Note 626 — Chapter X · —Man's Relation To The Water

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