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Lifelines: Canada's East Coast Fisheries

The Cod Rush
The European Fishermen, 1497-1763
 
Fishing in Distant Seas
The Cod Rush: The European Fishermen, 1497-1763

 

Europeans have been fishing on the high seas since the Middle Ages.

Over the centuries, inshore fishermen adapted their ways to be able to fish farther from shore. By 1400, they were fishing for cod in the North Sea and the Irish Sea, as well as off the coast of Iceland.

When Newfoundland was discovered, Europeans came to fish on the edge of the New World. Companies outfitted ships at ports along the Atlantic and the English Channel, and financed expeditions that lasted close to a year.


Fishing in the northern ocean - 
The Stewart Museum at the Fort, Île Sainte-Hélène

Fishing in the northern ocean in the late Middle Ages (detail)
Reproduction of a woodcut from Historia de Gentibus septentrionalibus by Olaus Magnus, published in Rome in 1555
(The Stewart Museum at the Fort, Île Sainte-Hélène, Montreal)


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