Report of the commissioner for 1878 : part VI.

  • United States Fish Commission.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the commissioner for 1878 : part VI. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    140/1174 (page 38)
    it exercised for the fishing interests of the country, offered bounties to encourage men to engage in fishing for cod. A certain sum was allowed for each bushel of foreign salt used by vessels of more than fifty-five tons registered tonnage. Block Island was at that time entirely destitute of a harbor in which vessels could ride in a storm. We were compelled in stormy weather to haul our boats above high-water mark to save them from the fury of the waves. From this cause we could not use vessels large enough to claim the bounty offered; hence we were compelled to compete at great disadvantage with the fishermen of more favored localities. Second. When, in 1870, the breakwater at Block Island was begun, one of the principal reasons given by the government for so large an expenditure of money was that the work would greatly foster the fishing interests of the island. If our fishing grounds are permitted to be spoiled by the use of trawl-lines, then has the breakwater become of no avail to benefit the fisheries of Block Island. We, your petitioners, almost without exception, are owners of small tracts of land, from which we derive a small income, insufficient, it is true, for our support, but which, when added to the amount realized from cod-fishing, has hitherto given us a comfortable living. On these tracts of land we have built us houses. Here are our homes. Xow that our fishing threatens to fail us, we are very apprehensive that we may be compelled to leave our homes; for if this business shall be ruined, our island cannot support more than one-half of its present population. We are, almost to a man, too poor to own boats large enough to trawl successfully; but in our own boats we have been successful. We would point with pride to the fact that while from most of the ports of the coast many vessels and men are lost every year in the fishing business, not one Block Island boat has been lost within the memory of man. Therefore we do beseech your honorable commission to urge the pas- sage of a law prohibiting the catching of cod by trawl-lines in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean between Montauk Point on the west and Xo Man's Land on the east, and thus insure the return and continuance of the good fishing we formerly enjoyed, lest by the ruin of this fishery we shall be compelled to seek our subsistence in other pursuits and in other localities, away from the island endeared to us as the place of our birth and the home of our childhood. That you will thus secure to us, on our native island, the opportunity to obtain our subsistence by that honorable toil to which we have been accustomed from our youth, we will ever pray. William Dodge. Welcome Dodge. Aaron W. Dodge. Edward P. Littlefield. Charles A. Paine. George C. Sprague. Darius B. Dodge. Uriah P>. Dodge. John Thomas. James E. Pose. Herman A. Mitchell. Lorenzo B. Mott. Seabury A. Mitchell. C. 0. Holmes. P. AY. Thomas. Joshua T. Dodge. William J. Steadman. Joseph II. AVillis.