The New England Cod Fishing Industry and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution

The American Revolution cannot be fully understood without coming to terms with the military mobilization of the commercial fishing industry. Throughout the eighteenth century enormous amounts of capital and manpower were invested in the production and distribution of dried, salted cod. Huge profits were reaped in transatlantic trade with Catholic regions in Europe.¹ On the eve of the Revolution cod was king in colonial New England. Between 1768 and 1772, fish contributed 35 percent of New England's total export revenue, making it the single most valuable export product for the entire region at this time.² Massachusetts maintained a prominent place in this economic sector.³ Between 1765 and 1775, 20 ports in this key colony harbored a fleet of 565-665 vessels of 19,550-29,090 tons.⁴ During this period, 4,405 Massachusetts fishermen hauled in 350,000 quintals of fish.⁵ This was a vibrant colonial extractive industry.

The commercial fishing industry mobilized for the Revolutionary War in significant ways. Fish merchants converted trade routes into military supply lines and transformed their most valuable capital assets, their fishing vessels, into warships. For their part, fishermen armed and manned the first American navy, served in the first coast guard units, manned privateers, and fought on land for wages, bounties, and prize shares. In this manner, the military mobilization of the commercial fishing industry helped secure American independence. Yet, to date there has not been a book-length effort to systematically investigate the relationship between the commercial fishing industry and the American Revolutionary War.

My dissertation explores deep internal tensions existing within the early modern British Empire. Alfred Thayer Mahan, the most prominent American naval theorist, was only partially correct when he asserted that the race to dominate the seas commercially and militarily was "a narrative of contests between nations."⁶ To be sure, European powers fought with each other for maritime supremacy all over the world during the early modern period, 1500-1800. Spain sent its armada to the shores of England in part to prevent Elizabethan pirates from plundering New World treasure fleets in the Atlantic. The naval arms race and maritime commercial rivalry between the Dutch Republic and England in the early seventeenth century contributed to tensions that resulted in the first of a series of global wars between these two powers.⁷

Yet, struggles over the sea also fostered internal divisions within empires. Over the course of time, from the first permanent settlement of a resident fishing station in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1631 to the shot heard around the world in April, 1775, colonial New Englanders built a maritime industrial complex that eventually challenged England's (and, after 1707, Great Britain's) commercial control over the Atlantic Ocean. Colonial entrepreneurs believed it was their right to conduct overseas trade. Maritime laborers felt they had the right to earn wages to provide for themselves and their families through maritime labor. And the British government routinely asserted its dominion over the seas. In short, at the heart of the American Revolution lies a complex sea story about colonial New Englander's maritime commercial expansion and the British state's attempt to control and command the colonists' relationship to the wider Atlantic Economy.

Excellent work has been done on the rise of what might be styled a maritime industrial complex in colonial New England.⁸ Particular attention has been given to the roles merchants played in the development of overseas trade routes and the construction of wharves, warehouses, and other forms of maritime commercial infrastructure.⁹ Important research has also been done on the rise of New England's shipping and merchant marine, the development of lumbering and shipbuilding industries, and the roles women played in the economic development of colonial ports in the region.¹⁰ In addition, whaling has been demonstrated to have played a role in New England's economic development.¹¹ In all these ways and more, the sea contributed directly to New England's commercial expansion between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Colonial maritime business...