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c h a p t e r 3 Workspace In the early part of the season the vessels trawling on the Western Bank bait with frozen herring . . . and later in the year use herring and mackerel. . . . Vessels going to the Grand Bank in April usually carry a few barrels of salted clams, but rely chiefly upon herring . . . in spring and capelin in June and the early part of July, and squid, which are used for the remainder of the season. —G. Brown Goode and J. W. Collins, “The Bank Trawl-Line Cod Fishery” (1887) Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. That, which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837) Attitudes toward Cape Cod’s wastelands would change dramatically in the first half of the nineteenth century. Initially viewed as a backwater, with ignorant and isolated people unable to grow their own food and forced to send their men off to distant fishing grounds for most of the year, after 1820 Cape Cod began to be seen in a different light. Two important trends caused people to recast their views. First, through local creativity and knowledge of the local marine ecosystem,Cape Cod fishermen reoriented their banks fisheries from export production to a far more profitable business serving growing domestic markets. In doing so, they appeared to secure the lives and the futures of Cape Cod’s previously precarious communities. Secondly, as Cape Cod fishermen turned their coastal wasteland into an economically thriving region,they attracted the attention of painters and writers seeking to moralize c h c h c h c h c h c h c h c h a p a p a p a p a p a p a p a p t e t e t e t e t e t e t e t e r r r r r r r r 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Workspace 55 on a new nation nurtured by an ever-abundant nature. For those watching fishermen find wealth in a previously barren space, the expansion of Cape Cod’s fisheries provided an ideal pastoral image of how society, nature, and work fit neatly together. Both these forces—the development of Cape Cod’s fisheries and their celebration in art and literature—transformed Cape Cod’s shores after 1820 from wastelands into productive workspaces where an American narrative of national development through abundant natural resourcesplayedoutmostdramatically .Ifturn-of-the-centurytravelersspurned Cape Cod, their midcentury successors idealized the region as an iconic American workspace where natural (marine) bounty, human ingenuity, and commerce overcame the limits of an erstwhile wasteland. At the foundation of Cape Codders’ ability to turn their wastelands into prosperous and celebrated workspaces lay their fishermen’s skills, natural knowledge, and ingenuity. Fishermen’s knowledge of the marine environment and of the behavior of the fish they sought allowed them to modify fishing processes and gear to meet the demand for fish then growing along the American seaboard. Other factors played equally important roles: the spread of rail lines and the use of ice preservation allowed a fisherman’s catch to arrive at market in a salable condition, while growing urban centers increased demand for all forms of fresh, cheap fish.1 To attribute the improved efficiency of the fisheries solely to improved technology, however, would be to separate the inanimate implements of fishing from the people who designed , refined, and used them.2 Behind every technological improvement stood people whose knowledge of fishing’s work, workspaces, and environments allowed them to make the modifications that improved catches and generated more profit.This was clear on Cape Cod,where changes in fishing gear—from hooks to vessels and most importantly to bait—brought a prosperity to towns such as never before experienced. If local natural knowledge allowed Cape towns to better manage their inshore fisheries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that same knowledge allowed them in the nineteenth century to better exploit the offshore fisheries. As had earlier colonial wars, the American Revolution crippled American fisheries. Peace in 1783 allowed Cape Cod ports to rebound quickly. According to Massachusetts merchant, politician, and shipmaster Stephen Higginson in 1790, “Those, who live beyond Cape Cod, and...

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