro Pond Harbor Association," for the purpose of opening a passage from the sea into a certain pond, or quagmire, lying on the west side of said town near the sea, and for clearing out said pond so as to form a conven- ient harbor.
This work was accomplished at considerable expense ; a few small vessels entered, but the heavy westerly winds soon filled the channel with sand, and it proved a total failure.
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CHAPTER XV.
THE FISHERIES AND THE WARS.
Exposed Condition. A Precarious Town. Dark Prospects. Beginning of the Fishing. Rivals for the Prize. Henry the IV. Sir Walter Raleigh. Stock Companies and the Nobility. Dutch Fishermen. Newfoundland. Catholic Europe. English Statutes. The Problem of Kings. Royal Kitchen and Royal Economy. Pine-Tree Shillings. Charles and Codfish. The People. 1485 - English Commerce - 1880. Education. Supply and Demand. From Newfoundland to New England. St. Saviour. Acadia. Fighting Men. Louis XIV. Louisburg. A Modern Crusade. Victory. One Vote. Fishermen Knighted. Peace. Codfish and Molasses. Free Rum. Merchant Voyages. The Cape Threatened. The Armada. Lawful Money. Crown Point. Petition for Protection. Watch and Ward. The Scheme. Priva- teering. Second Seige of Louisburg. Change of Rule. Dissatisfaction. An Impending Crisis.
TN an early chapter we have referred to the fisheries as making the settlements of New England possible, and that they had a controlling hand in developing the Colonies. In this chapter we wish to show as pertaining to our history, their continued importance to civilization, and how they became at least an indirect agency in the long struggles that led to the independence of the country. For a hundred years the Cape towns from their exposed situation and busi- ness interests, shared largely in the wars and misfortunes of the colony. This applies particularly to Truro, and still more to Provincetown, which we have shown was a barom- eter of the times, with a precarious fortune, subject to the ebb and flow of the fishing. Up to this time, say about 1750, though fishing was the main business in Truro, it had been carried on principally from the shore, and in connection with farming, as was and still is the English
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custom. Thereafter, the prosperity of the town became more identified with the fisheries, which will become more a part of our history. Just at this time their fifty years of comparative prosperity became darkened by war and its environments, making a long, dark night.
The fisheries of North America followed close in the wake of Columbus. Long before the Mayflower anchored in Cape Cod harbor, they had touched the enterprise of Europe, and commerce had spread rapidly in the maritime nations under its impulse. The English, Dutch, French and Portuguese, were rivals for the prize. Newfoundland was first the great point for all fishermen adventurers, and it is said was known to them before the voyage of Cabot, in 1497.
As early as 1517, fifty ships from the nations named, were employed. In 1536, a colony was attempted at Newfound- land, then known as Stora fixa In 1600 fully two hundred ships went annually there, employing ten thousand men, part of whom lived on shore curing the fish.
In 1540 the French had established fisheries in Newfound- land. In 1577 they employed one hundred and fifty vessels, and pushed the business with great energy. A little later, under Henry IV., and Sully his famous minister, these fish- eries were placed under government protection. In 1609 Scavelet, an old fisherman, had made forty voyages to Newfoundland.
In 1593 Sir Walter Raleigh declared in the House of Commons that the Newfoundland fishery was the stay and support of the west counties of England, so rapidly had it increased. Large joint stock companies were formed, to which leading statesmen of the kingdom freely contributed. Lord Bacon, Lord Northampton, Keeper of the Seals, and Sir Francis Tanfield, Chief Bearer of the Exchequer, were active supporters.
For many years the Dutch had followed the herring fisheries, and thereby enriched their nation. It used to be said that Amsterdam was built on herring bones, and that Dutchmen were made of pickled herring. Which last statement, I suppose, was not strictly true.
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THE FISHERIES AND THE WARS.
In 1580 a joint stock company of £80,000 was formed in England to carry out the herring fisheries in rivalry with the Dutch; they thought it disgraceful that their Dutch neighbors should enrich themselves under English noses. In 1750 a company with a capital of £500,000 was formed in London, of which the Prince of Wales was president. His associates were among the first men in the kingdom ; but it failed for want of practical management. This failure was a great blow to the herring fisheries of England. The stockholders could put their hands in their empty pockets and sing : -
He's dead ! he's dead as a herring ! For I beheld his berring, And four officers transferring His corpse away from the field.
The English were jealous of the growing wealth and influence of the Dutch, and pushed their own new-found enterprise with great energy.
