NOTE: This brief excerpt from chapter five of Mark Ferguson's M.A. thesis "Making Fish: Salt-Cod Processing on the East Coast of Newfoundland" provides a brief explanation of the different types and classes of salt fish and how they developed in relation to the geography and history of the Newfoundland fisheries. Once you have finished here, use your browser's "back" button to return to "Hard Racket for a Living."

In the era from 1920s to the 1950s, pickled fish, the lightest of all salted cures appears to have been peculiar to a stretch of coast running roughly north from Petty Harbour to Bonavista. I turn briefly now to other classes of salt fish produced on other stretches of coast -- variation on a different order from that detailed above. My goal is to compare the two types of light-salted inshore fish -- pickled and dry-salted -- as well as to the heavier salted classes, to provide an idea of how they all differed in quality and value.

It may appear at first glance that the class of fish produced varied on the basis of region. While it might be possible that regional techniques (and results) existed these do not seem to have led to any particular or peculiar sub-grades of fish. Major variations did exist from area to area, but these appear to have been based in the modes and amounts of salting. It was these salting distinctions -- techniques and levels employed in the production of fish from these regions, rather than in micro-variations in a single style of curing that created these distinctions. (Alexander 1977, 75). It might be argued that this amounts to regional variation, but I would assert that this is not the case. Wherever pickling was not practised in the inshore fishery, light-salting in bulks or pounds (see below) was, resulting in only two distinct regional inshore styles. Dry-salted fish does seem to have had various sub-classes too, but these again do not seem to be based regionally. Other factors such as gear types (which were found in all regions) contributed to these variations. Distinctive weather patterns do seem to exist for distinct regions. For example, the Northeast Coast from Bonavista North on down has less foggy weather than the Avalon Peninsula further south and east). It might be therefore possible to make a case for the existence of regionally distinct salt fish -- whether or not conscious techniques played any role. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to demonstrate this today since we have no physical evidence of fish. It might still be possible to construct a case based on oral accounts and evidence.

In the light-salted grades of fish, there were two sub-classes: fish pickled in brine and fish dry-salted in bulks, the latter method being the more prevalent. Here fish lay in "bulks" or "pounds" (which were boxes/pens constructed inside fishing stages using existing walls etc.). Each tier of fish was covered in salt. The salt drew water out of the fish which ran off and drained away through the floor of the fishing or salting stage. The immediate effect of this technique, as noted above, was a greater pressing out of fish dried in bulks. The heavier the salting and the longer the time under that salt, the flatter the fish became. Dry salting was, in fact, the standard technique for both light- and heavy-salted fish.

As noted in relation to pickled fish in the previous chapters, the two classes of light-salted fish required the most lengthy and complex drying phase (as long as six weeks depending on weather conditions). The hard-dried fish that resulted kept better in hot climates than the softer, heavy-salted "bank" or "green" fish and fetched better prices when made successfully (Head 1976, 72). Its overall quality also played a key role in its popularity. Dr. N. L. MacPherson (a fisheries scientist) had this explanation in 1935 for light-salted fish's popularity:

The idea behind the production of these lightly salted fish is this: the fish have not to lie long in salt bulk, and it is intended, and very necessary that they should subsequently be dried to a low water content. This type of preservation gives a valuable product, and at the same time one which requires great care in the process of making because it is so perishable. Of all the salt fish types the light salted shore cure reverts back nearest to the original. When soaked in water it takes up a greater percentage of water than does the heavier salted article (1935, 8).

Heavy-salted fish was historically produced by offshore fishing ships, and, later, in Newfoundland, in a climate too cold and damp to allow for light-salted curing -- for example, the short season and the rough and cold fall weather of much of the coast of Labrador, especially north of the Straits of Belle Isle. More salt was required to keep this fish from spoiling while awaiting opportunities to dry it. The early French fleets fished offshore, and developed what was known as the "green fishery." Their ships, often at sea for months, salted their catch heavily and kept it in their holds until a full load was caught, at which point they returned to their home ports in France, or to drying stations in the New World, where the entire load would be washed out and dried. Other nations with access to domestic sources of salt also carried out similar types of fisheries at different times in the history of the Newfoundland fishery. These nations eventually included England and Newfoundland itself. (For a discussion of England's entry into and development of a banks fishery from 1714 on, see Head 1976, 72-4. For an extremely thorough discussion of the international cod-fisheries, see Innis 1954).

