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Stephen Higginson Tells Fish Stories To Parliament In 1771 and Gets Arrested For It

In 1771, the British government desperately needed to know how American colonists felt about fishing policies. Stephen Higginson filled them in, and almost got jailed as a traitor because of it.

Stephen Higginson served in many capacities during the American Revolution and the formative years of the country – military leader, representative to Congress and political intriguer.

Higginson was born in Salem, Mass., in 1743 into a family of politicians and clergymen. Well-connected, his single act of rebellion against his place in society seems to be his decision to marry Susannah Cleveland, his second cousin from Connecticut. As their families opposed the marriage (probably because of their youth), the couple ran away to New Hampshire to marry in 1764.

After returning to Salem, Higginson took up his position as a merchant trader, same as his father. He set up a home near East India Square in Salem across from the Lafayette Coffee House. Armed with introductions from his well-connected father, he sailed to England in 1771.

Stephen Higginson in London

Stephen Higginson

In England, Higginson had his first critical brush with politics. Higginson, on his travels in England to introduce himself to his trading partners, found himself summoned before Parliament to answer to an investigation about New England’s fisheries.

Higginson’s testimony gave a picture of how large and vital cod fishing was to the New England economy.

Seven hundred fishing vessels, most between 40 and 70 tons, worked the waters off New England fishing for cod. It took more than 4,000 people to man those vessels, Higginson estimated. Another 2,000 worked on shore, curing and preparing the catch for sale. And another 350 vessels, employing another 3,000 people, transported the fish to market.

Between 1768 and 1772, fish accounted for 35 percent of all New England exports by value. But the interests of the English and their American colonies often diverged when it came to codfish.

Fishing schooners

American fish fed slaves in the West Indies and Catholics in Europe. This resulted in New England fishermen trading with the French, importing French sugar, rum and molasses, as well as trading directly with the French in Newfoundland. Britain implemented a series of tariffs to limit New England fishermen’s ability to trade with the French, preferring to keep such trade for Englishmen.

By 1771, the arguing over the New England fishery had gone on for 40 years, and Britain’s Navy actively seized American fishing vessels caught trading with the French. Edmund Burke, a member of Parliament who sympathized with the colonists and their position, summoned Higginson to testify.

Stephen Higginson Testifies

The British, as usual, were concerned that New England was trading too much with Spain and France, rather than England.

Higginson explained that Britain remained New England’s primary trading partner. He suggested that restricting New England trade would result in the region being unable to pay its debts to English companies.

In particular, the Parliament questioned what New England fishermen would do if the government closed the fishery entirely.

A partial transcript of his testimony:

Under Questioning

Q. What would these people do if the Fishery was stopped?

A. I can’t readily resolve that question. I suppose they would remain where they are as long as they could subsist in hopes of being engaged in their old employment.

Q. But when that hope failed and they could no longer subsist?

A. Then they will probably go elsewhere?

Q. Whether they would settle at Halifax?

A. In general I think not … the Fishermen in Salem and other Towns are a very quiet and steady set of men They esteem the people of Halifax to be dissolute and of a quite contrary turn. I think therefore they would not sit down among a people so different in their manners. Another reason is that they think the Government of Halifax is arbitrary and have a terrible notion of it. Another, those who have been there have disliked the country very much as being inhospitable.

Q. Would they go to Miguelon and St Pierre and fish for France?

A. Don t think they would generally. From Marblehead some perhaps would.

Q. Why would they from thence?

A. Because the people there are of various nations Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch, but the others are born in the towns where they live, have tenements and freeholds there and would not leave their place of abode, I conceive.

Return of the Traitor

News of Higginson’s appearance before Parliament spread, and upon his return to Marblehead, the colonial authorities arrested him on suspicion of traitorous conduct. Higginson had walked a fine line in Parliament, both continuing to state the American case for greater freedom in operating the fishery while defending the loyalty of the colonists.

Fortunately for his sake, Higginson had brought a detailed account of his testimony home with him. When he presented what he had said, the colonial authorities reversed themselves and praised him for his poise and presentation.

Into the History Books

During the American Revolution, Higginson ran his ships as privateers, and in 1783 Massachusetts elected him to the Continental Congress. Following the war, he participated in the military force that put down Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 and 1787.