It was a crude age, and the fishermen, though brave, bold and indomitable, were rude, ignorant and cruel. In many instances little better than pirates. Some of them became notorious freebooters. They exercised great authority on the Island, which excited the jealousy of England, whose unwise legislation forced them to the most atrocious deeds. The history of Newfoundland fisheries, that without compari- son are the most cruel in the annals of crime, were mostly for want of a modicum of practical wisdom in the laws made to govern them. Sabine says: "For more than three hundred years the quarter-deck of a fisherman dictated laws and usurped authority in Newfoundland."
It must be remembered in connection with the rapid growth of the American fisheries, that Europe was then Catholic, and that by the statute book, all British subjects abstained from flesh-food one hundred and fifty-three days in the year; and Parliament passed an act imposing a penalty of ten shillings for the first offence of eating flesh on fish-days ; other enactments "For the benefit of the realm, as well
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as to the navie, in sparing and increase of flesh victual, " etc. We should also consider the condition of Europe. Property aggregated largely in the nobility. Capital was limited. Enterprise and inventions were circumscribed for want of an open door. Labor was in poor demand, with poorer pay. The masses were ignorant, priest-ridden and poverty-bound. To feed the people, to keep them from positive starvation, was the open problem of kings and statesmen. The varieties of food were limited, and cooking a lost art, or in its infancy.
It may seem a surprising statement, that royalty was scarcely as well provided for in the comforts of living as the majority of our fishermen to-day. Contrast the fisherman's home with the conveniences and many of the elegancies of refined living ; with the hovels without chimneys, or windows, or floors, in which the majority of the English lived. The palace floor of Queen Elizabeth was covered with straw.
And now doth Geraldine press down The rushes of the chamber floor.
An English journal of the sixteenth century says: In one of the noble and splendid establishments of the kingdom, the servants and retainers had fish three fourths of the year. " Nor does my lord and lady fare much better, since for break- fast they had a quart of beer, as much wine, two pieces of salt fish, six red herring, four white ones and a dish of sprats." Old songs are said to be truthful tell-tales : -
In days when our King Robert reigned, His breeches cost but half a crown : He said they were a groat too dear, And called the tailor thief and lown.
Red herring were a standard bill of fare. A red herring riding away on horseback, in the royal corn-salad, was an accomplishment for kings' households. At the marriage of Henry IV., in 1403, the banquet was six courses; three of flesh and fowl, and three of fish, among which was "salty fyshe." Nor should we be misled by the great retinue of
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servants and retainers, since they received little or no consideration except their daily scant food.
When Massachusetts commenced, in 1652, to coin pine-tree shillings, Charles was much displeased. As a soothing mol- lient, the General Court ordered a present of ten barrels of cranberries, two hogsheads of samp, and three thousand pounds of codfish. Hume said that Charles used to swear by codfish. These were the times of which Emerson writes, " A layer of soldiers, over that a layer of lords, and a king on top, with clamps and hooks of castles, garrisons and police."
It was under these depressing, almost hopeless prospects for the people, that the spirit of discovery animated Europe, and especially England. War had been the pastime of kings, and the outlet to the surplus population. Anything was bet- ter than war, particularly with a bare exchequer. Here was a field for new enterprise and industry. In 1485, during the reign of Henry VIII., there were only five ships belonging to London over one hundred and twenty tons, and the trade of England was largely in the hands of the German merchants. The prosecution of the fisheries was the beginning of Eng- land's glory upon the seas. In 1700 the entering and closing tonnage of England was eighty thousand. In 1880 fifty-nine millions. But the kingdom was struggling up to a higher destiny made possible by the employment of the people.
Political abuses were yielding to better legislation. Diver- sified industries were producing diversified wants. Education in head, heart and hand, was laying hold of material good, and the concrete elements of society were building upon a better superstructure. It is interesting to watch the simple devel- opment of commerce. When our whalemen first visited the South Sea and Pacific Islands, the natives had nothing to sell and wanted nothing. But these courrier-avants of civilization preceding the missionary, the great civilizer, by a shrewd use of a few trinkets, salt provision and old clothes, created a demand. At their next visit the fruit and vegetables they needed were waiting their return and competed for more trink. ets, salt provisions and old clothes, for which the barbarous natives have now found use.
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Not only has commerce and civilization begun, but the principles of supply and demand, the first principles of politi- cal economy have been established on laws far more practical than those laid down by Smith and Mill. The virgin soil is now put under tribute, and idle hands are at work. Naked- ness must now be covered, the hut must be exchanged for a house, and a thousand before unknown wants become necessi- ties. Now the proud ship bears to them the products of our factories and shops, and from them, the products of sunny climes.
