Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [20]
The British were landing what for that time was enormous quantities of fish. Western ports continued to grow. Plymouth on the Cornish peninsula, stretching west toward the new lands, became increasingly important. There were fifty Newfoundland fishing ships based in Plymouth alone, about which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote in 1595, “If these should be lost it would be the greatest blow ever given to England.”
In 1597, this fifty-ship fleet returned from the Grand Banks, sailing up the south Cornish coast to Plymouth. It was a sight unknown in our age—some 200 canvas sails crowding the sky as the fleet made its way into the sheltered harbor against the green patchwork hills of Devon. These two-masted ships on which dozens of men lived and worked for months were only 100 feet long. Merchants would have preferred bigger ships with bigger holds, but sailors wanted to navigate the treacherous new rock-bound world with small vessels. Merchants from Holland, France, and Ireland packed into the small port town, waiting for the Plymouth fleet so they could buy their fish and ship it out again to Europe’s markets.
The British continued to miss out on this commercial opportunity. In 1598, a Newfoundland fleet sailed into Southampton and sold most of the cod to French merchants, who resold them to Spain. By then, Catholic religious wars with the Huguenots, the Protestants in La Rochelle, reduced the French fleet. With Portuguese, Spanish, and French fleets all in decline, the British began to understand the commercial potential of their Newfoundland fishery. By the end of the sixteenth century, British ships were finally allowed to take their Newfoundland cod directly to foreign ports. The newly freed British traders forced open commerce in cod, and other trade followed.
But this opening of trade would seem minor in hindsight, because early in the seventeenth century, when it was just beginning, an even more important change in world trade was seeded. A small group of religious dissidents who had fled England were staring at a map in their Dutch refuge and had noticed a small hook of land that was labeled with an intriguing name—Cape Cod.
THE SHAME OF IT
STOCKFISH
Beat it soundly with a Mallet for half an hour or more and lay it three days a soaking, then Boyle it on a simmering Fire about an hour, with as much water as will cover it till it be soft, then take it up, and put in butter, eggs, and Mustard champed together, otherwise take 6 potato (which may be had all the year at Seed-Shops;) boyl them very tender, and then skin them. Chop them, and beat up the Butter thick with them, and put it on the fish and serve them up. Some use Parsnips.
The like for Haberdine and Poor-Jack, I should be ashamed of this Receipt if we had no better to follow, and think it too mean to mention any thing about Green Fish or barreld Cod, but the watering and soaking before they are boyled.
—John Collins,
Salt and Fishery, London, 1682
Also see pages 237-41.
4: 1620: The Rock and the Cod
FISHIEST OF ALL FISHY PLACES WAS THE TRY POTS,
WHICH WELL DESERVES ITS NAME; FOR THE POTS THERE.
WERE ALWAYS BOILING CHOWDERS. CHOWDER FOR
BREAKFAST, AND CHOWDER FOR DINNER, AND CHOWDER
FOR SUPPER, TILL YOU BEGIN TO LOOK FOR FISH-BONES
COMING THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES. THE AREA BEFORE
THE HOUSE WAS PAVED WITH CLAMSHELLS. MRS. HUS-
SEY WORE A POLISHED NECKLACE OF CODFISH VERTEBRA;
AND HOSEA HUSSEY HAD HIS ACCOUNT BOOKS BOUND IN
SUPERIOR OLD SHARK-SKIN. THERE WAS A FISHY FLAVOR
TO THE MILK, TOO, WHICH I COULD NOT ACCOUNT FOR,
TILL ONE MORNING HAPPENING TO TAKE A STROLL
ALONG THE BEACH AMONG SOME FISHERMEN’S BOATS, I
SAW HOSEA’S BRINDLED COW FEEDING ON FISH REM-
NANTS, AND