There was, too, in those early days of the fisheries, a certain patriarchal relation maintained between owner and crew that finds no parallel in modern times.  The first step upward of the fisherman was to the quarter-deck.  As captain, he had a larger responsibility, and received a somewhat larger share of the catch, than any of his crew.  Then, if thrifty, or if possessed of a shipyard at home, such as I have described, he soon became an owner.  In time, perhaps, he would add one or two schooners to his fleet, and then stay ashore as owner and outfitter, sending out his boats on shares.  Fishermen who had attained to this dignity, built those fine, old, great houses, which we see on the water-front in some parts of New England—­square, simple, shingled to the ground, a deck perched on the ridge-pole of the hipped roof, the frame built of oak shaped like a ship’s timbers, with axe and adze.  The lawns before the houses sloped down to the water where, in the days of the old prosperity, the owner’s schooner might be seen, resting lightly at anchor, or tied up to one of the long, frail wharves, discharging cargo—­wharves black and rotting now, and long unused to the sailor’s cheery cry.  There, too, would be the flakes for drying fish, the houses on the wharves for storing supplies, and the packed product, and the little store in which the outfitter kept the simple stock of necessaries from which all who shipped on his fleet were welcome to draw for themselves and their families, until their “ship came in.”  To such a fishing port would flock the men from farm and forest, as the season for mackerel drew nigh.  The first order at the store would include a pair of buck (red leather) or rubber boots, ten or fifteen pounds of tobacco, clay pipe, sou’-westers, a jack-knife, and oil-clothes.  If the sailor was single, the account would stop there, until his schooner came back to port.  If he had a family, a long list of groceries, pork and beans, molasses, coffee, flour, and coarse cloth, would be bought on credit, for the folks at home.  It came about naturally that these folks preferred to be near the store at which the family had credit, and so the sailors would, in time, buy little plots of land in the neighborhood, and build thereon their snug shingled cottages.  So sprung up the fishing villages of New England.

The boys who grew up in these villages were able to swim as soon as they could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and the season for taking them.  They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster’s blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful ditties of castaways on George’s Bank.  Often they were shipped as early as their tenth year,