Lifelines: Canada's East Coast Fisheries

The Search for Cod, a Delicacy for Meatless Days
A Fishing Expedition on the Saint-André (1754)
The Search for Cod, a Delicacy for Meatless Days: 
A Fishing Expedition on the Saint-André (1754)

By Jean-Pierre Chrestien to TABLE OF CONTENTS


Endnotes
 

1 Charles de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française de la morue dans l'Amérique septentrionale, vol. 1 (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962), pp. 123, 284.


2 Ibid., p. 285.


3 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 640, 702. The Catholic Church imposed nearly 156 meatless days a year, depending on the diocese.


4 Gabelle: a special salt tax levied in certain regions of France.


5 Banker: A ship outfitted for the fishery on the Newfoundland banks. The term also refers to the fishermen on the ships.


6 The venerable Pierre Berthelot, chief pilot and cosmographer of the king of Portugal, and a member of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was born in Honfleur, where he was baptized on December 12, 1600 in Saint Catherine's Church. He was the son of Pierre Berthelot, known as Dupéral, a master surgeon who later became a naval captain. According to a contract dated July 21, 1598, Pierre Berthelot Sr. married Fleurie Morin, the daughter of Guillaume Morin, Sieur of Chamelonde. They had ten children, the eldest being Pierre Jr. He worked as master surgeon on ships employed in the Newfoundland fishery and took his eldest son with him on the Aigle to introduce him to the fishery. Pierre Jr. continued his apprenticeship on other ships outfitted and piloted by his father, who was also a navigator, like most naval surgeons of his time. In 1619, Pierre Jr. boarded the Espérance, a ship belonging to a company owned by merchants in Paris and Rouen that had been formed a few years earlier to trade with the Orient. After the Espérance was captured and looted by the Dutch, he remained in the Indies for a few years then served on merchant ships. In 1626, he was in Malacca, an Asian port captured by the Portuguese. His knowledge of the Indian archipelago made him a valuable assistant. He participated in several expeditions as a pilot on galleys then became the hydrographer of the viceroy of the Portuguese Indies, for whom he drew nautical charts. The chief pilot of the Portuguese squadron at Goa, he participated in a naval battle off the coast of Malacca, distinguished himself in other armed conflicts and received a title of nobility. He was appointed a royal pilot and cosmographer. On December 24, 1634, he became a member of the Carmelite Order. He was ordained on August 24, 1638 by the Patriarch of Ethiopia and received the name of Brother Denis of the Nativity. Injured in battle, he was taken prisoner by the prince of Achem and assassinated by a renegade on November 27, 1638. A descendant of his family, Denis-François-Guillaume Berthelot (1732-1818), was chaplain of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce chapel, where seamen from Honfleur went to pray. (Charles Bréard, Le vieux Honfleur et ses marins: biographies et récits maritimes, Rouen, Imprimerie Cagniard, 1897, pp. 42-48.)


7 "Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy 1754" (Log of Jean Marin Le Roy), deposited at the admiralty registry in Honfleur on November 5, 1754. Archives départementales du Calvados, Archives municipales de Honfleur, Série 2 ii, Amirauté de Honfleur, VIII, Journaux de navigation, 365, Voyages à Terre-Neuve et à Saint-Domingue, 1754.


8 Commissaire aux classes: person responsible for the classification of military personnel.


9 France, Archives nationales, Marine, D 2, 51. Cited in C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 2, p. 538.


10 Archives départementales du Calvados, Archives municipales de Honfleur, Série 2 ii, Amirauté de Honfleur, VIII. Journaux de navigation, 363, Voyages à Terre-Neuve, 1752: Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy 1752. Journaux de navigation, 364, Terre-Neuve, 1753: Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy 1753.


11 First known trip: left Honfleur on May 14, reached the Bank in June and returned on November 25, 1752. In 1753: reached the Bank on May 9 and returned on August 22, 1753.


12 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 2, pp. 75-76.


13 J.-P. Bardet, P. Chaunu, J.-M. Gouesse, P. Gouhier, A. and J.-M. Vallez, "Laborieux par nécessité: l'économie normande du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle", in Michel de Bouard, Histoire de la Normandie (Toulouse: Privat, 1970), p. 297.


14 The man who salted the cod on the ships employed in the fishery on the Bank or the area around Newfoundland. He earned more than the other fishermen because the quality of the cargo depended on his skills. According to Willaumez, the salter was often also the cooper and storekeeper. (Vice-admiral Jean-Baptiste Willaumez, Dictionnaire de marine, 1820-1831, reprint, Douarnenez, Le Chasse-Marée/Armen, 1998, p. 513.)


15 A ring consisting of a band of iron or a piece of rope with the two ends spliced together. It is inserted into the groove around a pulley or a deadeye, or is used to rig a yard. Also, a rope that holds the oars on the tholes.