Higginson’s most well-known legacy involves his opposition to John Hancock, during Hancock’s term as governor of Massachusetts. Higginson was a firm Federalist, along with John Adams and many others. The Federalists wanted a strong central government, and they were opposed by the Anti-Federalists who wanted the states to retain more power in the new country that they were forming.

John Hancock, meanwhile, had become something of a political chameleon. He managed to win support from enough Federalists and Anti-Federalists to serve as governor.

Stephen Higginson led probably the harshest attack on Hancock, though there were many. He published the “Laco Papers” in a newspaper, castigating Hancock for a weak military record during the Revolution. He called into question Hancock’s fitness to serve, as well as the alliances he had struck with his opponents, including Samuel Adams. In addition to printing the letters in a newspaper, under the pseudonym Laco, he also had them bound and distributed.

The Laco Papers had a remarkable effect, though not the one Higginson intended. Historians agree that the publication most likely generated sympathy for Hancock and helped extend his political reign.

Thanks to: Life and Times of Stephen Higginson, Member of the Continental Congress (1783)

Images: Stephen Higginson, Delegate to Continental Congress, New York Public Library, Max Rosenthal(Etcher)

Postcard of fishing vessels at the Portland Dock, Maine, c. 1908.

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When Mussolini Stiffed Gloucester, Mass., for $1 Million

In 1923, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini refused to pay a Gloucester seafood company for a shipment of salt cod.

Mussolini’s action nearly bankrupted the company, but it changed the way we eat. Today we owe at least partial thanks to the Italian Fascist for creating products that are now household names: Gorton’s, Birdseye and Sylvania.

Benito Mussolini

Gloucester

By the time Mussolini seized power in 1922 Gloucester, Mass., had long thrived as a major fishing port. The city’s fishermen primarily caught, cured and sold cod, a big, dumb fish easy to catch. For centuries, salt cod served as a staple that fed slaves and the working poor. Some historians consider salt cod the most important fish on the planet.

Cod

But by 1923, the public was losing its appetite for salt cod, preferring fresh fish. Gloucester’s largest fishing company, Gorton’s, was no doubt relieved and happy to get a $1-million-plus order for salt cod from the Italian government.

When the shipment of salt cod reached Italy, Mussolini ordered it seized and refused to pay Gorton’s. The company faced bankruptcy.

The next year, an eccentric inventor named Clarence Birdseye moved to Gloucester and rescued Gorton’s.

Drying salt cod in Gloucester

Slade Gorton

Slade Gorton, originally a Rhode Island mill worker, came to fishing by accident. He moved to Cape Ann to oversee the Annisquam Cotton Co., but a fire leveled the mill when Gorton was 51. Out of a job, he helped his wife run a boardinghouse by catching and curing fish for her boarders.

Gorton’s thrifty wife bought a fishing schooner and rented Rockport’s Motif No. 1 for a shop. “We are now in the fish business,” she said, according to lore.

Gorton’s sons joined the business and it prospered.

On March 31, 1906, Slade Gorton made a stunning announcement: It would merge with three other Gloucester fishing operators, creating the largest fishing company on the East Coast with 55 vessels and thousands of employees.

Clarence Birdseye

The year after Mussolini stiffed Gorton’s for the salt cod shipment, Clarence Birdseye moved to Gloucester so he could work on freezing fresh fish. He and a few others then opened the General Seafoods Company.

Birdseye had spent five years trapping furs in Labrador, where he noticed how the Eskimos preserved fish. They put them in barrels of brine, where the sub-zero temperatures quickly froze them. The fish tasted fresher and better than fish frozen at higher temperatures in freezers.

Birdseye mimicked the Eskimos’ method with a $7 investment in an electric fan, a cake of ice and a bucket of brine. With that apparatus he flash froze haddock.

After his move to Gloucester, he played around with ways to freeze and package seafood, vegetables, meat and fruit.

The nearly bankrupt Gorton’s turned to Birdseye for help developing a way to freeze fish. Over the next few years, they came up with a product that ended up in millions of U.S. households: frozen fish sticks in a family-size box with the Gorton logo on it – a fisherman in a yellow slicker.

Fish sticks

Today, Gorton’s of Gloucester is now a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Nippon Suisan Kaisha. It still packages and sells frozen seafood in supermarkets, but it also sells fish sticks to McDonald’s.

Will It Play in Springfield?

Meanwhile, Clarence Birdseye continued to tinker with freezing techniques.

