The story of the schooner fishery of the NE part of the United States of America and the Maritimes of Canada is one of danger, conquered by inspiration and innovation. As fishermen ventured further offshore to harvest the lucrative cod of the Grand Banks, and spent ever longer periods at sea they needed better vessels. The era culminated with the famous racing schooners like the Puritan and Bluenose and the fisher captains’ names became famous and their crews respected the world over. Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous lionised the fishery in a brilliant novel, and film in 1937 while some schooners were still working.
This book, a collection of five books in all, is a masterpiece, charting the whole era of the fishery under sail, from the coming of the mackerel and the simple dory to the end of schooners with depression, motorisation and the second world war. It’s a 448 page tome, and tells you stuff like it took 30 minutes to bait a 500 hook tub of long line. It’s a huge amount of research on Gloucester especially with appendixes of the vessels and crew lost.
aloneatsea.com £14.56