From Newfoundland the fisheries extended to Nova Scotia and New England. To obtain better advantages for her fishermen, France colonized Canada, Nova Scotia and Cape Britain, and England established important points in New England. In 1620 England had four hundred ships on the American coast.
In 1609 the French made their first settlement at St. Saviour, on the coast of Maine, at Mt. Desert, which was ignominiously and cowardly destroyed by Sir Samuel Argal of Pocohontas fame. Referring to this, Sabine says: "It is of interest to remark, that was the beginning of the con- tests, wars and bloodshed between the English and the French, which, with occasional intervals, continued for a cen- tury and a half, and which terminated only when the flag of England waved over every sea between Mexico and Labrador !" There were a good many first crosses and con- siderable flag-waving among the early historians. A hundred years before Longfellow's Arcadia and Evangeline, a hundred battles had been written in the blood of England and France on these shores. When not at open warfare, they were fight- ing for pretended rights as they had at Newfoundland. The soldiers and sailors of that day considered it their business to fight, and fight they did, with or without a cause.
The wars of England and France were transferred to America, and were continued under the Indian and French wars till the peace of Utrecht, 1713. It has been computed that during those wars not less than eight thousand young men from the colonies of New England and New York fell
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THE FISHERIES AND THE WARS.
by the sword or sickness. Nearly every family was in mourning. Not less than a fifth part of the people able to bear arms were in the field, and sometimes over half of the militia.
In the meantime Louis XIV. had spent thirty millions "of francs and twenty-five years in building a great fortress mounting more than two hundred guns, on the desolate rock- bound Island of Cape Britain. Within were palaces and nunneries, besides all the appointments of a grand citadel. A thousand sail of French vessels, from two to five hundred tons, were annually employed on this coast. Where now an occasional fisherman casts anchor, hundreds of ships lay with valuable cargoes, and the busy dash of commerce and armed navies was on every breeze. Fleets and armies fought with desperate valor, surprising victories were gained, and victors were heralded and knighted. The madness or secret, if any there were for this outlay, was to control the fisheries of North America. The history of Louisburg, the Gibraltar of America, the Dunkirk of the west, is stranger than fiction, and fertile with attractions for pen or pencil. The possessions of France in America had ever been an itching palm to the English, in which the Colonists sympathized.
The excitement of enlisting troops for the Louisburg expe- dition was wild almost beyond comparison. Religion was sufficiently infused to give enthusiasm. The sanctuaries were opened for recruiting, and the old fire of the crusad- ers burned on the home altars. Prayer to the God of battles went up continually from every christian heart for its success. The most remarkable feature of this daring enterprise was its success, the next was the accident of the bill.
Governor Shirley submitted the plan to the General Court, endorsing the same. The court rejected the plan ; the Gov- ernor again renewed it. The merchants insisted, and the plan was finally adopted by the vote of the speaker. The casting vote of the speaker was made possible by the following incident. Mr. Oliver of Boston, who was opposed to the bill, while on his way to the Court of which he was a member, fell and broke his leg. On this turn the bill was passed. The
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expedition was carried out ; Louisburg passed into the hands of the English. The victory was the talk of the world; a thanksgiving in New England and peace to Europe.
The original design of this enterprise has always been credited, says Sabine, to the New England fishermen. Pep- perell who was knighted was the son of a Maine fisherman and had large interests in the business. By keeping the French flag flying after the surrender, he had more than fisherman's luck. Ships laden with cargoes valued at a million of dollars, were caught on that hook. Phipps was also knighted.
Elizabeth Vickery, the daughter of Deacon Jonathan, when eighteen years of age, took passage on a fishing vessel from Truro to Boston. This was during the French war. The vessel was taken, and four Frenchmen were put on the prize. During the excitement Miss Vickery was left, and was found by the men who took charge. They started with their double prize, probably for Louisburg. A heavy gale overtook them, and they were shipwrecked on the Isle of Sable.
It was now winter, and no communication could be had till the ice would allow a passage from the mainland in the spring. From the wreck the four men built a hut, where they passed the long winter. When the Island was visited late in the spring, they were all made prisoners by the English. At the earnest solicitation of the Frenchmen, Miss Vickery was liberated, carried to Halifax, and from there sent home. To the honor of these French sailors, be it remembered that during all these trying experiences, they never failed in their kindness or honorable protection to their helpless prisoner, and that she received only marked respect from their hands. She married Jonathan Collins, and became the mother of many generations.
