PHOTOS: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA188224; GRAHAM CHANDLER; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA202293; GRAHAM CHANDLER

Clockwise from top: Ships at anchor off Newfoundland, 1857; archeologist Peter Pope examines the remains of 18th century galets, used for drying cod; cod is dried and collected at Cape Rouge, Nfld., in the mid-1800s; archeologists uncover what was probably an 18th century bread oven.

Near the eastern tip of Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula, a tiny seaside town called Conche–nestled in Martinique Bay–takes you back to a time when cod fishing ruled this island. A 20-minute walk along a new boardwalk from town to what the locals call Long Point takes you back to a place where it all started.

On this day in 2007, a blustery cold wind blows off the icebergs in the bay, and it ruffles Peter Pope’s hair and beard. Dressed in a faded green sweatshirt and wind pants caked with soil fresh from his excavation unit, the affable archeology professor from Memorial University of Newfoundland is showing me what’s left of 17th- and 18th-century French migratory fisheries.

He and his crew are excavating the remains of a three-by-three-metre stone structure; he’s sure they are of a large oven. “If it’s not an oven, it’s something pretty odd,” he says, trowel in hand. “The French Shore Historical Society has seen these everywhere; there’s a memory of them here for generations.” One of his students digging here, Genèvieve Gudot, is studying the ovens for her master’s thesis. When Pope came here in 2003 to supplement his extensive studies on the English Shore migratory cod fishery around Ferryland and the Avalon Peninsula closer to St. John’s, he was shown similar ovens on both sides of the bay.

The transatlantic migratory salt-cod fishery was once part of a huge trade between Newfoundland and Europe that was worth more than the better-known Canadian fur trade. Beginning around 1500, English, Portuguese, Breton, Norman and Basque (from France) fishers sailed from various ports between northern Portugal and Normandy, the West Country of England and southeast Ireland. Exploiting different coasts of Newfoundland, they came each year to harvest cod from the rich inshore grounds, salt and air-dry them, and sell them into lucrative European markets.

An English ship called the Gabriel was one of the first on record. She came home to Bristol in 1502 with 36 tons of what was probably North American cod. But the English were relative latecomers, minor participants until about 1565 at what would later become the English Shore on the Avalon Peninsula. Before that, as evidenced in Norman archives and common-use ceramics found at Renews and St. John’s, the Avalon was fished by the Portuguese.

Up here along the coast of the Northern Peninsula, which the French called Petit Nord, Pope says Breton crews were fishing at Crouse, just to the north of us, in 1541 with crews from the French Basque country and Normandy. “They dominated this productive fishery through the 17th and 18th centuries,” he says. “Our survey around Conche, Crouse and Croque turned up a number of Breton style earthenwares from the period.” He says they matched those in use at the Breton provisioning ports.

We stroll along a flat ridge near the shore, picturing the daily activities of centuries past. The life of the fishers was a tough one. They climbed onto their small boats at dawn, “rowed hard for perhaps an hour or two,” says Pope, to the best spots. Each then baited a pair of iron hooks on two or three weighted lines and lowered them to the bottom. Hauling them up continuously until the boat was full, on a good day they could head back in late afternoon with over a thousand fish per boat. Then another arduous two-hour row–this time muscling a much heavier boat. At the dock the work wasn’t over yet: the cod had to be unloaded.

To land their catches, boat crews used a fishing stage. In French it was called a chaufaud or échafaud. This was a rough wooden wharf with an enclosure against the weather at its seaward end. “The archeological signature of these structures is at best a concentration of ballast boulders in the tidal zone,” says Pope, “what Newfoundlanders call the landwash.”

Once the haul was on the stage, shore crews took over. First, there was the ‘header’ who gutted and decapitated each fish. He pushed the fish across to the ‘splitter’ who opened it and removed the spine. Early observers said a good splitter could do a fish every four seconds. Younger, untrained boys then moved the split fish in wheelbarrows and piled them for salting and air-drying. Salting required expert judgment. Too much salt would burn the fish and not enough would give it a reddish colour that would make the fish much less marketable.