16 The odds are that Captain Fafard also received food and beverages of better quality from the captains who lent him their surgeons. How else can one explain the fact that the health of the crew improved?


17 An old unit of distance (approximately 4 km). Nautical league: one-twentieth of a degree of a large circle of the earth, equal to 3 miles or 5,555.5 metres.


18 Boats of various sizes similar to shallops and canoes, and pointed at both ends. The largest had two masts. The front one was quite slanted and the middle one straight. The sail on the large mast was more than double the size of the one on the foremast. (J.-B. Willaumez, Dictionnaire de marine, p. 79.)


19 Short pieces of rope attached to sails. They are tied when reefing sails and untied when unreefing.


20 Cap Lévy (commune of Fermanville, département of la Manche) is a triangular peninsula surrounded by reefs that is easy to distinguish because it stands out clearly from the coastline between Cherbourg and Pointe de Barfleur. Its hilly surface extends as far as Anse de la Mondrée. (Henri Elhaï, La Normandie occidentale entre la Seine et le golfe normand-breton : étude morphologique, Bordeaux, Imprimerie Bière, 1963, pp. 410-416.)


21 Reefs in the Channel Islands, an Anglo-Norman archipelago that includes the islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Herm, Sark, Brechnou, Jethou and Lihou, as well as a group of reefs: the Roches Douvres, Minquiers, Ecrehous, Dirouilles, Paternosters and Casquets.


22 Battered by westerly winds, the island of Yeu, near the coast of Vendée, northwest of Sables-d'Olonne, is 9.8 km long and 3.7 km wide. Its Breton character, with its crystalline schist terrain, is what first catches the eye. The coast that is turned towards the open sea is reminiscent of Belle-Île. The south and east coasts are more like the Vendée area, with their pines, dunes, evergreen oaks and long fine-sand beaches. The climate is moderate because the island receives the warm currents from the Bay of Biscay. On the south coast, Vieux-Château, a medieval fortress in ruins whose ghostly silhouette overhangs the sea, used to be a pirate stronghold. What is now Port-Joinville was called Port-Breton before 1818, a name also given to a harbour on Grand Bay, on the coast of Labrador, in the sixteenth century (Carrol Cove).


23 Tack: manoeuvre that maintains the lower end of a sail on the windward side. On a starboard tack, the ship receives the wind on the starboard side.


24 The Pertuis breton is a strait that separates Ré Island from the coast of the Marais poitevin.


25 Le Roy did not make the usual distinction between Thursday, January 31 and Friday, February 1.


26 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches... (Paris: Saillant & Nyon, et Veuve Desaint, 1772), vol. 2, section 1, part 2, chap. 5, pp. 53, 61.


27 It was Sunday, February 3. Le Roy does not mention going to mass, but he writes about what they did at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., so they must have taken the time to go to mass and perhaps eat in La Rochelle, as they did on other Sundays.


28 At this point, we return to the text of Le Roy's log.


29 A Christian feast commemorating the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary. Candlemas is always celebrated on February 2.


30 Clinch: To fasten with a half hitch to bend the hawser to a ring.


31 This may refer to the small anchor or the anchor ring (an iron ring at the end of the anchor shank to which the cable is fastened).


32 Portlast: The boom that receives the foresail tack. It holds or supports the sail's luff. The mainsail tack is also a portlast. A synonym of bumpkin: a short boom projecting from each bow of a ship to extend the lower edge of the foresail to windward. Also applied to similar booms for extending the mainsail and the mizzen. (Oxford English Dictionary, compact edition, Oxford University Press, 1971.)


33 A cove opposite the salt marshes at Loix, between Pointe du Grouin and Saint-Martin-de-Ré.


34 The roadstead of La Flotte, east of Saint-Martin, opposite the village of La Flotte, on Ré Island.


35 It is not clear what Le Roy meant here. Was he referring to Jacques Philippe Nopvice or to an apprentice (novice, in French), a young sailor who was with the carpenter? Since Le Roy does not mention the carpenter's name, I presume novice refers to Jacques Philippe's rank. In the bank fishery, the apprentices and boys helped the fishermen or worked 'tween-decks and in the hold preparing the salt cod; they helped the salter.


36 Le Roy wrote "Rade de Loye" (the roadstead of Loye).


37 Beat: sail in a zigzag course to take advantage of a head wind, turning one side of the vessel then the other to the wind. Beat close-hauled: as close to the wind as possible.


38 The fort on Pointe du Chapus stands out about 400 metres from the coast. It is also called Fort Louvois because it was built by order of François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, who was Secretary then Minister of War. Built in 1692 for coastal defence, according to Vauban's plans, it protected Le Château-d'Oléron. It is horseshoe-shaped to control a 180° area. Its low battery, for shots that grazed the water, is combined with a tower-keep that dominated ships with high sides and served as a lighthouse. (Charente-Maritime : Aunis, Guide Gallimard, Paris, Éditions Nouveaux-Loisirs, 1994, p. 257.)


