USA > New York > Suffolk County > Riverhead > History of Suffolk country, comprising the addresses delivered at the celebration of the bi-centennial of Suffolk county, N.Y., in Riverhead, November 15, 1883 > Part 9
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On June 4,. 1825, in violent storm, two smacks were lost with all on board, viz ; the Fame, Capt. James Beebe with his son Stafford and Joseph and Benjamin Griffin, brothers ; and the Emeline, Capt. Daniel Griffin, his brother David, Joel King and Horace Clark. These are names that occur to-day in the business of smack fishing from East Marion, which has long been and now is more distinctively a community of fishermen than any oth- er in the county or perhaps the State. At the present time there are hail- ing from the port of Greenport, which includes East Marion and Orient, 2 1 schooner and 4 sloop smacks, of an aggregate tonnage of 937.36 tons ; same of them are as handsome craft, with as fine lines, shapely models, clean run, and complete outfit of rigging, sails and all needed equipments, as it they had been designed for pleasure yachts. In those little smacks of 15 or 18 tons, with no chronometer clock, no binocular glass, no marine in- strument other than a compass and a quadrant, and with no further aid to safety than the imperfect charts of those days, four or five bold, self-reliant mariners bravely threw themselves upon the broad ocean and made trips as tar south as Charleston, Savannah, or even Key West ; sometimes passing months in fishing in those waters and finding markets for their catch in the cities named, and going and returning not by any inside canal route but out on the open sea, past the stormy Hatteras and down the inhospitable beaches of the Carolinas. Taking in about $150 worth of provisions in N. V., with 5 gallons of rum at a shilling a quart to last the cruise, they made harbors if occasion required but if caught in a gale would lay to under a trysail and ride it out like a petrel of the storm, when a frigate might have foundered. When fishing they were in 12 to 20 fathom water, and when loaded with bass would run into port; in this business they would occupy 6 to 9 months, generally from October to July, but sometimes
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would go down to Jacksonville to get sheepshead for Charleston or to Key West to get groupers for Cuba. One of the first smacks built, the Venus, Capt. Simeon Price, with a crew of four foundered in Charleston Harbor, inside of Sullivan's Island, and was never seen afterwards.
Blue-fish, now so prominent as a food fish, were not much thought of till about 1852. [In the course of the inquiry before the U. S. Senate Committee investigating the causes of the alleged scarcity of food fishes, in 1882, Samuel B. Miller, a Brooklyn dealer in fish for 49 years, testified that he could remember when 2,000 pounds of blue-fish could not be sold in New York in one day, at 2 cents per pound ; and Caleb Haley, a veteran fish dealer in Fulton Market, testitied that it was only within ten years pre- vious to that date that blue-fish had become a desirable market fish. Striped bass were abundant along the south shore ; immense hauls, sometimes amounting to many wagon loads, were taken in seins and often sold for 2 or 3 cents per pound ; they ranged in weight from I to So pounds, and tradition tells of one one-hundred pounder .* Sometimes better prices prevailed and good profits rewarded the fishermen's labors. At and near Smith's Point, for the use of the shore to low water mark as a landing place for the use of their nets, bass fishermen have paid the owner as high as $500 in a year. The privilege at that place is still paid for. In early times there were three inlets into Great South Bay east of Patchogue, the last one of which did not close till 1820. In consequence the water was salt and all the better sorts of fish abounded, as did oysters
and clams. The fisheries were productive and valuable ; they were held under the Smith patent and the patent to Brookhaven town-the latter in its agreement with William Smith assuming a penal obligation of $20, 000 to duly attend to the fisheries. About the years 1825 to 1840 bass fishing in the bays and ocean was extensively carried on during the Fall and Winter. Large quantities were conveyed to New York in wagons. It is estimated that the quantity sold would net at least $5.000 yearly, though at times the price was only for 132 cents per pound. Eels were also plenty and many thousands of dollars' worth were annually sold : eeling is still a large in- dustry, though less than at that time. Sheepshead were sometimes abun- dant, but were not the high-priced luxury they have since become. In 1828, the East Bay being full of bass, there came on a hard storm early in the winter and drove all the bass into Quantuck Bay, a body of water cov- ering some 200 acres. During that winter, by a count kept by a resident of Quogue, 75,000 bass were taken out of that bay, all the barns and out- houses being filled with them through the winter. When gray-beards of 50 or 60 years were boys, eels were so numerous that, even at 7 or 8 cents per dozen, any industrious man could earn $100 with his spear in a winter. Of recent years large quantities of perch have been taken in the East Bay, and in the winter of 1882 over $10,000 worth was sold. Crabs in the same bay have also become an important item, as many as 200 barrels hav- ing been shipped in a day from one station.