In 1926, Marjorie Merriweather Post, the daughter of a food company founder, was yachting off Gloucester. She was served a goose that had been frozen six months earlier, and its flavor impressed her. Marjorie then asked some questions about the goose and learned that Clarence Birdseye had frozen it. So she told her father, and he bought Birdseye’s business in 1929 for $22 million.

Then called the Postum Co., it became General Foods. The company kept Birdseye on staff to research and develop freezing techniques and put his name on their frozen products. Birdseye invented a commercial freezer, freezer cases for grocery stores and wax packages for retail customers.

On March 6, 1930, Clarence Birdseye market tested 27 frozen foods in 18 Springfield, Mass., grocery stores. Consumers loved it.

Birdseye went on to invent quick-drying in 1946. He improved the incandescent light bulb and founded an electric company that became part of Sylvania. By the time of his death in 1956 he had received 250 patents.

General Foods became a multinational food processing corporation that is now part of Altria, formerly Philip Morris.

Image: Clarence Birdseye By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35811599; Fish sticks By BCastle75 – Photo in a supermarket, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20415400. This story was updated in 2024.

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Philip Ashton Escapes Vicious Pirates but Lands on a Deserted Island

Philip Ashton, a 19-year-old fisherman, escaped captivity by the ruthless pirate Edward Low on a remote Caribbean island. For 16 months he managed to survive, though his rescuers found him so weak they had to carry him across the sand.

Philip Ashton

Philip Ashton was born in Aug. 12, 1702 in the Massachusetts town of Marblehead, a fishing village north of Boston.

He had gone to sea as a child. In the summer of 1722, Philip Ashton set sail for the Grand Banks to fish for cod. He captained the schooner Milton with a half-dozen young fishermen from Marblehead. His childhood friend, Joseph Libbey, joined him on the fishing voyage and had saved him from drowning.

In June, the fishing schooner had anchored in Port Roseway, part of a fleet of 13 fishing vessels. Near sunset, a boat from a merchant vessel rowed toward the Milton and climbed aboard. Philip Ashton assumed they’d come over for a visit and some news, but then he realized something wasn’t right. Then, he wrote,

They drew their cutlasses and pistols from under their clothes, and cocked the one and brandished the other, and began to curse and swear at us and demanded a surrender of ourselves and our vessel.

Captivity

Edward Low

The pirates seized Philip Ashton and Joseph Libby and took them aboard the Rebecca, Edward Low’s pirate ship. Low had a reputation as a psychopath who mutilated, disemboweled and decapitated his prisoners. Mariners who plied the Atlantic were terrified of Low, said to have fried a French cook alive. He once cut off a captain’s lips with a cutlass, broiled them and forced the victim to eat them while still hot.

Pirates often conscripted their captives, and Low’s crew tried to threaten and cajole Philip Ashton into joining them. So they put him in chains, beat him and threatened him with death.

Joseph Libbey went along with the pirates. While Ashton lingered a castaway on a Caribbean island, Libby met his death by hanging in Rhode Island with 25 other pirates.

Roatan Island

In March of 1723, the Rebecca landed on Roatan Island, an uninhabited Caribbean island off the northern coast of Honduras. Native people and then a small group of British colonists had lived there, but by the time Philip Ashton arrived not a soul lived on the island. Five miles long and 48 miles across, dense jungle covered the island.

The pirates went ashore in a longboat to collect water. They took Philip Ashton ashore with them, probably thinking he wouldn’t escape to such a desolate island.

Once on land, though, he ran for his life and hid in the jungle until the pirates decided to leave without him.

Sapote fruit

Ashton had no shoes, nothing but his scanty clothing. He survived for 16 months in utter solitude, bedeviled by mosquitos, snakes, stifling heat and boredom. He had little to do but roam the island and gaze at the sea.

At first he kept himself alive by eating raw turtle eggs, wild figs and plums. He eventually ate sapote fruit, which he thought poisonous until he saw wild hogs eat them. He built a hut with palmetto leaves and branches.

Another Englishman

One day after about nine months, an Englishmen paddled to the island in a canoe. He had fled the Spaniards who live in Honduras and threatened to burn him to death.

