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| 29 2 seeking local control in an emerging national context, 1854–1885 “Intrusion of Strangers” Throughout the fall of 1876, Gloucester fishing firms prepared their fleet for the departure to the winter herring fisheries along the coast of Newfoundland. The company of John Pew and Son prepared two well-equipped schooners for the voyage. Both the Ontario, mastered by Peter McAuley, and the New England, mastered by John Dago, outfitted their crews with purse-seine nets. They left Gloucester in late November and arrived in Fortune Bay, Newfoundland, a few weeks later. They proceeded to Long Harbor, where they joined a fleet of twenty-six American schooners and approximately one hundred local vessels and boats, all of which searched the waters for the next big school of herring, which could then be immediately frozen in the cold North Atlantic and transported to New England to be used as bait in the spring cod fishery. On Sunday, January 6, the fishermen saw “bubbles” rising to the surface of the water—an unmistakable sign to the crews that the fish had arrived. McAuley and Dago worked their seines together, and in a short time they caught an estimated 2,000 barrels of herring. Upon capturing the precious baitfish, a “violent mob” of nearly two hundred local Newfoundlanders presented themselves before McAuley, Dago, and the rest of the Yankee fleet working the inshore environment to demand that they release the herring. The Newfoundlanders boarded the 30 | c h a p t e r 2 Gloucester schooners and began to cut apart the purse-seine nets. One American captain threatened the locals with a revolver, but to no avail. The local fishermen far outnumbered the visiting fishermen from Gloucester, overpowered them, and cut their nets open to release the herring. The Newfoundlanders celebrated their day’s victory over a burning bonfire of destroyed American seine nets.1 This is but one example of a growing effort among local fishermen from around the northwestern Atlantic fishing world to claim and enforce control over their local bait fisheries and the exchange of baitfish between producer and consumer. The Ontario and the New England had full rights as established by the recently signed treaty of 1871 to utilize the baitfish grounds around Newfoundland , Prince Edward Island, and the Atlantic Canadian Provinces of Canada. Local fishermen in Fortune Bay, however, were not interested in adhering to the recent changes in international law and diplomacy. Instead they sought to enforce their own constructed codes of conduct that restricted extraction to local operations while allowing foreign fishermen to purchase bait caught by the local labor force. These informal codes, which emerged in the 1830s, retained important authoritative power, despite the growing influence of national politics and international treaty negotiations that began after the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and the Canadian Confederation in 1867. As has been demonstrated, the North Atlantic bait fishery was quietly developing into a major diplomatic issue between the United States and Great Britain. When Canada emerged as a semi-independent dominion in North America, the Anglo-American fishery dispute suddenly became a three-way power play between the competing nation-states. Furthermore, after 1870, the colonial governments of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland began to insist on more independent management of their own fisheries, resisting both British control and Canadian influence in efforts to seek independent arrangements with the United States government, or more informally with American fishing interests. Local legislation competed with national law and international treaty, all while fishermen continued to navigate both the environment of the North Atlantic and the language of the multiple jurisdictional authorities. Early in this debate, Great Britain pursued a general policy of appeasement and rapprochement with the United States, much to the disappointment of Canada. The emerging Conservative Party in Canada, under the direction of Sir John A. Macdonald and his Nova Scotia ally Dr. Charles Tupper, used this lax British attitude to impress upon fish merchants in Nova Scotia, and to a lesser extent in New Brunswick and l o c a l c o n t r o l i n a n a t i o n a l c o n t e x t | 31 Quebec, that the Dominion government should be entrusted with the protection of the fishery resources of Canada from American exploitation. As a result of Confederation, Canada’s new diplomatic role in the Treaty of Washington negotiations, and the National...

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