The humble fishing dory that put the ‘cod’ into Cape Cod

Lawrence Brown

Columnist

To start our story, I want you to take yourself to Provincetown, way out on the tip of Cape Cod. Now, let the years melt away… maybe a century and a half… and take a good look around you. There are no paved roads. The steam engine has been invented recently, but the nearest train is in Hyannis, and that would be a long buggy ride from here.

In 1871, Provincetown is the richest town per capita in Massachusetts. But just look around yourself! Tied to the piers and riding at anchor are over 700 fishing schooners. Here — and around Gloucester — is where the type was originally designed. Many were built here on Cape Cod.

During the Revolutionary War, John Adams and others realized that if our fledgling country was to have a navy, its sailors would have to come from the ranks of New England fishermen. It would be a New England fish merchant and his men who would row Washington across the Delaware for his famous rout of the Brits on Christmas Day, 1776.

Not all wealth is equally glamorous. The slave trade was downright immoral. The fishing trade certainly wasn't glamorous, but the cod swarming off our coasts were hugely profitable. The earliest colonials joked that you could walk across the surface of the water on the backs of all the cod we had here.

Two foods from the Americas would trigger a population explosion in old Europe: salted cod fish and potatoes. Potatoes could grow anywhere, even in seaweed stuffed down between rocks. In an age before refrigeration, dried cod was stacked in barrels packed in salt… one of the few storable sources of protein in Europe. Cod was frequently on Henry the VIII's dining room table.

The Grand Banks were a particularly profitable area to fish, but also treacherous, a killer of generations of Cape Cod fishermen. All the same, the last days of sail saw the development of the fishing schooner. Fast and capable, the schooners could get out quickly to the fishing grounds. There, they would drop most of their sails and the fisherman would go out in small boats called dories.

The little dories were only 16 to 20 feet long, made out of wood planks. Slab-sided and flat-bottomed, they were easy to make in quantity and could be stacked on deck one inside the other. These dories had to be launched overboard and recovered in a seaway that might slam the dory against the hull repeatedly. So they had to be rugged. High-sided and tippy, they only stabilized when they had 400 to 500 pounds of fish heaped in the bottom. They were cranky to row and only slightly better under sail.

But they were designed for a purpose, the cargo vans — or sea-going wheelbarrows — of the age. If you want to see what the whole arrangement looked like, visit the Provincetown Public Library. Go up to the second floor and you'll be astonished to find a half-sized fishing schooner – the Rose Dorothea - complete with sails and dories on the deck. It’s all the more breathtaking being tucked under the lofty ceiling surrounded by shelves of books dwarfed by the hull.

Now, gather around and I'll tell you the incredible story of the dory fisherman Howard Blackburn. It was the mid-1880s when Howard and his fellow sailor were lowered off the side of their schooner. They’d voyaged to over 100 miles off the Canadian coast. Between their feet was a huge bucket of weighted fishing line and baited hooks. They had several hundred pounds of halibut sloshing on the floor of their dory when it began to snow. Their clothing was of wool, flax, cotton or leather. Nothing thermal. Nothing waterproof.

Their schooner would appear, then disappear in the squalls of snow. The wind and waves picked up, and their little dory slid helplessly down the faces of the mounting seas. Then it got dark.

By mid-morning, Blackburn’s partner had frozen to death. At this point, Howard removed his woolen gloves, dipped his hands in seawater, and held them to the oars until they froze in place. Then, he set his back to it and rowed his tiny boat across over 100 miles of open ocean till he made the coast and was rescued by locals. He’d lost all his fingers and toes – but had saved his life. As the old-timers liked to say, 'There were men in those days!'

Today, the dory is easily built of marine plywood and/or fiberglass. Modern variations of the dory have been designed for speed and ease under oars or sail. Google 'wooden boat-builders on Cape Cod' if you’d like a rowing or sailing dory of your own. Call Old Wharf Dory Company in Wellfleet, 508-349-2383, for a quality modern replica, or E.M. Crosby in Hyannis, 508-362-7100. Fine builders both.

Nobody outside of Canada has a production line of dories being built. With these or any local builders, you'll have to see what their production schedule looks like —and their costs. The Cape Cod Maritime Museum has boat-building projects and maybe can build you a plywood version. Call 508-775-1723 to find out. Check out the Cape Cod Builders’ Boat Show next February.

It's easy to forget that not that long ago, most men spent their lives doing back-breaking, often dangerous physical work. It wasn't a lifestyle. It was life

. I wonder sometimes whether men have a harder time of it, finding their place in the world as men, in a setting that's much tamer and more civilized.

At the same time, men like Howard Blackburn would have given anything for modern sailing gear and an outboard motor. And, dear God, a radio to call for help.

Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.