Once the cod was split, washed and salted, shore crews needed a place to spread it for drying in Newfoundland’s famous cool breezes. We stroll further along the beach and stand on a rough, but flat bed of lichen-coated stones almost hidden by growth. “Here’s what the Bretons called galets,” explains Pope. “They’d lay out the fish here to dry.” He says Breton, Basque and Portuguese crews used these cobble beaches which were usually natural, but sometimes needed to be stripped of vegetation first. Air circulation was enhanced by placing the fish on a layer of fir boughs on top of the stones.

English fishers on the 16th- to 18th-century English Shore preferred to dry their fish on ‘flakes’–rough wooden platforms covered with boughs. “The French used flakes later, too,” says Pope. Whatever the preferred method, drying space was the major requirement of a productive fishing ‘room’–the term used for the processing area. Other space needs included wooden vats and strainers of fir boughs to reduce cod livers into ‘train oil’–a then-common industrial lubricant. Pope says archeologists have found a good example near the St. John’s waterfront that suggests the vats were located near the fishing stages where the fish were eviscerated. Here on the Petit Nord the most visible traces of the migratory fishery are the galets and the carefully constructed walkways and ramps which connect work areas.

We walk along the remains of some of these ramps, past an odd-shaped pile of stones. “Perhaps a collapsed chimney?” muses Pope. Another crude ramp leads about 50 metres up a gradual slope with a commanding view of the lagoon to an eight-metre-high cross. Made of oak which is not indigenous to the island, it sits on a metre-square mortar-and-stone base and looks over the fishing rooms out to sea. He’s not yet sure of the meaning of these landmarks, called calvaires. “There are three possible functions,” he surmises. “Religious, navigation aid, or to divide fishing rooms–sort of a fence.” He says he may excavate at its base. “We already found a faience dish here, of a type that wasn’t used much after 1800,” he explains.

We pause by the cross for the commanding view while Pope explains some of the site layout. Standing in the wind, he explains that fishing rooms weren’t just for production. Crews lived close to their work. They not only caught, gutted and dried fish, but ate them and lived with them. “The workers would even sleep on the stages with the cod,” he says. “Probably under a tent made of sail.” His survey last year identified rock foundations of cookrooms where crews were fed, and the occasional faint traces of smaller cabins, which he figures housed higher-status workers. Near the cookrooms, the suspected bread ovens he’s excavating today are larger than the traditional household ovens well known in Quebec, but about the size of the communal bread ovens that are still seen abandoned in parts of rural France.

Large ovens would be needed to feed these crews. “A full operation here would employ 100 to 150 people,” adds Pope, “supported by 20 fishing boats and two larger ships anchored in the harbour.” Throughout the 16th and much of the 17th centuries, substantial crew sizes on ships had another advantage. Cargo carried to the best dry-cod markets–Iberia or the Mediterranean–was a common target of pirates plaguing the waters inside the Straits of Gibraltar, and so extra men could help defend the ship. Demand for labour was thus strong and recruiters had few problems. Lads from Basque, Breton or West Country ports were happy to take on a job offering nutritious food, a new set of clothes, an apprenticeship and good pay. Most English crews up to 1700 were paid in shares; typically one-third of the catch.

Catches could be considerable. In 1615, English ships in this industry numbered more than 250 and employed at least 5,000 men, producing about 300,000 quintals of dry fish, with a quintal representing 112 pounds. Annual live catches by the British were then averaging 75,000 tonnes. The French were as productive. Pope figures if the French prosecuted the Petit Nord fishery in the mid-to-late 17th century with 4,000 to 5,000 migratory fishers it suggests shipments of up to 200,000 quintals.

All of this processing demanded considerable space–which was at a premium. Despite Newfoundland’s size, there wasn’t wide choice of fishing rooms. Much of the coast is steep and rocky, and where it’s flatter (as on the west coast), fishing is not the best. The combination of features that make a workable fishing room is rare: a safe place to moor or careen a ship, protected water for landing boats, proximity to reliable fishing grounds, accessible bait species, wood for stages and flakes, open areas for drying and fresh water.