The Englishman planned to live the rest of his days on Roatan with his dog and support himself by hunting. But then he went off to hunt, and Philip Ashton never saw him again. The Englishman, though, left behind 5 lbs. of pork, a knife, powder, tobacco, tongs and flint. Ashton could eat roasted turtle now, and crabs and coconut.

To escape the insects, he floated on a bamboo pole over to a small cay during the day, returning to his hut at night. His swimming, at first rudimentary, improved.

Rescue

In June 1724, after 16 months on the island, Philip Ashton saw two large canoes paddling toward the island. The men in the canoes hesitated, seeing the smoke from Ashton’s fire. Their caution convinced Philip Ashton they weren’t pirates, and he showed himself openly to them.

They sent one man ashore.

When the Man came up to me he stated back, Frighted to see such a Poor, Ragged, Lean, Wan, Forlorn, Wild, Miserable Object so near him: but upon recovering himself, he came and took me by the hand, and we fell to embracing one another, he with surprise and wonder, I with a sort of Extasy of Joy.

The man carried Philip Ashton, thin and weak, across the sand to one of the canoes.

They told him they were Baymen, English woodcutters who lived in in camps along Honduras Bay. Many considered them one step above pirates. They said they’d come to avoid a fight with Spaniards and Indians.

Roatan Island today

He lived with the Baymen until the Diamond came ashore for water in 1724. The brig came from Salem, Mass., just a few miles from Philip Ashton’s father’s house.

Two years, 10 months and 15 days after Edward Low captured him, Philip Ashton arrived home.

With thanks to At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton by Gregory Flemming.

Images: Roatan Island By Westbrowncanada – Roatan, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25239041. This story was updated in 2023.

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February 1879 : The Deadliest Month for the Gloucester Fishing Fleet

Fishing the Georges Bank has always been a dangerous job taken on by the Gloucester fishing fleet of Cape Ann, Mass., but nothing has ever been seen quite like the year 1879. That year, 249 fishermen disappeared at sea, 14 ships from the fleet disappeared in the single month of February 1879.

In those years death on the ocean was so common it was mostly in and around Gloucester where people took note of a fisherman dying at sea. But the loss of 14 vessels from the fleet made news around the country.

Gloucester Harbor, Winslow Homer

The Gloucester fishing fleet, legendary for the dangers it faced on Georges Bank, had suffered losses before. In 1862, 15 vessels and 120 men disappeared in a gale. Then in 1871, 19 vessels and 140 men perished. And 1879 topped them all with 14 vessels with 157 men gone in February gales.

The fishermen from Cape Ann throughout history had a reputation as a rugged, fearless bunch. Historians have pointed out that the Cape Ann soldiers who fought in the Revolution were thought to be among the bravest. Men who wrestled their living from the North Atlantic didn’t have much to fear from British soldiers.

Gloucester Fishing Fleet

The pursuit of cod commercially started in Gloucester started in the 1600s. And by 1713, the schooner arrived on the scene. The schooner, defined as a fore-and-aft rigged vessel with two or more masts, had several advantages: relatively cheap to build, easy to sail, fast and didn’t require much crew.

The Gloucester fishing industry nearly died out in the early 1800s, but came roaring back around 1860. Then prices for cod skyrocketed. By 1879 the fleet consisted of schooners that would go out for months.

The schooners, wide and flat to carry as much fish as possible, had riggings that reached high and stretched forward to a long bowsprit. The result of the design: a ship capable of carrying a good payload. But the top-heavy vessels were not stable in rough weather.

Schooners at Gloucester

Despite the risks, the pay was good enough that fishermen clamored for the chance to go out. Fishermen on the schooners used hand-lines cast over the rail set with two hooks. It took about 30 minutes to land the fish once caught. When hauled aboard, the fisherman would cut out the fish’s tongue to record the catch before it he packed it in salt.

In the mid-1800s, the schooners began also carrying dories, which could be launched. Other fishermen would work from those, bringing their catch back to the ship. The dories were dangerous in all weather.

Following the 1879 disaster, there were the usual cries for safer boats, but the fishing fleet moved on as before. It grew to over 400 vessels in the 1880s, the peak for the fleet before it started its long decline.

As for the men who perished in the 1879 gale, no one really knows how they met their end. It’s assumed that when the schooners went down, they were tumbled over and over in the ocean until they broke apart leaving their crews to drown.

In all, between 8,000 and 11,0000 men from Gloucester have died at sea.

This story last updated in 2022.

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