turn moves at the shifting instance of currents, temperature and
water salinity. And in the wake of plankton, caplin and cod follow
the fishermen, led by all these complicated forces and facing the
menace of fog, field ice and norther.

John Cabot, when he returned from his first voyage in 1497,
made report: "They affirm that the sea is covered with fish which
are caught not merely with nets but with baskets," ¹ and another
observer tells of "cods so thicke by the shoare that we heardlie
have been able to row a boate through them. . . ." ²

An English letter records:

The third day of August we ventured into a good Haven called
Saint John and there we found eleven saile of Normans and one
Brittaine and two Portugall Barkes and all a fishing--written in
haste, 1527. ³

The harbours and fishing places were well known at an early
date; Jacques Cartier, on his exploratory voyage in 1534, sailed
straight for Bonavista, as though, in the character of a fisherman,
he had been there before. From Bonavista, like fishermen before
and after him, he sailed north to the Isle of Birds, now Funk
Island, "to procure some of the birds, whose numbers are so great
as to be incredible, unless one had seen them.--Of these each of
our ships salted four or five casks." ⁴ The rapacity of the fishermen
brought about the extinction of the great auk.

Cartier proceeded north, passed through the Straits of Belle
Isle and sailed along the western coast of Newfoundland, stopping
at many places, named and apparently well known. At what is
now Shecatica Bay he wrote, "We saw a large ship from La
Rochelle that in the night had run past the harbour of Brest
where she intended to go and fish." ⁵

Englishmen had been the discoverers of the new land; English
companies up to 1505 sent out expeditions under the Cabots and
others, but they accomplished nothing. English ships are mentioned
in the records, but they appear to have traded more than they
fished. Portuguese companies were equally unsuccessful, but

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