[Sidenote:  Fisheries as nurseries of seamen.]

Fisheries have always been the nurseries of seamen, and hence have been encouraged and protected by governments as providing an important element of national strength.  The Newfoundland Banks were the training school which supplied the merchant marine and later the Revolutionary navy of colonial New England;[626] ever since the establishment of the Republic, they have been forced into prominence in our international negotiations with the United Kingdom, with the object of securing special privileges, because the government has recognized them as a factor in the American navy.  The causal connection between fisheries and naval efficiency was recognized in England in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, by an act aiming to encourage fisheries by the remission of custom duties to native fishermen, by the imposition of a high tariff on the importation of foreign fish in foreign vessels, and finally by a legislative enforcement of fasts to increase the demand for fish, although any belief in the religious efficacy of fasts was frankly disclaimed.  Thus an artificial demand for fish was created, with the result that a report on the success of the Fishery Acts stated that a thousand additional men had been attracted to the fishing trade, and were consequently “ready to serve in Her Majesty’s ships."[627]

The fishing of the North Sea, especially on the Dogger Bank, is participated in by all the bordering countries, England, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium; and is valued equally on account of the food supply which it yields and as a school of seamen.[628] The Pomors or “coasters” of Arctic Russia, who dwell along the shores of the White Sea and live wholly by fisheries, have all their taxes remitted and receive free wood from the crown forests for the construction of their ships, on the condition that they serve on call in the imperial navy.[629] The history of Japan affords the most striking illustration of the power of fisheries alone to maintain maritime efficiency; for when by the seclusion act of 1624 all merchant vessels were destroyed, the marine restricted to small fishing and coasting vessels, and intercourse confined to Japan’s narrow island world, the fisheries nevertheless kept alive that intimacy with the sea and preserved the nautical efficiency that was destined to be a decisive factor in the development of awakened Japan.

[Sidenote:  Anthropo-geographic importance of navigation.]

The resources of the sea first tempted man to trust himself to its dangerous surface; but their rewards were slight in comparison with the wealth of experiences and influences to which he fell heir, after he learned to convert the barrier of the untrod waste into a highway for his sail-borne keel.  It is therefore true, as many anthropologists maintain, that after the discovery of fire the next most important step in the progress of the human race was the invention of the boat.