“Thus, in a collection of from six hundred to a thousand vessels, cruising in one vast body, and spreading over many miles of water, is kept up a constant, though silent and imperceptible communication, by means of incessant watching with good spy-glasses.  This is so thorough that a vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel ‘alongside,’ technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading to the wind every available stitch of canvas to force each little bark as quickly as possible into close proximity to the coveted prize.”

To come upon the mackerel fleet suddenly, perhaps with the lifting of the fog’s gray curtain, or just as the faint dawn above the tossing horizon line to the east began to drive away the dark, was a sight to stir the blood of a lad born to the sea.  Sometimes nearly a thousand vessels would be huddled together in a space hardly more than a mile square.  At night, their red and green lights would swing rhythmically up and down as the little craft were tossed by the long rollers of old Atlantic, in whose black bosom the gay colors were reflected in subdued hues.  From this floating city, with a population of perhaps ten thousand souls, no sound arises except the occasional roar of a breaking swell, the creaking of cordage, and the “chug-chug” of the vessel’s bows as they drop into the trough of the sea.  All sails are furled, the bare poles showing black against the starlit sky, and, with one man on watch on the deck, each drifts idly before the breeze.  Below, in stuffy cabins and fetid forecastles, the men are sleeping the deep and dreamless sleep that hard work in the open air brings as one of its rewards.  All is as quiet as though a mystic spell were laid on all the fleet.  But when the sky to the eastward begins to turn gray, signs of life reappear.  Here and there in the fleet a sail will be seen climbing jerkily to the masthead, and hoarse voices sound across the waters.  It is only a minute or two after the first evidence of activity before the whole fleet is tensely active.  Blocks and cordage are creaking, captains and mates shouting.  Where there was a forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the first rays of the rising sun.  The schooners that have been drifting idly, are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other’s bows, slipping out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical miracles.  From a thousand galleys rise a thousand slender wreaths of smoke, and the odors of coffee and of the bean dear to New England fishermen, mingle with the saline zephyrs of the sea.  The fleet is awake.