A YEAR IN THE NEWFOUNDLAND TRADE

Not the Shipping News

Bill Whelan

2025 10 03

The schooner Little Puzzle, 39 days from Cadiz, has arrived to Messrs Thorburn & Tessier, reported a Newfoundland newspaper of the 4^th of May of 1895. The St John’s Evening Telegram did not report Little Puzzle’s cargo but we may take that to be Cadiz salt, much used in the fish trade and a byword in the town.  Nor did the Telegram mention another aspect of this commercial transaction: that Thorburn & Tessier were insolvent, as a result of the recent Bank Crash.

That great Newfoundland fiasco, the Bank Crash of December 1894, closed the Dominion’s two banks and resulted in the failure of many firms engaged in the fish trade. Times were more than ordinarily difficult, even by Newfoundland standards:  the predominant currencies of the country were the banknotes issued by the Commercial Bank and by the Union Bank; this money was now of very questionable value. With its gift for the language, the Telegram reported the bank crash of December 1894 as The Present Calamity.

The Telegram referred to Little Puzzle as an English schooner and noted that other Little schooners were owned by the same company, schooners such as Little Pet, Little Secret, Little Mystery, Little Minnie, and other Littles. These vessels were owned by the John Stephens firm of Fowey, in Cornwall. A typical year’s work for Stephens schooners began with a cargo of coal or china clay to Portugal or Spain. The schooner then took on a cargo of salt for Newfoundland, where they took on a cargo of saltfish for Europe. The cycle Europe to Newfoundland to Europe would be repeated twice, or perhaps thrice, a year. On return to England the winter trade for Stephems schooners was often china clay from Fowey northwards with potatoes from Scotland on return. The typical crew was four, including the Master.

In Newfoundland, some firms were administered by trustees after the Crash. So it was that Trustees of the Estate of Thorburn & Tessier cleared Little Puzzle, 80 tons, 5 men, Captain RJ Johns, for Barcelona, according to the Telegram of the 20^th of May. The Telegram was pedantic in its reporting of each vessel’s captain, rig, tonnage, manpower, cargo. A mistake in any of these items would invite the derisive laughter for which St John’s is well known.

The schooner Little Mystery has arrived to Messrs Thorburn & Tessier with a cargo of St Obes salt, reported the Telegram in its issue of the 16^th of June.  Little Mystery was another Stephens schooner. Thorburn & Tessier remained insolvent; we do not know how the business of Little Mystery’s salt cargo, or for that matter Little Puzzle’s salt cargo, was settled. Those mundane commercial transactions are lost to history but we may suppose that suitable credit arrangements were made. Salt was essential to the saltfish trade, that much is certain, as is the fact that saltfish was made from codfish preserved, cured, with foreign salt and the sea breeze and sunshine of Newfoundland.

We do know, however, that Little Mystery found another cargo, for the Telegram of the 2^nd of July reported that the vessel was loading skins and oil from the Newfoundland Seal and Whale Fishing Company. Then on the 9^th the Telegram reported the vessel, 99 tons, 5 men, Captain JH Greet, as cleared for Queenstown with 34,531 sealskins and 192 casks containing 46 tuns, 3 hogsheads and 40 gallons of steam-refined pale seal oil.

This business of selling off the products of the Seal Hunt was seen on the island as crucial to recovery from the Bank Crash. The months January and February, after the Crash, were unpleasant. There was little that could be done in those months of the Newfoundland year that would bring in money. The Seal Hunt in March and April offered the first chance, although of course it was a dangerous enterprise, physically and financially.

The Hunt of 1895 was a success. Captain Abram Kean took a fatherless boy from Greenspond to the 1895 Hunt, out of pity.  Fourteen-year-old Noah Gaulton did well; he had $40.32 as his share of the take.  That was serious money in the time and place, less than a man’s share but serious money, nevertheless. The steamship Terra Nova, pride of the Bowring firm’s fleet, did well also. That vessel would go on to fame as Captain Scott’s ship to the Antarctic.

