This money went to small boats fishing inshore ledges and banks as far north as Labrador. A common boat at the time was the “Chebacco” boat, named for the Chebacco parish of Ipswich, Ma., where many were built. Ipswich became the town of Essex in 1819, where the Story yard built Gloucester fishing schooners right up until the end of the days of sail. It is also where Harold Burnham still builds schooners and Chebacco boats the traditional way, on the beach. That is outdoors on the beach, the same beach where his ancestors built similar boats in 1650. The schooner-rigged Chebacco boat was eventually built from Cape Ann to the Maritimes. It had a full bow, the low rails swept up at the sharp stern where they met behind the rudder post. This formed both a convenient rack for the boom and a seat of ease for the crew. It came to be known as a “pink stern” or “pinky boat.” They were not fast, but very seaworthy. There was a fish hold, but no deck house. The cod bounty benefited most fishermen in small boats like the Chebacco boat. The bounty’s support of independent small fishermen was an argument legitimately made in the bounty’s defense, particularly by those opposed to industrial consolidation. After the war with Britain in 1812, the U.S. gave up access to Canadian shore fisheries, but retained the sea fisheries. This led to the need for stronger, larger vessels for offshore work on the banks. The Chebacco boat evolved into a square stern schooner of forty to 60 feet, with raised quarter deck. Before 1840, the crew of four or five slept below the quarterdeck and the fo’cstle was used for storage. This boat was called a “heel tapper,” possibly because of the raised quarter deck and low waist had some resemblance to a shoe. Unlike contemporary politics and government policy, which favor big industrial fishing, the original cod bounty supported and encouraged the small, independent fisherman, particularly in Maine. The Maine fishery developed in the 1830’s and 40’s and the bounty was important to many with small boats and limited capital. In 1792, Massachusetts and Maine, still a part of Massachusetts at the time, had more fishermen than the rest of the country. The largest percentage of the money paid out in bounties went to Maine fishermen. Between 1820 and 1857, Maine collected 40% of the bounty money the U.S. paid out, most to Penobscot Bay and further east. The bounty was important to the small fishermen of Maine. A Yankee liked “fishing on his own hook”, was a pre-revolutionary phrase that described more than the system in which each member of the crew supplied his own gear, food and bedding. The relatively small amount of capital to start fishing and the share system of paying crews appealed to men without the resources for mercantile ventures. They were also unwilling to submit to the wage system, discipline and long voyages on merchant vessels. The cod bounty was contentiously debated whenever it came up for renewal in Congress. There were changes made in 1819 and again in 1839, by which time proponents were on the defensive. Opponents accused fishermen of going out less to catch fish than “to catch the bounty”. Needless to say, there was a considerable body of bounty law generated over the years, further raising the cost of spending tax dollars. Early on, it was fairly untouchable with the concentration of power, politics and money in the northeast.
While there were the recently-emerged Adam Smith “free market” congressmen on one hand, and the “ever present around the till” lobbyists on the other, the core of the struggle over the cod bounty was based on the same regionalism that helped spark the Civil War. The south never supported the bounty, since they did not fish cod and were not (yet) paid to grow or not grow cotton. Western expansion into Missouri and Kansas, etc., resulted in cattle-raising states, which opposed the expenditure on the cod bounty. New England had a maritime economy in what was becoming a non-maritime country. In 1792, 31% of the Senate and 25% of the House were New Englanders. That representation had dropped to 19% and 12%, respectively, by 1858, when a major bounty-repeal effort was made. At that time, Maine’s Senator and Lincoln’s first-term vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, revived the bounty defense that the fishery was the “nursery for the navy.” The War of 1812 with England had led to the confiscation and sinking of fishing boats, as well as the impressments of American sailors. That war left the fishing fleet damaged, and the bounty helped revive it. Fishermen who learned to sail fishing boats were tapped in wartime to sail warships. The War of 1812 was a case in point where this had been true. But by the Civil War, Hamlin’s argument had a bit of an empty ring. The navy was, by then, iron steamships, where shoveling coal and operating gun turrets were the necessary crewmen skills. The wooden warship and sail handling were obsolete in the new navy, but not for the sake of argument in congress. Hamlin’s argument does hold the clue to what had happened in the fishery over the decades since 1792, and the bounty’s role within it — evolution. The fishery, like practically everything else, evolved as a result of its changed context. When larger, more expensive boats went further offshore, the capital invested changed the dynamics at the top. There were more owner/investors who didn’t want the “share system” which did not allow wages. Also, five-eighths of the bounty went to the crew and three-eighths to the owner. The vessel could only fish for cod and it had to be salted. This was at a time when the developing fresh fish market paid better. Captain and three fourths of the crew had to be Americans. In addition, the vessel had to be inspected before and after each voyage and an official log had to be kept at sea. The mounting paperwork and red tape became more of a problem in the face of markets and ownership shifting away from the model the bounty was originally based on. Maine fishermen convinced their congressmen to vote against repeal as late as 1861. But, the large fishing capitalists at Boston, Gloucester and Portland opposed the bounty and, after the Civil War, even without southerners in the reconstruction congress to oppose it, the bounty was still repealed, in 1866.
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