Within a few years the taking of codfish in the ocean from Quogue to Moriches has grown to large proportions, about 150 men being engaged last winter and from West-Hampton depot 285,000 pounds of cod were
*Subsequent to this writing the largest cod fish on record-a fish weighing over 100 pounds, whose dressed weight was Sy pounds-was caught in the ocean off Montauk by N. Dominy's company of East-Hampton fishermen.
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sent by rail, besides large quantities from Quogue and other stations. Of the oyster fishery in the Great South Bay and the bays on the north side of the county, I shall not attempt to speak in any detail. The facts are too many and the ideas they suggest are too extensive, to be compressed into such an article as this. Its growth, its present extent, and its prospective greatness are all themes that might occupy attention for hours. Enough to say that several hundreds of boats, thousands of persons, and large amounts of capital are engaged in its prosecution, and in the South and East Bays alone it has been computed that the value of the boats, scows, and apparatus used in the fishery is fully half a million dollars, 'while the number of families supported wholly or in part from this source is from 900 to 1,000, besides 200 to 300 unmarried men earning wages. Its yearly products count up into the hundreds of thousands of bushels. The taking
of clams for the market from Peconic and Shinnecock bays, and in the waters of the north shore, especially Smithtown harbor, has grown to be a large business, but does not date back much, if any, further than 40 or 50 years ago. The Connecticut markets have long been supplied from the east end and the bays along the north side have sent quantities of both the long and round varieties to New York.
Escalops are of still later introduction as an item of commercial fish- ing-comparatively few being taken 15 years ago. Of recent winters large quantities have been taken by boats from New Suffolk, Greenport and other places on Peconic Bay, and to a lesser extent in Northport and Hunting- ton Bays. Lobsters were found many years ago near the rocks along the north shore of Southold town, and at Montauk ; also near Plum Gull and Fisher's Island and in some years considerable quantities have been caught at those places.
The fishey that might have the greatest popular attractiveness for the romance and picturesqueness attaching to many of its incidents; for the striking illustrations of personal heroism it developed; for the extent to which it was carried and the wide scope of its operation, covering the acces- sible waters of every ocean; for the number of persons and amount of capi- tal engaged and the values of its products; and for the general prominence before the country and before the world which it gave to Long Island mariners, vessels and ports, is now extinct within our county, where once it flourished to a degree not easily appreciated at this remove of time. Of course I refer now to the whale fishery as it was carried on at Sag Harbor, Greenport, New Suffolk, Jamesport and Cold Spring. I have here a mass of notes and memoranda relating to this fishery, drawn from all the sources to which I could gain access, including every historical document or works available to my examination, and many traditionary and individual remi- niscences, with especial stress to be laid on a manuscript sketch of the whaling business at the port of Sag Harbor prepared by the late Luther D. Cook, of that place, and most kindly placed at my service by his son, Ben- jamin A. Cook, of New York, and which I have found a storehouse replete with recitals of the utmost interest to all descendants of the whalemen whose voyages formed so large a part in the past prosperity of my native village. But, with great reluctance, I am constrained to lay them all aside as their reading would tax too severely your patience, perhaps already wearied with this necessaily discursive and ill-digested paper.
I will, however, detain you a moment longer on this head to group a few prominent facts in illustration of the magnitude and value of this
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now vanished trade.
Starting in 1790 with one brig of 150 tons, it grew slowly 'till 1820, when six vessels brought to port 531 barrels of sperm and 7,850 barrels of whale oil. In the 30 years from 1820, to 1850, for which period Mr. Cook has full records of arrivals at the port of Sag Harbor, with their car- goes, the aggregates are 490 vessels bringing in 83, 101 1-2 barrels of sperm and 812,595 1-2 barrels of whale oil and 6, 728, 809 pounds of whale- bone, worth at very low average prices nearly $15,000,000. In 1847 there were 32 arrivals, bringing 3,919 barrels of sperm and 63,712 barrels of whale oil and 605, 340 pounds of whalebone, worth, Mr. Cook says, at then current rates, $996,413. In that year Sag Harbor owned 63 whale ships, with an aggregate of 22,233 tons. The whaling business at that port was then at its highest level, and from that year may be dated the be- ginning of its decline.