From the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, various interests in Newfoundland developed fisheries based on heavier salted cures. The northern fisheries were prosecuted from shore and from schooners "down" on the Northern Peninsula and the Labrador. In the Labrador shore fisheries, short drying seasons and weather conditions did not always allow for the production of light-salted hard-dried fish of consistent quality, and so they often relied on a heavier salting. The floater fishery (a schooner fishery) operated on a basis similar to the green fishery outlined above. These schooners called floaters fished down north for the summer and returned when their holds were full, usually in the early fall, to Newfoundland. Various arrangements were then made to have this fish dried: very often inshore fishing families would dry the catch on a piecework basis. This was a practice common around the island wherever small scale schooner fisheries operated (NFM-29; Margaret and Pius Power, personal communication, 1994).

Likewise, on the Grand Banks, fleets of large banking schooners fished at great distances from their home ports following huge schools of offshore fish. The schooners belonged to good-sized mercantile establishments. They carried crews of men who worked the water from smaller boats known as dories, using ground trawl gear. These fishermen filled their schooners' holds with medium to heavy-salted fish and returned to their home ports periodically, leaving the catch for shore crews of women, who also worked on a piecework basis, to hard dry. This deep sea fishery, akin to the long-standing French banks fishery and to the New England schooner fishery, developed its own English-Newfoundland variant, as noted, in the early 18th century, and a native Newfoundland one in the last third of the nineteenth century (the Newfoundland Government of the day offered subsidies for the building of fishing schooners). This latter fishery prospered especially well on the South Coast of the island, based in communities including Grand Bank, Burin and Belleoram, due to their ice-free harbours. This lack of ice allowed schooners access to fishing banks from early March to November. The history, economy, culture, and the catching and curing techniques and technologies have been well documented in Fizzard 1987 and the ongoing work of Raoul Andersen (1988) (especially with respect to Grand Bank).

The higher concentration of salt present for longer time periods in heavy salted fish drew out more water from it and acted as a retardant to spoiling agents. This allowed for shorter drying times than was necessary for more lightly salted fish. Heavy-salted fish from the Labrador Floater fishery required only a few days of good drying in order to be made. The resultant product, initially dried out more by salt, was then more difficult to dry further with sun and wind than was light-salted fish and it could not be dried to the same hardness (MacPherson 1935, 34). Another effect of the heavy-salting was a toughening of the fish. It could therefore take rougher handling of various kinds and was generally piled in much larger piles than light-salted bulk fish (MF-20/21; Kenneth Saunders, personal communication, 1995). These fish were of course the flattest of all, as well as the toughest to eat. It was also much more susceptible to the deterioration in quality caused by sunburn (as noted above).

The above outlines the most basic processing and quality distinctions between light and heavy-salted fish, but there was variation in the steps for making any particular class of fish. Historically, I believe that the two cures, light-salted, inshore fish (shore fish) and heavy-salted offshore fish were the two fundamental types. It was much later that some of the methods and modes of salt fishing outlined above, for example, the Newfoundland banks fishery, developed a number of what might be called intermediate grades.

The closest to a medium-salted class in this century were Labrador shore fish and the Banking schooner fish. They achieved this grade while attempting, mind you, to create a grade of fish equal to the hard-dried shore cure fish of the inshore small-boat fishery (Newfoundland Commission 1937, 48). In the Northern Peninsula and Labrador shore fisheries (conducted by the livyer and stationers), medium amounts of salt were required to make fish due to the shorter drying seasons and cooler weather conditions that prevailed in these regions (amounts of salt required were slightly less than with the Banks fishery) (MacPherson 1935, 9-10).

The stationer fishery of Labrador was an inshore migrant fishery, based mainly out of Conception Bay. It began in earnest in the last third of the 18th century when the English gained access to Labrador and continued through to the 1950s. It was a reflection of the fact that, by this time, shore room for the inshore fishing operations was running short in the southern bays of the island and that fish stocks up at the heads of bays were being depleted. Every spring, schooners carried fishing crews and families to various locations `down north,' where they carried out what was basically an inshore fishery. The livyer fishery was conducted by the permanent residents of Labrador. On much of the coast, they were of mixed European and Native descent, and frequently were not solely engaged in cod-fishing. The salmon fishery and fur-trapping in the winter were major commodity producing economic activities as well. But both fisheries generally endeavoured to produce more lightly salted, hard-dried fish, as it fetched better prices. This was especially the case with stationer and livyer fisheries on the Straits of Belle Isle (and later, on the Northern Peninsula) where weather conditions were a little better, allowing for more thorough drying.