39 South of Pointe du Chapus, the mouth of the Seudre and La Tremblade peninsula delimit a small landlocked sea, half of which is enclosed by Pointe de Gatseau and Pointe d'Arvert.


40 Le Roy has the details a bit mixed up: "Nous y sommes restés le restant du jour et de la nuit; la marée était trop tardive pour mettre à la voile à la marée de l'après-midi en raison du vent contraire." (We spent the rest of the day and the night there; the tide rose too late for us to sail with the afternoon tide because of a head wind.)


41 The Seudre estuary provides remarkable shelter close to the salt marshes of Marennes.


42 The anchors were cast in such a way that their cables crossed to provide better protection against the wind and the current.


43 A village located in the salt marshes near Rochefort.


44 E. and J. Vigé, Brouage, vol. 2, Capitale du sel et patrie de Champlain (Saint-Jean-d'Angély: Vigé, 1990), pp. 69-72, translation.


45 The admiralty of Saintonge had a registry in Marennes, just like in La Rochelle and La Flotte. The captain had to go there to get his clearance stamped, make his declarations and pay fees.


46 Tonneau: unit of measure. 1 tonneau = 1,000 kg.


47 The crew no doubt went to Saint-Pierre-de-Sales Church in Marennes. The English-style church can be seen from afar, with its high square 15th-century tower, supported by corner buttresses and topped by a spire ornamented with crockets that reaches a height of 85 m. It served as a landmark for navigation. (Poitou, Vendée, Charentes, Michelin guide, Paris, Michelin, 1998, p. 127.)


48 Muid: unit of measure. 1 muid = 1,200 litres.


49 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1, p. 138, translation.


50 Ibid., p. 124.


51 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1, p. 124.


52 Oléron, the largest island off France's Atlantic coast (30 km long and 6 km wide), is a natural extension of Saintonge. The Pertuis d'Antioche (a passage) and the Pertuis de Maumusson, which has dangerous currents, separate the island from the coast of Charente. Low on the horizon, with many windmills, Oléron has a limestone terrain and long series of sand dunes that are forested to the north and west. There were many salt marshes near Ors, St-Pierre or La Brée. They have since been converted to oyster beds. Before retiring to Fontevraud Abbey, where she died in 1204, Eleanor of Aquitaine set about bringing some order to her island. The dangerous coast attracted looters of shipwrecks. She also had a series of rules drafted related to the seas, ships, masters, seamen and merchants. This maritime code, known as the Rôles d'Oléron, served as a basis for everything that was promulgated on the subject after that.


53 Le Roy did not record anything in the log on these two days. Since the ship had run aground off the island of Oléron, he must have had more pressing matters to attend to. What he wrote on the days that followed, in particular March 6, provides some clarification.


54 Once again, Le Roy remains silent. The repairs were carried out slowly as the tides allowed. On the days that followed, the pilot wrote little about the mundane work.


55 Le Roy wrote "sur La Rade de loye" (on the roadstead of Loix).


56 Barrique: a barrel of about 200 litres. Ships employed in the Grand Bank fishery carried enough water for the whole expedition. They also carried enough wood for the stove in the storeroom because they could not pick up new supplies during the expedition.


57 Pierre Bouguer, Nouveau traité de navigation contenant la théorie et la pratique du pilotage (Paris: Chez Hippolyte-Louis Guerin & Louis-François Delatour, 1753), pp. 234, 245.


58 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1, pp. 145-146, translation.


59 Hierro (Ferro) Island is the most southwesterly island in the Canaries. According to The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ferro, then the most westerly place known to ancient European geographers, was chosen c. A.D. 150 by the classical geographer Ptolemy for the prime meridian of longitude, and until the 18th century some navigators continued to reckon from this line." (Micropædia, vol. 4, p. 748.) In 1634, a scientific commission appointed by Louis XIII and consisting of a group of mathematicians set the prime meridian (meridian 0) there. This decision was adopted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by most European nations. During the French Revolution, France adopted the meridian of Paris. In 1911, it switched to the Greenwich meridian. (Le Petit Robert 2, 1974, p. 646. M. Mourre, Dictionnaire d'histoire universelle, vol. 1, p. 952.)


60 Le Roy uses the abbreviation "te" to designate both the minutes of a degree and the fractions of a nautical league. I have replaced this abbreviation with the symbol for the minute that corresponds to one-sixtieth of a degree angle ( ´ ).