I must ask your attention for but a short time longer to what is now the most important fishery interest in our county-an interest that has grown up with the life time of one generation, and yet overtops all other interests of the sort within this State, except, perhaps, the oyster fishery. When first our ancestors began to utilize that branch of the herring family which is now known as the menhaden by using them to fertilize their fields, cannot be precisely stated. The earliest mention, so far as I have learned, is in Spofford's Gazetteer, where it is stated that about the year 1797 a seine at Town Harbor, Southold, drew to land at one haul 250,000 moss bunk- ers. The knowledge of this fact was derived by the compiler of the Ga- zetteer from a paper entitled " Observations on Manures" read in 1795 before the Society (State) for the Promotion of Agriculture by Hon. Ezra L'Hom- medieu, of Southold village, one of the foremost men in the long period of his active career and one of the brightest intellects to which Southold Town ever gave birth. In this paper he says: "This year I saw 250,000 taken at one draught, which must have been much more than 100 tons;" and he adds: " One seine near me caught more than one million the last sea- son, which season lasts about one month." As this paper was read in March, before menhaden ordinarily visit these waters, it is fair to presume that the paper was prepared during the previous Fall or Winter, and that the words " this year" must have referred to the season of 1794. How much earlier than this latter date the industry of taking menhaden for ma- nure had become established as an important adjunct to the agriculture of the eastern towns, it is impossible to say, but doubtless it had been prose- cuted more or less for forty or fifty years-perhaps longer. [See note B, page 77.
Both in Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound, and on the ocean shore in the Hamptons, seines were used from an early period in the history of the eastern towns to take bunkers for manure. Regular organizations were formed, seines and boats adapted to the work were procured, and fish houses for storage and for dwelling, were put up at suitable points on the bay or beach shores, and for several weeks of the Spring and Fall the crews made a business of fishing whenever the weather served and fish were to be seen-the catch being shared among themselves and the owners of the outfit. This practice, while superseded or mainly forced to give way by later improved methods, is still maintained to some limited extent, at a few points.
But the use of Menhaden as a material for the manufacture of oil for
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tanning and dressing leather, for rope making, for painting, and for various other uses, while it was known that those fish contained oil and the process of extracting it had been actually applied many years before in some scattered and inconsequential way, may be said to be not yet forty years old. The late Judge Osborn, of Jessup's Neck, on Peconic Bay, was the first to put up try works for rendering menhaden by boiling the fish in water in large iron pots set in masonry, and skimming off the oil that rose to the surface. Those pot works, as such establishments were called, were put up in a lot near his house and not far from the shore, where the fish could be conveniently landed from the seine and carted to the works.
This was in the year 1847 or 1848. The oil made in this way was heavy, black and rank, and was used, by the Judge, for coarse painting and other purposes on his premises, and some small amounts were sold to other parties. Some years later he put up steam works on Jessup's Point. On July 4, 1850, thirty-three years ago, the first steam factory in Suffolk County, for making oil and guano from menhaden, was begun at Chequet Point, Shelter Island, directly opposite Greenport, by Daniel D. Wells and his oldest son Henry E. Wells, both then residents of Greenport, the former since deceased, the latter yet living and one of its foremost citizens, from whose lips I have received entertaining information concerning this pioneer undertaking which led the way for the great enterprise that now lifts itself into the fore-front of the nation's marine activities. They had visited and inspected the works of Judge Osborn, and being acute practical observers and shrewd men of business, they had noted its possibilities and needs. They procured a steam boiler, which not proving powerful enough was exchanged for a larger and that again for a still larger. The fish were