Did this lead to inevitable conflicts? Despite his explanation of the Breton fisherman’s body they found in a shallow grave right where we stand, evidence of clashes is rare, says Pope. “We found him on his back 10 to 20 centimetres deep–right here on the beach,” he says. “Had a five-centimetre round hole in his forehead. A large spike lay across his face and several animal long bones lay under and about his cranium.” There was no sign of clothing, he says, but artifacts in associated strata suggest the burial dated before 1700.

Violence was headed off and managed largely through the adoption of what was called the ‘admiral’ system. By 1600, it was widely accepted that the ‘admiral’ or fishing master first arriving at a particular station had first choice of shore space, as well as the right and responsibility to allocate space and settle disputes amongst the later arrivals.

The admiral custom soon became written regulation. The English governor of Cupids colony in 1611 seems to have been first. John Guy’s Certaine Orders For the Fishermen took the status and rights of fishing admirals for granted, but tried to discipline their activities. Because the dominant complaint was hogging space, the document specified that “Every Admiral of each harbour for time being reserve only so much beach and flake or both as is needful for number of boats.” It was explicitly entrenched by the Western Charter granted to the ports of England’s West Country by King Charles I in 1634.

By this time the Bretons had adopted much the same system. Regulations published by the parliament of Brittany in 1640 explained how the admiral system was to work on the Petit Nord. A French royal ordinance of 1681 made the rules more clear: “When our subjects go to fish for cod on the coasts of the island of Newfoundland, the first to arrive or to send a shallop (a small inshore fishing boat) to the harbour called Petit Maistre will have the choice and will take the extent of drying space which he needs and will post a signed notice at the place called the stage of Croque, giving the day of his arrival and the name of the harbour which he has chosen.”

A clear pattern emerged with the admiral system: proximity to Newfoundland permitted access to the choice areas. British ports arranged in order of their sailing distance from Newfoundland tended to be paired with Newfoundland harbours arranged in order from the south, where most European ships reached first. The official sailing date each year for the British was initially April 1, but in order to be first and become the admiral, by the 1670s this had advanced to March 1 for the five-week voyage. Those faced with more miles to sail ended up with the further spots, and the latest found themselves exploiting the most distant.

So eventually West Country fishers dominated the eastern Avalon fisheries. The Bretons, with a few days extra sailing to cross the Atlantic, would concentrate on the Petit Nord, to the north and west. The Basques eventually had to settle for the island’s west coast.

Year after year of returning to much the same spots, knowing them and developing a fish processing infrastructure at them, soon led to agreements to allow four- and five-year sojourns. These had the added benefit of employing over-wintering caretakers to dissuade the local aboriginals who had been dismantling and burning the structures and seasonal boats for iron nails, etc. while the fishers were home in Europe. Pope says they fashioned the iron into useful tools such as projectile points and awls; as have been found in recent archeological excavations in Notre Dame Bay.

The more permanent stations gradually led to settlement of regions by ethnicity–for example, the English Shore and the Petit Nord. But in both cases, says Pope, the tactic turned out to be bad strategy because caretakers became settlers, and Newfoundland settlers inevitably wanted fishing rooms themselves. Personal property rights interfered. Some of the earlier English “planters” as they became known, were well settled into a permanent population of 1,500 by 1660. They grew into a society dominated by a merchant gentry providing services to the migratory fishers and undertaking pursuits like lumbering, boat building, fur trapping and hunting during the off-season. Here in the Petit Nord, the five-year system lasted until its abandonment in 1904, when French fishing rights were exchanged for some colonial islands off Africa.

The traditional inshore fishery survived for a few more decades; but since decimation by the massive outshore overfishing of the 1970s and 1980s, cod no longer rules this island. Here in the biting wind, the attractions of Conche are now the history of how it once did.