A brief digression from the usual photograph posting thanks to some questions about fishing from schooners. As others have pointed out, sometimes it was fishing directly from the schooners themselves, but more often (and especially by the late 19th/early 20th century) it was using dories carried by the schooners. Usually, the fishing involved long hand lines with multiple baited hooks. (This is a pretty broad generalization; different techniques were used at different times and in different locations, and there were also differences between the various fisheries like cod or swordfish.)
The dories were transported by, and launched and recovered from, the schooners. The fish would be processed on board the schooners, and either iced or salted before being transported to buyers ashore. Working fishing schooners carried all sorts of dories and other gear on their decks. Many of the photographs of Bluenose show her in racing or public exhibition trim, but she was also a working schooner, as seen in the lead photograph, taken around 1940.
The Portuguese were still carrying on a schooner-based dory fishery in the 1960s. The last few ships attracted attention from documentary film-makers and a number of their films are on YouTube. They give some idea of the experience, equipment, and techniques:
Image: Marine Survey of Bluenose W.R. MacAskill, circa 1940 Nova Scotia Archives accession no. 1987-453 no. 245
This entry was posted by jbc on Sunday, April 23rd, 2017 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Tumblr.
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