procured from shore seines at Orient and East Marion. The Yaphank seine, in the latter harbor, on one occasion enclosed a vast school of fish and 1,000.000 were landed from it; an equally large haul was made by a seine in the upper bay; and I believe that on Short Beach a seine once landed nearly or quite I 1-4 millions of fish. Usually at first they had some two million fish in a season, afterwards three millions, and within a few years the supply largely increased. The very first year of the business they dried some of the scrap or refuse, as an experiment, on a small plat- form, and then ground it in a large coffee mill-this being the first dried and ground scrap ever exhibited. After continuing in the business for two years at Chequet Point they bought land at White Hill, a little ways west of Prospect, Shelter Island, and moved the factory there in the spring of 1853, but before the work of rebuilding had been completed they sold the estab- lishment to Colonel Morgan, of Poquannock, near Groton, Conn., where it was removed and erected, being the first factory of the sort in that State. 'The same fall they built another factory at White Hill, in connection with Harmon and Maxon Tuthill and the latter's brother-in-law, Mr. Strong, all of East Marion. They bought their first purse-net of Capt. Benj. Tallman, of Portsmouth, R. I., who originated this mode of catch- ing menhaden in deep water-an invention, not patented, but which has been relatively of as great utility to this fishery as Whitney's invention was to the production of cotton. The first purse-net used in Peconic Bay was bought a year or two previous by Capt. David Smith and others. The Wellses bought out the Tuthills' and Strongs' interest, and from 1854 till now the business has been conducted under the same firm name of D. D. Wells & Sons. At one time they had one seine fishing in Orient Harbor
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and two purse-net gangs fishing in the bays; afterwards a third. At first cat-rigged boats were used both for the seines and for carryaways to convey the fish to the factory; sloop yachts, after handsome and finely equipped . vessels costing several thousand dollars, were introduced about 1868, and being built chiefly for speed, they made, until steam supplanted them a few years ago, a most picturesque as well as novel feature of a business strictly utilitarian-perhaps the only business which ever did or fairly could warrant the employment of vessels fitted by model, rig, finish, and sailing qualities to rank with pleasure yachts. In 1870 a small steamer designed for towing the carryaway boats-in which manhaden are carried from the place where a haul or "set" of the purse-net may be made to the factories-about the Bays, with a view to saving time in delivery of the fish, was built at the ship- yard of Boss Oliver H. Bishop in Greenport; but she was not adapted to the work in all respects, and did not develop speed enough to make her profitably serviceable, and so after full trial she was sold to the Greenport and Shelter Island Ferry Company to be converted to its use as a ferry boat between the two places. In 1872 Messrs. Wells & Co. had built for their Maine factory the steamer Wm. A. Wells, modeled, constructed and engined with special reference to the business of following menhaden into deep water off the coast of Maine, towing or following the purse-boats to the fish, hoisting their catch by steam scoops into the hold, and after steam- ing back to the factory discharging them in the same way into cars that carry them on inclined railways to the rendering tanks. In the following year the Ranger Oil Co., of Greenport, of which Thomas F. Price was (and is) managing agent, built at South Bristol, Maine, the steamer E. F. Price, for Cap. Elijah Tallman, of Rhode Island, who has remained in the service of the same company ever since, and is now "commodore" of its fleet; this was the first menhaden steamer actually employed in fishing on Peconic and Gardiner's Bavs. The first steamer ever built for this fishery was the Seven Brothers, built, and I believe still owned, by the enterprising firm of Church Bros., of Tiverton, Rhode Island. Hawkins Bros., of Jamesport. in 1874, brought their first steamer into the Bay. Wells & Sons, after carrying on the business at White Hill for nearly 20 years, with varying fortune but with a preponderance on the right side of the account, were led by the growing opposition of their new neighbors at Prospect to pull up stakes in 1871 and remove to North West, in East- Hampton town, where they now have their factory in active operation, its cash products for the past season exceeding $53,000. Their largest sea- son's catch was in 1879, when 18,000,000 fish, caught by two gangs and averaging 4 gallons of oil to the thousand fish, were rendered. On another year, from 6, 200,000 fish they made 62,000 gallons, or a full average of 10 gallons to the thousand. That year, from one particular boat load of fish, which was kept separate and accurately measured, an average yield of 24 gallons to the thousand was got. The fattest fish and largest yield of oil ever known, is reported from Shinnecock Bay, where some menhaden that had been shut up in brackish water grew to such size and fatness that they yielded at the rate of 48 gallons to the thousand.