61 Lie to: to shorten sail so as to bring the ship almost to a stop.


62 Halyard: a rope or tackle used to raise or lower a sail, flag, etc.


63 Tack: rope used to secure the lower fore corner of the sail. Haul: to pull a rope.


64 Foresail: the bottom sail on the foremast. Foremast: the mast nearest the bow.


65 Sheet: rope used to secure the lower after corner of the sail.


66 Topsail: square sail on a topmast. Top: rounded platform at the top of a lower mast. Topmast: the second section of a mast, above the lower mast. Main topsail: on the mainmast.


67 Antoine de Conflans mentioned their biscuit bread in 1513, in his Traité concernant le navigaige. (Charles Bréard, Vieilles rues et vieilles maisons de Honfleur du 15e siècle à nos jours, Honfleur, Société normande d'Ethnographie et d'Art populaire, 1900, pp. 39-41.) Honfleur could easily obtain wheat from Caux or the plains in Caen.


68 François and Colette Boullet, Ex-voto marins (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1996), p. 44.


69 France, Archives nationales, Marine, D2, 54, cited in C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1, p. 147, translation.


70 Lie to: to shorten sail, keeping only the mainsail on the mainmast.


71 Pierre Bouguer, Nouveau traité de navigation, p. 142.


72 A plateau about 270 miles long and 200 wide, located between 48° and 54° west longitude (from the prime meridian).


73 For example, the surgeons who visited the ailing captain and crew of the Maréchal de Saxe in 1752 and 1753.


74 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 50.


75 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 61.


76 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 57.


77 Ibid., pp. 64-66.


78 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, pp. 50-51.


79 "In Normandy, green cod was sold by the hundred, but since the fish were always handled in twos - either loose or tied together with a string around the tail - the hundred consisted of 66 handfuls, or 132 cod. That was called a grand cent or grand compte (large hundred or large count). The petit compte (small count), which was 60 handfuls, consisted of only 120 cod and was the one commonly used in Paris trade. In general, in Honfleur a hundred of cod (132 cod) was sold for 95 livres cash or 100 livres with a three-month term, for example. For that price, the buyer got a hundred of cod of the highest quality, of cod of lesser quality at two for one, or of cod of the lowest quality at four for one." (C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1, p. 193, translation.)


80 Assuming that a cod of the highest quality weighed about 5 pounds once it was salted, the Saint-André returned to France with about 35 tons of fish.


81 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 50.


82 Ibid., p. 48.


83 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 50.


84 Ibid., p. 64.


85 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 63.


86 Ibid.


87 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 68.


88 Sound: the air bladder of a fish.


89 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 66.


90 The cod sometimes had one or two pounds of roe, or eggs, depending on its size. The roe was salted separately in barrels. It was excellent bait for the sardine fishery. Basque fishermen sold it to the Spanish from the coast of Biscay at a price of 60 to 120 livres for a barrel weighing about 5 quintals. (Ibid., p. 70.)


91 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 56.


92 Ibid., p. 68.


93 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité général des pesches, vol. 2, p. 68.


94 Ibid., p. 88.


95 Box bed: a bed enclosed in a cupboard.


96 Nicolas Denys, Histoire naturelle des peuples de l'Amérique septentrionale, vol. 2, Paris, 1672, pp. 83-84, translation.


97 Ibid.


98 Nicolas Denys, Histoire naturelle des peuples, vol. 2, p. 84.


99 Topsail sheet: a rope that is used to control the angle at which the sail is set and to secure the lower after corner of the sail.


100 Crews whose ships were outfitted in Granville, Cherbourg, Honfleur and Fécamp often found that they could get a better price for their cod in Dieppe than in their home port, according to C. de la Morandière (Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 2, p. 530).


101 A cape at the southwest end of the Cornwall peninsula, in England.


102 A small British archipelago in the English Channel, about 40 km from the southwest tip of England (Land's End), consisting of about 100 small uninhabited islands and 5 inhabited ones: Tresco, St. Martin's, St. Mary's, Bryher et St. Agnes. (Le Petit Robert 2, 1993, p. 1640.)


103 Le Roy views the Channel as Breton, just as the English view it as theirs by calling it the English Channel.


104 The Étang de Gattemare, a lagoon near Gatteville and Pointe de Barfleur. (Henri Elhaï, La Normandie occidentale entre la Seine et le golfe normand-breton : étude morphologique, Bordeaux, Imprimerie Bière, 1963, pp. 420-421.)


105 Pointe de la Percée, on the coast of Calvados, is in the commune of Louvières, between Englesqueville and Vierville, northwest of Port-en-Bessin. (Henri Elhaï, La Normandie occidentale entre la Seine et le golfe normand-breton, pp. 488-489.)


106 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 2, p. 538.


107 Ibid.


108 C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 2, p. 538, note 64, translation.


109 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing Limit, brochure published by Environment Canada, Fisheries and Marine Service, 1976.


110 Ibid.


111 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing Limit, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Marine Service, 1976.


112 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing Zone, brochure published by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 1981.



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