New England Fishermen (1938)

[Music] for ages men have gone down to and ships Hardy men who Brave the PS of small boats and tossing waves to fish with to fish with sweeping net to bring back from the sea important part of our food supply while this Monument stands watch over Gloucester Harbor the descendants of centuries of Fisher folk there still carry on the Glorious traditions of men who live by fishing here's your coffee John looks like a fair day to get out to see seems as if you just got home and in half an hour you'll be a board Schooner again I'd better be and off to the banks about all we got last trip was fog I know and you can't sell fog at the pier and Gloucester prices are way down too why don't you give up fishing what else can I do there a lot of Farms West of a Newberry Port Turnpike some of them are for sale cheap yes and why it's cuz there's no money in farming either no the Sea's been good enough for us dailies for six Generations yes the sea that swallows up our Gloucester fishermen year after year now you just keep cheerful we'll hope for a big catch this trip in a better market and so year after year here daily and other Gloucester fishermen return again to the Sea once aboard the Schooner no time is lost the day is fair sails areed with a heave hole to catch a favoring Breeze every bit of canvas possible is crowded on as the Schooner makes out to see to ensure quick passage Schooner sail is supplemented nowaday Days by auxiliary diesel engine power under Full Sail and motor power the Schooner heads toward the fishing Banks as nearby as George's off Cape Cod or as far as the grand Banks off Newland routine sailing tasks occupy the time of the crew or preliminary fishing chores such as putting in shape dozens of tubs of fishing line each with hundreds of hooks arrived at the banks the crew char small fish into bait for thousands of waiting hooks hooks are quickly baited and the lines of troll cleverly wound into tubs without delay dories each with its crew of two are loaded with lions and boys and lowed over the side of the Schooner each crew Rose skillfully away some distance from the ship perfectly at home in their tiny craft now they select a spot and toss out a buy to Mark The End under the line and an anchor to keep it from drifting a throwout stick keeps fingers clear of hooks one after another the dories go over the side until the entire crew is at work if the fishing is good the long troll lines almost at once begin yielding returns of cod hadock and sometimes halbot and other food fish as soon as a catch is secured the dorymen make the trip back to the Schooner without delay they toss the fish up on Deck where skilled hands clean and Ice them or salt them down then off again to their lines day after day until the hold is full nowadays on the fishing Banks we find the steam tler a more modern type of fishing boat and an even later development the diesel powered crawler whose decks we shall visit for a Time crawlers fish with large Nets and reflect the Modern Trend toward machine operation winches to control the Nets to lower or haul in powerful engines to drag the Nets along the sea floor below decks the engineers carry out the captain's every order for control of fishing operations now at a signal up comes one of the two great doors which are fastened to the ends of the net to keep it open and near the bottom when dragging doors and net are hauled up by electrically driven winches wooden rollers attached to the bottom of the net keep it clear from a rocky uneven ocean floor the main part of the net is thrown back over as soon as the crew have looped a rope round the open end of the bag where the fish have collected they haul this bag aboard then they loosen a rip cord at its bottom and the catch Cascades down on deck part of the crew quickly tie the bag again and lower the net while the rest go to work cleaning the catch here is a hadock one of the more valuable food fish and here a Cod best known fish of the North Atlantic Banks now the winches have let out 250 fathoms of cable and the tler drags the net again along the bottom 4 knots an hour while the cables strain mightily meanwhile in his almost sacred Galley the ship's cook prepares solid fair for the hardworking crew a watch of five crew members clean thousands of pounds of fish in an hour clean them and then Fork them down into the hold of the tler to be iced each kind is sorted here and iced in separate bins to save sorting at the market later here is a bin of large Pollock as the fish are clean the oil man sorts out the valuable livers cod liver oil meal time comes first to the men about to go on duty those coming off work eat next and then have 6 hours to rest or to sleep in their quarters in the folkal before their next watch begins day and night this routine goes on 6 hours on duty 6 hours off the Nets come up every hour and a half day and night in fog or sunshine or in velvet Darkness the hold must be filled before the first fish caught begin to spoil fish market reports are the routine of the toler's radio operator a good Mar pass in a our trolman after one night at home will return to the Sea to carry on the traditions of who live