One Fish, Two Fish, Red White and Blue Fish

 by Kayla Whitehouse

This weekend marks the 250^th anniversary of the passage of the New England Trade and Fisheries Act, given royal assent on March 30, 1775. As the first of the two Restraining Acts, the Fisheries Act was passed by Great Britain in response to the growing unrest and civil disobedience in the colonies. Specifically, this act restricted trade and limited exportation and importation of goods to and from Great Britain, Ireland, and “British Dominions in Europe.” It also set regulations aimed at protecting British fishing interests in Newfoundland. Under this act, only vessels with a special certificate given by the British government were allowed to fish off the coast of Newfoundland “and the seas adjacent,” meaning the Atlantic coast of the American colonies.

The act effectively made it illegal for American colonists to fish in the Atlantic. Failure to abide by the restrictions in the act were punished with fines of up to £500, or the equivalent of over $130,000 today, depending on the offense, and any fishing equipment and boats were liable to be confiscated by the British.

In the North American colonies, people in all coastal cities fished in the Atlantic, meaning this prohibition had significant effects on the local economies. According to the New England Historical Society, from 1768 to 1772, 35% of New England exports were fish – most of which were traded in the West Indies for sugar, molasses, and rum. And although the Fisheries Act only specifically pertained to the four New England colonies (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island), it affected all the colonies. Codfish from Newfoundland was sold in cities all along the Atlantic coast, and all of the colonies benefited from the codfish shipped to the Caribbean, receiving in exchange the cheap sugar, molasses, and enslaved people that were traded for salted cod. In fact, Atlantic fishing off the coast of Newfoundland was so important to the American colonies, that when the Treaty of Paris was written in 1783 to negotiate the end of the Revolutionary War, an explicit “Right to take Fish … on the Banks of Newfoundland” was included as the third article of the treaty – right after the confirmation of the United States’ independence, and the demarcation of our borders.

"A Parcel of Fine Dry Codfish", New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy, November 19, 1750.
This advertisement announces the sale of Codfish from Newfoundland in New York City in 1750.

By making it illegal to fish in the Atlantic, and only allowing trade with Britain (and therefore outlawing trade to the West Indies), the British government severely curtailed both a major source of income and a major source of food for the colonies.

Allotments to American troops showed just how important fish was to the colonists’ diet. During the Revolutionary War, American soldiers were allotted one pound of fish each week in their provisions. To get an idea of how much fish that would require, consider that the Revolutionary War was an eight-year campaign and an average of 40,000 men served in the Continental Army at any given time. This meant that each week over 40,000 pounds of fish needed to be caught and transported to army settlements. A ban on ocean fishing had the potential to leave many soldiers without sustenance. The troops were usually spread throughout the Colonies, but large numbers of men were gathered for significant battles, requiring large amounts of food. For example, there were 9,000 American men at the first Battle of Saratoga, but, with reinforcements, there were over 15,000 men there by the time of the British surrender.

If they couldn’t fish in the Atlantic Ocean, how did they feed all of those soldiers?

Luckily for the men at Saratoga, they were fighting along the Hudson River! (In fact, the site of the 1777 surrender is just about a mile away from the river.) Although the NYS DEC does not recommend eating any fish from the Hudson River these days due to pollutants in the water, in the 18^th century, the Hudson was a great source of fish for soldiers and civilians alike.

A publication written in 1794 described the fishing:

“In Hudson’s River, which runs from above Albany to New York, sturgeon is caught in large quantities. … I have been informed that as much sturgeon may be purchased for sixpence as would serve a moderate sized family for a day : their neighbours in derision call it Albany Beef. The oysters here are of an enormous size, indeed so much so as rather to excite disgust.”

                                                                                                        Letters on Emigration, p. 35-36

The Atlantic Sturgeon are still sometimes seen in the Hudson River. Although, due to regulations from overfishing, we can no longer catch and enjoy the “Albany Beef” that many 18^th century Albanians would have eaten. But if you were interested in knowing how the sturgeon were eaten, here is a recipe for Pickled Sturgeon, from Maria Van Rensselaer, who lived at the nearby Cherry Hill property in Albany.