The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky Page B

fresh oysters and selling them pickled abroad, but he noted that the poorest people in Manhattan lived all year on “nothing but oysters and bread.” In 1763, a restaurant opened in a dark and unfavored location, the basement of a building on Broad Street, the old oyster-selling street. This working-class basement oyster bar was New York’s first oyster cellar.
    On November 22, 1753, an article in the
Independent Reflector
contended that no country had oysters of the quality of the city of New York. “They continue good eight Months of the Year and are, for two months longer, the daily food of our poor. Their beds are within view of the town, and I am informed, that Oysterman industriously employed, may clear Eight or Ten Shillings a Day.”
    But all was not well in Eden. In the late seventeenth century, New York and New Jersey started passing conservation measures. As early as 1679, the Long Island town of Brookhaven had passed an ordinance restricting to ten the number of vessels allowed in the Great South Bay, a huge natural oyster bed between Long Island and Fire Island. The European settlers in Brookhaven quickly realized the potential of Great South Bay oyster beds. In 1767, the town negotiated an arrangement recognized by the king of England in which the town, in exchange for control over the oyster beds, agreed to give the crown’s recognized owner William Smith and his heirs forever half of all “net income accruing to the town from the use of the bottom of the bay.”
    Oyster beds are very different from fishing grounds because the oyster permanently attaches itself to the bed. For that reason and because oystering was recognized as valuable, the new New Yorkers were fighting over ownership of underwater land—a notion that the Lenape would have found even more absurd than the concept of fighting over abundant dry land.
    In 1715, the colonial government, as a conservation measure, banned oystering in the months without
R
s, May 1 to September 1, because it was the egg-laying season. The measure also reduced harvesting by barring slaves and servants from taking or selling oysters. The law was aimed at New Jersey residents who shared with Staten Island Raritan Bay and Arthur Kill, both rich in natural oyster beds. Nonresidents caught working Staten Island beds had their vessels and equipment seized. In 1719, the colonial assembly of New Jersey retaliated with an act “for the preservation of oysters in the province of New Jersey.” The act closed all New Jersey beds from May 10 until September 1 and also stated “that no Person or persons not residing within this province” shall directly or indirectly “rake, gather up any Oysters or Shells within this Province, and put them on board any Canow, Periauger, Flat, Scow, boat or other vessel” and that any non-resident caught would have his vessel and equipment confiscated. By 1737, Staten Island officials were also becoming concerned about the survival of their beds and they barred oystering for anyone other than Staten Island residents.
    In colonial times, such laws depended on local citizens for enforcement. Oystermen caught working beds off season would claim they were harvesting clams, and the local enforcers lacked the expertise to argue the point. This ineffectual system of citizens’ arrests on the oyster beds continued into the nineteenth century.
    By the mideighteenth century, warnings were already being voiced of the possible destruction of oyster beds in the New York area. New Jersey passed a 1769 law to further contain avaricious neighbors. The practice of raking up oysters simply to burn for lime was banned. One of the reasons behind stricter enforcement was concern that oysters remain a cheap source of food and available means of income for the poor. The 1719 law argued that preserving the oyster beds “will tend to great benefit of the Poor people.” But a 1769 law stated that the 1719