en and coastwise sailors fought on the land as
well and followed the drums of Washington's armies until the final
scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and
orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing.

* Marvin's "American Merchant Marine," p. 287.

The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports
tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed
westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire.
They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate
community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock,
deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: "Every
person on board our fishing vessels has an interest in common with his
associates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise.
Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fishing
vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood
and the strongest ties of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for
their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful
navigators."

Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners
loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back
naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned
trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from
one forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the
stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucesterman would sign on for a
voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become
a mate or master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was
maintained a school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent
and efficient officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were
mostly recruited from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England
until the term "Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own.

Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and
ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing
vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor
is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The
Gloucester fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and
powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of
canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share an