Gloucester, Essex, MA

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Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth

Subject: Gloucester, Massachusetts
Source: Harper's Monthly Magazine

p.468
The history of Gloucester centres in the fisheries. The yarns told at her firesides
are of hair-breadth escapes at sea; her legends and romances have a flavor of the salt
sea about them; her ragged red granite shore is marked with the scenes of memorable
shipwrecks and storms; her town records are the records of fleets that have gone down
on the Banks, of pinks and schooners that have foundered on the Georges, of heroes who
toiled for their families, and fought the grim battle of life with the fogs, the light-
ning, and the swooping billows of the sou'wester, and with the ice, the hail, and the 
short, savage cross seas and terrible blast of the raging nor'wester, while their
children have cried for their absent fathers, and their wives have lain awake through
long, dreary nights and straining their eyes to see, through the gloom of the storm, the
long-expected vessel and the beloved form that perhaps have already gone down far at sea.

Such is life on Cape Ann for those whose heritage is noble poverty, and whose lives are
lives of honest toil. Her fishermen may not reap such dividends as the farmers who till the
fat soil of the West, but they are not less enterprising nor less useful in plying thier
perilous craft, as they labor summer and winter on

"The fields that no man sows - The farm that pays no fee."

The total number of vessels lost from the single port of Gloucester for the 43 years ending
August, 1873, was 296, and the total number of lives lost during the same period amounted to
1,437 - an average of thirty-four lives and seven vessels annually. Twenty eight vessels were
lost during the nine months of the year 1873, with a loss of 172 lives, leaving nearly two
hundred widows and orphans. The loss of life and property has been over one-half on the
Georges, rightly called the grave-yard of Cape Ann.  It should be remembered also, in order
fully to realize the terrible nature of this fearful record, that for many years Gloucester
was but a small place. In 1840 it had only 6,350 inhabitants, and has but recently reached its
present population of 17,000, and its dignity as a city with a valuation of over $8,000,000.

The first fishing vessels were craft of six to ten tons, called pinks, pointed at both ends,
without bowsprits, and carrying two for-and-aft sails. Later the pointed prow was shaved off,
and a browsprit and jib were added, and the vessel, retaining its pink stern, was then termed
a jigger. The fishing vessels which now sail out of Gloucester with lines graceful as those of
a yacht, swift and buoyant and the best sea-boats in the world, are appropriately rigged as
schooners, for at Gloucester the name and the rig were first invented. In 1713 Captain Andrew
Robinson launched a vessel whose rig was what is now called a schooner, gaffs instead of the 
lateen yards until then in use, and the luff of the sail bent to hoops on the mast. As she
slipped down the ways a by-stander exclaimed, "Oh, how she schoons!" A schooner let her be!"
replied the builder, catching at the word intuitively.

p.469
The total number of vessels now registered in the district of Gloucester, which includes a
few owned at Manchester, Rockport and Essex, is 496, of which seven are steam-vessels, comprising
in all, 28,775 tons.  While the number of vessels is slightly decreasing, the tonnage is on the
increase which shows that the size of the vessels is growing larger, while the fishing business
is in a thriving condition.  Sixteen were added to the fleet last year. Of these vessels, 420 are
engaged exclusively in the fisheries. The total product for the year ending 1873 was $3,435,500.

The number of men directly employed in these vessels is about 6,000; many of them are from the
provinces and make excellent skippers and seamen, while Sweden, Norway and the Portuguese island
contribute a large number, who are generally capable, orderly and industrious.

They fare very well, as compared with the fishermen of other days, or with men before the mast
in the merchant service now. Fresh pies, biscuit, fowls, eggs and other similar deli-

p.470

cacies are not unfrequently seen in the fore-castle of a Gloucester banker.

The mackeral fishermen usually start out as early as the last of February for the Georges Banks,
the worst time of the year for winds, and as they anchor near together in ranks on those treacher-
ous shoals, where even in calm weather the tide rips swirl and boil in an extraordinary manner, if
one drags her anchors in a gale of wind, it is almost a dead certainty that, as she sweeps on to
destruction, she will fall foul of some of her companions and involve them in a common doom, which is
the reason why it is rare to hear of one vessel being lost alone on the Georges.

The mackeral fishermen bound to other waters, with the cod, halibut, and haddock fishermen, do not start
until later. The cod are caught chiefly on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where the watch-lights
twinkle in the midnight gloom in company with those of the French fishermen of Miquelon and St. Pierre.
Many mackeral are caught in the Bay of St. Lawrence, off Cape North, Sidney, and the Magdalen Islands,
where the daring fishermen often linger until late in the fall, and are often embayed by tremendous gales
among those inhospitable shores, without sea-room, on a lee shore, and no safe port to run to.

The haddock and halibut are oftener caught on Brown's Bank and within the waters of New England. It is a
curious sight to see a schooner come in from the Banks loaded down nearly to the scuppers and packed to
the beams with cod-fish. The wharf is lined with eager spectators as she glides up to her dock with
a leading wind. The foresale comes in, then the mainsail is lowered, and

p.471

handed by a crew weather-beaten and clumsily limnber in useful but not graceful Cape Cod sea-boots,
sou-westers, and oil-jackets, and with the inevitable clay pipe jutting out beyond the bushy, untrimmed
beard. Then the jib down-haul is manned, and a number of boys, eager for the day when they can go to the
Banks, catch the hawsers, and make fast to the pier fore and aft.  Amidst a hail-storm of questions asked
and answered on both sides, the crew range themselves on board and on shore, with one-tined pitchforks,
and proceed to unload with the rapidity and regularity of machinery. The men in the hold heave the fish
on deck, thence they are tossed on the wharf. Another turn of the pitchfork lands them under the knife,
their heads and tails come off, and they are split open almost in a second, and are then salted and laid
on the fish stages or trellises to dry, after which they are ready to serve up to good Christians either
for fish-balls on Sunday or for hash on Friday.