Sicilian salt, 150 tons, came to the Island by means of another Stephens schooner, 50 days from Trepani, according to the Telegram of the 1^st of July. Then on the 2^nd the Telegram reported that Spinaway, 74 tons, 4 men, Captain Edward Richards, was to carry her cargo onward to the North, to Twillingate, a major outport. The salt would be well used, for the voracious bottom-feeding cod had come inshore in pursuit of squid and caplin. They were eating the rocks, as the Newfoundland term has it. This fishery produced the superior Newfoundland shore fish, well dried by the beneficent climate of coastal Newfoundland and therefore preferred in Portugal and other markets. This bacalao did not perish.

Although the seal hunt was important, Newfoundland made its living by the export of saltfish. Now all efforts were directed to that end. One man at Cape Charles had taken 100 quintals in his trap. That was good going, early in the season. A quintal is 112 pounds of codfish. Then there is the question of pronunciation: quintal is pronounced kental, Fowey is pronounced Foy, codfish is pronounced fish.

Little Pet, Captain Berwick, sailed from Trepani for St John’s on the 2^nd of July, reported the Telegram on the 16^th. Next day the Telegram reported the arrival of Little Secret, 88 tons, 5 men, Captain J Couch, 30 days from Cadiz with 120 tons of salt. Of course, Little Pet and Little Secret were Stephens schooners. The Bowring firm cleared Little Secret for Civita Vecchia with 2500 quintals, according to the Telegram of 10^th August. This was now the apex of the fishing year; much of the year’s income would be earned in these weeks and few months.

Newfoundland traded widely. We might take that cargo of Little Secret to Civita Vecchia as an example. Civita Vecchia is a port in Italy, not far from Rome and of course The Vatican. It seems possible, indeed likely, that the Holy Father, the Pope, dined on Newfoundland fish in the Vatican, as the Italian dish baccala.

The Telegram of the 30^th of July reported the arrival of another Stephens schooner, Little Minnie, with salt from St Obes. The Bowring firm cleared this vessel, 86 tons, 5 men, Captain Charles Jago, for Messina on the 24^th of August with 2520 quintals. The vessel did its business there and sailed from Messina, bound for St John’s, on the 16^th of October according to the Telegram of the 4^th of November.

Little Gem, 30 days from Figueira, has arrived to M Thorburn with 150 tons of salt, reported the Telegram of the 11^th of September. This vessel, 99 tons, 5 men, Captain J Hancock, obtained a cargo for Europe and was reported on the 1^st of November as being in St John’s again, 14 days from Oporto in ballast. Then in six days the Bowring firm loaded Little Gem with 2940 quintals and cleared the vessel for Oporto.  Saltfish was plentiful in Newfoundland by this time of the year. Now it was a race to market.

Spinaway was in St John’s again on the 8^th of October, 28 days from Alicante with salt.  On the 30^th of that month the Job firm cleared the vessel for Oporto with 2600 quintals of prime dry shore fish. Little Mystery had cleared for Alicante a few days earlier, on the 23^rd, with 2954 quintals from the Harvey firm.

The Telegram of the 13^th of September reported that Little Puzzle had been cleared for Oporto with 2410 quintals of Bowring’s fish. It appears that the vessel made short work of the passage and its business in Portugal, for on the 2^nd of November the Telegram reported Little Puzzle back in St John’s, 16 days in ballast from Vianna. The vessel was again loaded by the Bowring firm and was cleared for Vigo for orders, according to the Telegram of the 26^th November. Then on the 13^th of December the Telegram reported THE LOSS OF THE LITTLE PUZZLE. The Bowring firm had received a cable the previous evening of the loss of the vessel, on charter to them, at Vigo in the north of Portugal. No details were given in the message.

Christmas Day of 1895 brought a heavy snowstorm to eastern Newfoundland, with the loss of a schooner at Bay Bulls and two at Harbour Grace.  In its Boxing Day issue the Telegram reported that Little Gem was 17 days out from Vianna, bound for St John’s, and noted that Little Puzzle was breaking up on the rocks at the entrance to Vigo.

So ends our account of a year of the Stephens firm in the Newfoundland trade, as reported in a Newfoundland newspaper. The Telegram called these workaday facts Marine Notes, rather a dowdy name for an interesting column closely read in the town.  In a time warp, E Annie Proulx called fictional maritime facts The Shipping News.

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Ends