remarkable winning streak started to change.
The British and the Americans went to war again in 1812. Fishermen from Gloucester, Marblehead, and other New England ports, manning swift ships-of-war on a design borrowed from their schooners, did a masterful job, as Adams had predicted thirty years earlier, in âthe preservation of our independence.â
It fell upon John Adamsâs son, John Quincy Adams, to negotiate the peace in Ghent. Like the rest of his family, he was a firm advocate of New England fishing interests. Once again the issue divided the United States in a North-South split.
For New Englanders, the Paris treaty ratified in 1783 had been a huge victory. But southerners wanted to rewrite that treaty because, in order to get the British to yield on the Grand Banks, they had been given navigation rights on the Mississippi River. New Englanders insisted that their fishing rights had been signed and were not negotiable. But a Virginian, James Madison, was president, and he sided with his native South. The Ghent treaty that ended the War of 1812 denied British rights to the Mississippi but left the issue of the Banks open to further negotiation.
The Convention of 1818 reasserted some American fishing rights in the Banks, but the New England fishermen never regained what John Adams had won for them in 1782 and the issue would be a source of tension between the United States and Canada for the next 200 years.
Â
North American cod fisheries were hurt, probably far more than either Adams would have wanted to admit, by the abolition of slavery in 1834 in the British West Indies, 1848 in the French Antilles, and 1849 in. the Dutch Antilles.
After centuries of bloody slave rebellions, Europe found in the homegrown sugar beet a safer alternative to sugar colonies. Caribbeans continued to eat salt cod and to fashion drums from the barrels. In fact, now that cod no longer comes in barrels, the barrels are still made for musicians. But once the huge plantation economies ended, these little islands became very small markets.
After two centuries of dumping on the Caribbean slave market, there was little quality control in North American salt cod. This was how Thoreau found the Provincetown fishery in 1851:
The cod in this fish-house, just out of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, pitching them on to the barrows with an instrument which has a single iron point. One young man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish repeatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when that older man sees you he will speak to you. But presently I saw the older man do the same thing.
The Mediterranean markets had constant complaints about the quality of Newfoundland cured cod. In 1895, a shipment of Labrador and Newfoundland salt cod was sent to Bilbao; the Basques, saying, âIt was not liked here,â shipped it on to southern Spain. In the late twentieth century, right up to the 1992 moratorium, the Canadian government was still trying to convince Newfoundland fishermen not to spear the cod in the way Thoreau had described, because it damaged the fish.
RIPPING, CUTTING, AND SPLITTING
The throat of the fish should be cut as near the gills as possible. The skin between the napes (known as liver strings) should be cut on both sides to prevent tearing when opening fish for gutting. They should be ripped close by the vent on left side, all guts and liver carefully removed, and heads cut off instead of breaking off.
A BADLY SPLIT COD FISH
Â
The wrong way to split a cod, from Notes on Processing Pickled and Smoked Fish by A. W. Fralick, senior field inspector, Maritimes Region, Canada. (Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia)
From the Middle Ages to the present, the most demanding cod market has always been the Mediterranean. These countries experienced a huge population growth in the nineteenth century: Spainâs population almost doubled, and
The British and the Americans went to war again in 1812. Fishermen from Gloucester, Marblehead, and other New England ports, manning swift ships-of-war on a design borrowed from their schooners, did a masterful job, as Adams had predicted thirty years earlier, in âthe preservation of our independence.â
It fell upon John Adamsâs son, John Quincy Adams, to negotiate the peace in Ghent. Like the rest of his family, he was a firm advocate of New England fishing interests. Once again the issue divided the United States in a North-South split.
For New Englanders, the Paris treaty ratified in 1783 had been a huge victory. But southerners wanted to rewrite that treaty because, in order to get the British to yield on the Grand Banks, they had been given navigation rights on the Mississippi River. New Englanders insisted that their fishing rights had been signed and were not negotiable. But a Virginian, James Madison, was president, and he sided with his native South. The Ghent treaty that ended the War of 1812 denied British rights to the Mississippi but left the issue of the Banks open to further negotiation.
The Convention of 1818 reasserted some American fishing rights in the Banks, but the New England fishermen never regained what John Adams had won for them in 1782 and the issue would be a source of tension between the United States and Canada for the next 200 years.
Â
North American cod fisheries were hurt, probably far more than either Adams would have wanted to admit, by the abolition of slavery in 1834 in the British West Indies, 1848 in the French Antilles, and 1849 in. the Dutch Antilles.
After centuries of bloody slave rebellions, Europe found in the homegrown sugar beet a safer alternative to sugar colonies. Caribbeans continued to eat salt cod and to fashion drums from the barrels. In fact, now that cod no longer comes in barrels, the barrels are still made for musicians. But once the huge plantation economies ended, these little islands became very small markets.
After two centuries of dumping on the Caribbean slave market, there was little quality control in North American salt cod. This was how Thoreau found the Provincetown fishery in 1851:
The cod in this fish-house, just out of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, pitching them on to the barrows with an instrument which has a single iron point. One young man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish repeatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when that older man sees you he will speak to you. But presently I saw the older man do the same thing.
The Mediterranean markets had constant complaints about the quality of Newfoundland cured cod. In 1895, a shipment of Labrador and Newfoundland salt cod was sent to Bilbao; the Basques, saying, âIt was not liked here,â shipped it on to southern Spain. In the late twentieth century, right up to the 1992 moratorium, the Canadian government was still trying to convince Newfoundland fishermen not to spear the cod in the way Thoreau had described, because it damaged the fish.
RIPPING, CUTTING, AND SPLITTING
The throat of the fish should be cut as near the gills as possible. The skin between the napes (known as liver strings) should be cut on both sides to prevent tearing when opening fish for gutting. They should be ripped close by the vent on left side, all guts and liver carefully removed, and heads cut off instead of breaking off.
A BADLY SPLIT COD FISH
Â
The wrong way to split a cod, from Notes on Processing Pickled and Smoked Fish by A. W. Fralick, senior field inspector, Maritimes Region, Canada. (Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia)
From the Middle Ages to the present, the most demanding cod market has always been the Mediterranean. These countries experienced a huge population growth in the nineteenth century: Spainâs population almost doubled, and
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