Wells & Co., a firm with D. D. and H. E. Wells holding one-third interest were the first to build a steam factory in the State of Maine, having put up one at South Bristol in 1864, two years before any others in that State. Five years later they removed to Virginia, at Farmer's Creek, it being also the first factory in that State; not succeeding there they removed it back to
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the same place in Maine, where they still own it but it is not now in opera- tion, the fish having deserted that coast for four years past, until late in the present season. Capt. B. C. Cartwright, of Shelter Island, one of the veterans of this fishery, began with a steam factory at Ram Head in 1860. and in 1872 removed it to Bunker City, where he now carries it on success- fully. I have not time to enumerate the various factories and pot works that have been started on Shelter Island and describe their several vicissi- tudes. Of the 15 or 16 that have had longer or shorter careers on that island, only that of Capt. Cartwright, known as the Peconic Oil Co., and of Hawkins Bros., near the same place, remain. On Gardiner's and Pe- conic Bays, beside 8 or 10 now closed or dismantled, there are 12 factories in active operation, viz: at Promised Land, Abbe & Co., George F. Tuthill & Co., Dixon, Jonas Smith, T. F. Price & Co., Elsworth Tuthill & Co., O. H. Bishop and the pot works of William M. Tuthill & Sons; at North West, D. D. Wells & Sons and Sterling Oil Co .; at Bunker City, Peconic Oil Co. and Hawkins Bros. ; at Long Beach, Orient, the Atlantic & Virginia Fertilizer Co. During the season just about to close, these factories employed 7 double and 20 single gang steamers costing $10,000 to $25,000 each and averaging 29 men for the former and I6 for the latter, or a total of 528 men on the steamers, beside 6 sailing gangs averaging 13 men, or 78 in all, while the factories employ an everage of 30 men, or 360 in all, making an aggregate of nearly 1,000 men employed in this industry on the two bays. A careful approximate estimate of the past season's catch, by which is meant the fish brought and rendered at the factories on those bays is 145,000,000, of which about 134,000,000 were taken in steamers, averaging something over 5,000,000 to a steamer; while the sailing gangs have averaged about 2,000,000.
Wells & Co., have made 894 barrels of oil and 1, 100 tons of scrap, and have consumed about $5,000 worth or 1, 000 tons of coal. The carrying of coal and salt to the factories and taking oil and scrap from them to market, makes freight lor many vessels. In 1880 the total value of products of the menhaden fishery in the State of New York, as tabulated for the U. S. Census of that year, was $1, 114, 158, of which all but the products of four factories on Barren Island, one of them owned by Hawkins Bros., of Jamesport, and all of them mainly or wholly supplied with fish by fishermen from this county, was a result of the combination of capital, labor and skill by residents of Suffolk County in a manufacture of which the raw material had no value until taken out of the teeming sea and applied to the uses of mankind. Certainly, than this no branch of human industry could be more intrinsically worthy of commendation and encour- agement.
Mr. Louis C. d'Homergue, Secretary of the U. S. Menhaden Oil and Guano Association, which was organized in January 1874, was the first to make a business of drying scraps and shipping it to Europe; he had a fac- tory for this purpose at Hay Beach, Shelter Istand, previous to 1876. He has kindly furnished me with many useful data respecting the work of the Association and the statistics of the business in the United States for every year since its organization, but I regret to find my time will not allow me to make use of them. In 1882, writing to U. S. Senator Lapham, he esti- mated that the business then employed about $4,000,000 of capital, over 90 steam and 250 sailing vessels, and 3,000 men; that the 71,000 tons of . dry scrap manufactured that year was used as the basis in the composition
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of 284,000 tons of commercial fertilizers, applied in the South at the rate of 250 pounds per acre to raise one bale of cotton, and that thus the scrap or guano made from menhadon after the oil has been expressed becomes the active ammonial agent in raising 2, 272,000 bales of cotton, besides corn, sugar cane, and other products.
A few words more and I am done. Many of this audience may have but an inadequate idea of the actual extent to which the fisheries of our County are carried, and it is certain that by the world at large they are quite generally underestimated, if, indeed, they are known at all. For information of those who care to know something of this topic, I read from an official statement kindly sent me by Mr. Nimmo, some figures respecting only the products of the fisheries (menhaden and edible swimming and shell fish) brought into the U. S. Customs District of - Sag Harbor-which includes the Surveyor's District of Greenport-from 1872 to 1883, inclu- sive, the fiscal year being meant in each case and ending June 30. It will be noted that this leaves out of computation the products of the oyster, clam and other fisheries in L I. Sound, in the ocean, and in the bays on the south and north sides of the county, and relates only to the towns bordering on Peconic and Gardiner's bays. During those twelve years the total reported value brought in from the sea at those ports was $7,822,928. In the one year of 1882 the value so reported was $1,400, 850. While, in the absence of authentic figures returned from any other portion of the county, it is impossible to give accurate results as to the products of fisheries in the large area unreported, it' may, I think safely be reckoned that their value would range each year from $400,000 to $600,000, and that a low average would be half a million dollars-making for the twelve years referred to, an aggregate af at least $6,000,000. 'Indeed, with every disposition to be moderate in th's est mate, I deem it entirely within bounds to believe that the fisheries of Suffolk county during the past twelve years have yielded to those engaged in them fully $15,000,000, or the large yearly average of $1, 250,000. In this estimate account is made only of commer- cial values, omitting altogether the large quantities of fish taken from the waters of the county and consumed by its inhabitants, the cash value of which it is obviously impossible to state. [See note C, page 78].
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