In connection with its fisheries Gloucester has the largest importing trade of any port in Massachusetts,
except Boston. An average of thirty square-rigged vessels laden with salt, etc., enter the place annually
from foreign ports.

The city also does a large business in the manufacture of oil-clothes, which are rather more necessary to
the seamen than a dress-coat and white cravat are considered at a wedding, and are quite de rigueur at any
parties given by Neptune, when the winds furnish the music for the dance of the schooners on the Banks. The
oil-clothes of Gloucester find a market in every port of America.

The topography of Cape Ann is peculiar. It will surprise some to learn that a large part of it is practically 
an island. A vessel can completely circumnavigate it. That looks as if it were insular. The fact is that
the seaward and largest half of the cape is divided from the other half by the Annisquam River, which is a 
broad winding inlet spreading laterally into winding creeks and salt marshes, and extending from Ipswich

Bay until within a few rods of Massachusetts Bay on the South, where a very narrow neck of land formerly
joined the cape to the mainland. This however, was divided many years ago by a canal called the Cut, which
it was expected would be of great advantage for small vessels, especially in time of war - a hope which has
never been fully realized.  The town of Gloucester extends entirely across the cape north and south, including 
Annisquam, Lanesville, the pretty little hamlet of Riverdale, and Magnolia, a charming summering
settlement on Kettle Cove.

On the eastern shore are the fishing and quarrying towns of Rockport and Pigeon Cove, which ought to be in-
cluded withing the corporation to which they naturally and doubtless will, ere many years, belong.

p.472
The city lies on a range of hills around the port, presenting an effective appearance, especially if
one happens to see it on a clam summer's day, as a background to a marine picture, when a fleet of two or
three hundred schooners is putting to sea, after a storm, spreading their white duck against the blue
sky and fanning gently hither and thither singly or in picturesque groups.

p.473

When a northeaster is blowing - which has given rise to the ridiculous story of a preacher on the cape who was 
holding forth on a certain Sabbath to a congregation of old salts on the necessity of securing to them-
selves a haven of refuge against the day of wrath. "Supposing," he said, "you should get caught out in the bay, 
the clouds growing blacker and blacker, the sea rising, and the wind threatening a gale, wouldnt you feel the 
need of some safe harbor, and how would you do in such a case?"  "Put your helm up and bear away
from Squam!" Out spoke an old fisherman from a remote corner of the meeting-house."  Squam is reached from
Gloucester by a ride in old fashioned stage coaches which connect with the railroad at Gloucester.  A 
continuation of Squam is Bay View, where General Butler has his summer residence and keeps his yacht, the 
famous "America", winner of the Queen's Cup. Adjoining this, and substantially part of it, is the charming
village of Lanesville, also lying by the shore of the vast ocean.  

                                             Quarrying Granite.

Two or three miles beyond is Pigeon Cove, which is a sort of feeler thrown out by Rockport, which little fishing 
port completes the cordon of quaint, half-ancient, half modern settlements of Cape Ann. Most of them have more or 
less to do with the quarrying of granite, and the busy, not unmusical ringing click-click of the
chisel and the mallet is an ordinary sound on the Cape.  This business has caused the construction of several 
of the smallest and snuggest ports in the world.  A breakwater of massive granite, some forty feet high is
built across a little cove, with an entrance only large enough to allow a vessel to slip through into a haven
perfectly secure from the wildest storms, but barely four or five acres in extent. Lanesville Harbor is probably 
the most curious place of this sort on this side of the Atlantic.

The general appearance of the Cape is rocky in the extreme, while there are no very lofty precipices on the coast, 
nor any very striking features anywhere visible, as on the coasts of other lands. The effect is wild, but can hardly 
be said to be cheering.  The fields are strewn with stones, as if it had rained rocks there in some unknown day of 
Divine retribution in past ages. The whole land is astonishingly wrinkled, like a limp handkerchief with hills, 
hillocks, hummocks and the angular shoulders of untamable ledges and boulders, with
occasional phenomena like Rafe's Crack and Trap Rock Chasm; while the woods are of a similar austere character, 
sombre pines and cedars evermore chanting a solemn and dirge-like music to the ocean winds, like an echo of the 
everlastin roar of the surge on the rocky shore. Here and there, like a caprice of nature, are
bits of idyllic beauty, a quiet little nook by a brook-side, or a pool reflecting the blue sky on its quiet bosom, 
unconscious of the raging ocean close at hand, like the pure soul of a child still

p.474

ignorant of the stormy world, and reflecting the innocense of heaven; then a delicious avenue of embowering
willows steals on the view, and fills one with delight wich is heightened by contrast with the wild scenes just beyond.

At present the Cape is overrun annually for three of four months by an army from the cities. The era of
boarding-houses, shanties, and shooting-boxes has fairly set in. The trim yacht is seen lying in the coves
alongside of some rusty old pink or granite drogher; the weather-worn and quaint grambrel-roofed farm houses
are turned for the nonce into villas. They are garnished with new porches, lace curtains and croquet grounds; 
and cottages presenting a cross between an Italian villa and a Chinese joss-house are perched on the hill-tops 
and planted among the buildings of the early settlers, not always with perfect success as regards effect.

There is hardly anything that will so test the sense of propriety and artistic taste as the location and
construction of a country-seat, whether simple or pretentious. So many fail, so few succeed, in the attempt,
it may be considered a crucial test of one's capacity in such matters.

The ideal country residence is yet to be designed; but one thing in its construction, and the last thing
usually thought of, should be fitness. A building that would look well by the Thames or in Venice is not suited 
to Cape Ann. 
End.
Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth