Fisheries: History of Fisheries in Maine

Maine’s first fishermen were Native Americans, who caught salmon and trout. Mounds of shells, called middens, tell us that they also ate clams. When John Cabot crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1497, he found so many large cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland that he could scoop them up in baskets. When word of this bounty reached Europe in the early 1500s, Basque, Portuguese, Spanish, and French fleets numbering in the hundreds began annual voyages; indeed, some may have preceded Cabot. By the 1540s, the British had passed laws that encouraged English participation in the Grand Banks fishery. This 1698 map of America by Nicholas de Fer shows a cod fishing station.

Cod fishing station 1698

By the 1600s, Europeans were learning about the significant fish stocks in the Gulf of Maine and along Maine’s coast. Well before the Pilgrims settled the Plymouth Colony in 1620, expeditions like those of Bartholomew Gosnold, Martin Pring, George Waymouth, George Popham, and especially John Smith in 1614  reported plentiful fish stocks along the coast of Maine. The coast became a popular summer fishing ground, with 26 ships visiting in the six years before the Pilgrims arrived. Gosnold named Cape Cod in 1602, and Smith put it on the map in 1614. This was a factor in the Pilgrims’ decision about a settlement area.

The first permanent settlements in Maine were fishing stations established in the 1620s at Monhegan Island. Other fishing settlements developed on Damariscove Island, Cape Newagen on Southport Island, and Matinicus Island; and at Richmond Harbor, just south of Portland.  Though Maine’s maritime population grew slowly in the colonial era, the fisheries remained an important part of the regions’ overall economy. Cod fed the slaves in the West Indies and were sent to cities in colonial America.

Fish Flakes, Friendship

Fish Catch Schooner Pioneer

After the American Revolution, British markets such as the British West Indies were closed to Americans. The federal government stimulated the fisheries by providing a bounty, based on the size of the fisherman’s vessel and on the vessel’s annual catch. The bounty helped encourage the New England fishing industry until its repeal in 1866. The log of the schooner Pioneer, Captain J.W. Blunt, was used to support a bounty claim in 1861. After the War of 1812, fisheries grew dramatically in both Maine and Massachusetts, which in the mid-nineteenth century vied for the position of top fishing state in the country.  After repeal of the bounty, Maine’s share of the cod and mackerel fisheries dropped dramatically from 45% in 1860 to half that in 1870 and 10% by 1900.