an excerpt from The Fisheries of Gloucester from the First Catch by the English in 1623, to the Centennial Year, 1876, page 58. Instances are on record of many wearisome trip, of days and nights without food and water, spent in weary labor at the oars, at last to find succor from some chance vessel or by reaching a distant port an imagination revolts from the contemplation of the hardship experienced, the hopes awakened and dispelled, and the torturing fate of many ‘lost in the fog,’ of whose trying experience nothing is ever known. The stealthy fog enwraps him in its folds, blinds his vision, cuts off all marks to guide his course, and leaves him afloat in a measureless void. And a greater foe than carelessness lies in wait for its prey. Yet a moment of carelessness or inattention, or a slight miscalculation, may cost him his life. His frail boat rides like a shell upon the surface of the sea, but in experienced hands no description of small craft is safer. Tossed on the waves in his frail dory, at greater or less distance from his vessel, he is subject to perils unknown to the fisherman of the olden times.
This article also recounts the story of the legendary Gloucester fisherman Harry Blackburn. an excerpt from Fishing in Volatile Grand Banks was Risky Business by Pam Peterson on Wicked Local: Marblehead. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Then the crew would use their own fog horns to try to guide the dories back.
Dory men would use the fog horns and noisemakers to alert the crew that had remained aboard their fishing sloop of their location. If a fog rolled in while they were fishing, it was sometimes so thick and all consuming that it made any hope of finding the way back to the “mothership” impossible. They carried with them food, water, fog horns and noisemakers. Dory fishermen were at risk every day as they set off in their small boats. The distance from shore makes them isolated, and the relative shallowness of the ocean makes them susceptible to thick blinding fog that rolls in quickly…In the 18th and early 19 century, fishing was done from the schooners by handlining.
Weather conditions on the Grand Banks are treacherous always. Once fishing schooners reached the Banks, it took several weeks, with the best of luck, to catch enough fish to fill the hold. From Marblehead the trip took seven days, sailing night and day. Getting to the Grand Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland, wasn’t quick or easy. Click on the painting for a high quality image that can be magnified. See their website for detailed information. Winslow Homer’s The Fog Warning is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Teach close reading skills, foreshadowing, and historical fiction writing with Winslow Homer’s The Fog Warning
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