This peace to the Colonies was more in letter than spirit. They were still smarting under repeated acts of Parliament hostile to their interests, which were summed up under the comprehensive charge of "Restriction on our Fisheries." The duty imposed on rum and molasses "from any of the West India Islands than English," was an exasperating act
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and a staggering blow. Codfish and molasses was the Golden Fleece of New England. The colonists declared they could not prosecute the fisheries unless they could exchange cod- fish for molasses, to make rum for home consumption and trade with the Indians. The consumption of rum was enor- mous, and the traffic was untrammeled by any nice question of morals. It was literally free rum.
In 1700 Massachusetts exported one hundred thousand quintals of codfish, averaging four dollars per quintal, besides a contraband commerce of considerable magnitude, under the Navigation Act of England. Forty years later the export- ation of codfish had trebled. Marblehead alone had one hundred and sixty vessels. The whole number including ketches, snows and shallops employed in the business, was not less than eight hundred. In 1775 Mr. Higginson, a merchant of Salem, stated at the Bar of the House of Commons, that seven hundred vessels were employed in the business, one half of which were carrying fish to foreign markets. In connection with these statements it should be remembered that the whole white population of Massachusetts was less than a million. These facts throw no little light upon the business resources of the colonies.
They also explain how so many of our people were so early engaged in the European trade in connection with the fish- eries, which was a direct step to the more generally recog nized merchant service. This change was more in name than fact. Carrying fish to foreign markets, in a fore- topsail, poop-deck schooner, was as much merchant service, or, as it used to be called, "merchant voyages," as carrying rum, cotton and tobacco in brigs and ships. The skippers, acting as their own agents, and doing their own business, qualified themselves as merchants, and led directly to rela- tions of larger magnitude. It also led to new social relations, which often resulted in making new homes. This process has never ceased in Truro.
In retaliation for Louisburg to recover her loss and dis- tress, if not conquer New England, France fitted out the
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most formidable armament of modern times. This expedi- tion, under Duke d'Anville, consisted of eleven ships of line, thirty ships of war, transports with over three thousand troops, and forty thousand stands of arms for the Canadians and Indians. The fleet was destined for New England, and terrible reports floated on every breeze. The air was thick with coming distress. Truro and Provincetown were greatly exposed, and entirely unguarded. The people were anxious almost to despair. But Providence was better than their fears. It was the story over again of Philip and his armada, which the Pope had blessed and pronounced invincible, and on which Philip had staked the strength of his kingdom. It has been said with that armada sunk the wealth of the two Indias, and the flower of the Spanish chivalry. France staked her reputation on this cast, and with the loss sank her star of empire in the western world.
Sterling money was scarce, old tenor being much reduced in value. In 1749 Parliament provided coin, which was shipped to Boston. It was in two hundred and fifteen chests, of three thousand dollars each, one hundred casks of copper, making twenty-seven truck-loads when it was carted to the Provincial treasury. After the thirty-first of March, 1750, by this provision, all debts were paid in coin. The term "law- ful money" was then originated. The town raised £71- 17s-6d, lawful money, and placed in the hands of Captain Constant Freeman, to pay the men hired in the town to go to Crown Point.
In 1756 the war broke out with renewed fury. Truro being more exposed and almost defenceless, suffered more than an average share of these troubles. She again petitioned the General Court for arms and military assistance, representing their exposed condition. It was ordered that Provincetown Harbor be fortified by a battery of six guns, viz. : two nines, two sixes, and two five pounds : all of which was never done.
In 1757, March 22, Mr. Joshua Atkins was deputed to petition the General Court that the town be protected, and excused from impressments. A committee was appointed to consult with the inhabitants of Provincetown respecting building
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a battery there, this town pledging assistance in the work; also to petition the General Court for aid in the same ; also to assist the military officers in drawing the claim list.
The defences having become suspended, the town voted that the military watch and ward be carried on at Cape Cod, and that here a suitable number of guns and ammunition be brought to the meeting-house every Sabbath to be ready in case of alarm. The scheme as generally adopted in the towns for enlisting men in the service was the resort here.
The sum of fifteen pounds per month was voted to be paid to each of the town's quota, from the town treasury, in addi- tion to the Provincial wages.
At a meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Truro, October 24, 1757, said town chose for moderator Mr. Joshua Atkins.
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