Cod by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page A

Zoane state so much. These same English, his companions, say that they could bring so many fish that this Kingdom would have no further need of Iceland, from which there comes a very great quantity of the fish called stockfish.
    From this statement, historians have concluded that John Cabot’s men caught cod simply by dropping weighted baskets. There is no evidence that Cabot ever said this, nor is it known how reliable di Soncino’s source was. However, subsequent accounts do confirm that the coast of North America was churning with codfish of a size never before seen and in schools of unprecedented density, at least in recorded European history.
    When Europeans first arrived, North America had a wealth of game and fish unparalleled in Europe. Flocks of birds, notably the passenger pigeon, which is now extinct, would darken the sky for hours as they passed overhead. In 1649, Adriaen van der Donck, the colonial governor of New Amsterdam, wrote from what is now New York that nearby waters had six-foot lobsters. Even a century after Cabot, Englishmen wrote of catching five-foot codfish off Maine, and there are persistent accounts in Canada of “codfish as big as a man.” In 1838, a 180-pounder was caught on Georges Bank, and in May 1895, a six-foot cod weighing 211 pounds was hauled in on a line off the Massachusetts coast. Cabot’s men may well have been able to scoop cod out of the sea in baskets.
    Cabot, a skilled and experienced navigator, had moved to Bristol with his wife and son only two years before his 1497 voyage, frustrated by the triumphs of Columbus and dreaming of his own glory. Both Columbus and Cabot had been born in Genoa about the same year, and both had searched the Mediterranean for backers. They probably knew each other. Cabot may have even had to endure the spectacle of some of Columbus’s triumphant receptions. He seems to have been in Barcelona in April 1493, when crowds cheered his fellow Genovese formally entering the city. At last, when Cabot returned to England after his North American voyage, he basked in the same kind of reception that Columbus had enjoyed in Spain. In England, Cabot was a sensation, the man of the moment, and fans assailed him on the streets of Bristol and London the way they might today if he were a rock star. But there was little time to luxuriate in what might be only fleeting glory. After all, Columbus was about to embark on his third voyage. With his sudden fame, Cabot easily raised funding for a second voyage with five ships. One ship soon returned, and the other four, along with Cabot, were never heard from again. It was the first of many such calamities.
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    The Portuguese were also exploring and charting North America. A 1502 map identifies Newfoundland as “land of the King of Portugal,” and to this day, many Portuguese consider Newfoundland to be a Portuguese “discovery.” Many of the earliest maps of Newfoundland show Portuguese names. Those names have remained, though they are no longer recognizably Portuguese. Cabo de Espera (Cape Hope), the tip of land between St. John’s and Petty Harbour, has become Cape Spear, Cabo Raso is now Cape Race, and the Isla dos Baccalhao is Baccalieu Island. In 1500, Gaspar Côrte Real went to Newfoundland and named it Greenland, Terra Verde. He was the youngest son of Joao Vaz Côrte Real, a despotic ruler of the Azores and yet another mariner who some claim went to America before Columbus. In 1501, on his second trip, after sending back fifty-seven Beothuk as sample slaves, Gaspar, like Cabot, vanished with his ship and crew. The following year, his brother Miguel was lost along with his flagship and its crew.
    This grim early record did not discourage fishermen. Fishing had opened up in Newfoundland with the enthusiasm of a gold rush. By 1508, 10 percent of the fish sold in the Portuguese ports of Douro and Minho was Newfoundland salt cod. In France, the Bretons and Normans had an