Tools & Gear

Lobsterman getting traps ready in the spring. Traps have to be cleaned, dried, and repaired. This was especially hard work in the days of wooden traps, which rotted over time. Traps are being loaded onto a lobster boat that is just visible. A peapod is pulled out and set upside down on the nearby dock. Berry probaly took this photograph in New Harbor or Round Pond.

Each warp or line coming up from a pot or two on the bottom of the sea ends at a lobster pot buoy on the surface. Originally these buoys were cut with a hatchet from a small spruce trunk. Once laths became available, fishermen could turn buoys from larger pieces of wood. Small wood shops could make them in quantity for sale. Now buoys are hard foam.

Lobster measure, for measuring the carapace, or body shell, of the lobster. The shorter measure is 3 1/4", and that is the minimum allowable size of the carapace; the maximum is 5". If the lobster carapace is between these two lengths, and the lobster is not an egg-bearing female, it may be kept. Otherwise, the lobster must be thrown back. This measure has a float attached to it, so that it won't sink if dropped overboard.

Small wide rubber bands are used hold the large claws of the lobster closed, in order to keep lobsters from hurting each other when stored or shipped together. Before rubber bands, lobster fisherman whittled plugs that could be inserted into a lobster's claw to prevent them from opening.

This diagram shows important tools of the navigator for dead reckoning and piloting, including the lead line, chip log, a mechanical log, and a compass. For communications, speaking tubes are shown on the left. This illustration is from H. Paasch's Illustrated Marine Encyclopedia, 1890, Plate 98. For a 17th century navigator only the mechanical log would have been new.