1 Charles de la Morandière, Histoire de la
pêche française de la morue dans l'Amérique
septentrionale, vol. 1 (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962),
pp. 123, 284.
2 Ibid., p. 285.
3 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 640, 702. The Catholic
Church imposed nearly 156 meatless days a year, depending on the
diocese.
4 Gabelle: a special salt tax
levied in certain regions of France.
5 Banker: A ship outfitted
for the fishery on the Newfoundland banks. The term also refers
to the fishermen on the ships.
6 The venerable Pierre Berthelot,
chief pilot and cosmographer of the king of Portugal, and a
member of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was born in
Honfleur, where he was baptized on December 12, 1600 in Saint
Catherine's Church. He was the son of Pierre Berthelot, known
as Dupéral, a master surgeon who later became a naval
captain. According to a contract dated July 21, 1598, Pierre
Berthelot Sr. married Fleurie Morin, the daughter of Guillaume
Morin, Sieur of Chamelonde. They had ten children, the eldest
being Pierre Jr. He worked as master surgeon on ships employed
in the Newfoundland fishery and took his eldest son with him
on the Aigle to introduce him to the fishery. Pierre
Jr. continued his apprenticeship on other ships outfitted and
piloted by his father, who was also a navigator, like most
naval surgeons of his time. In 1619, Pierre Jr. boarded the
Espérance, a ship belonging to a company owned by
merchants in Paris and Rouen that had been formed a few years
earlier to trade with the Orient. After the Espérance
was captured and looted by the Dutch, he remained in the Indies
for a few years then served on merchant ships. In 1626, he was
in Malacca, an Asian port captured by the Portuguese. His
knowledge of the Indian archipelago made him a valuable
assistant. He participated in several expeditions as a pilot
on galleys then became the hydrographer of the viceroy of the
Portuguese Indies, for whom he drew nautical charts. The chief
pilot of the Portuguese squadron at Goa, he participated in a
naval battle off the coast of Malacca, distinguished himself
in other armed conflicts and received a title of nobility. He
was appointed a royal pilot and cosmographer. On December 24,
1634, he became a member of the Carmelite Order. He was
ordained on August 24, 1638 by the Patriarch of Ethiopia and
received the name of Brother Denis of the Nativity. Injured in
battle, he was taken prisoner by the prince of Achem and
assassinated by a renegade on November 27, 1638. A descendant
of his family, Denis-François-Guillaume Berthelot
(1732-1818), was chaplain of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce chapel,
where seamen from Honfleur went to pray. (Charles Bréard,
Le vieux Honfleur et ses marins: biographies et récits
maritimes, Rouen, Imprimerie Cagniard, 1897, pp. 42-48.)
7 "Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy 1754"
(Log of Jean Marin Le Roy), deposited at the admiralty registry
in Honfleur on November 5, 1754. Archives départementales
du Calvados, Archives municipales de Honfleur, Série 2 ii,
Amirauté de Honfleur, VIII, Journaux de navigation, 365,
Voyages à Terre-Neuve et à Saint-Domingue, 1754.
8 Commissaire aux classes:
person responsible for the classification of military personnel.
9 France, Archives nationales, Marine, D 2,
51. Cited in C. de la Morandière, Histoire de la pêche
française, vol. 2, p. 538.
10 Archives départementales du Calvados,
Archives municipales de Honfleur, Série 2 ii, Amirauté
de Honfleur, VIII. Journaux de navigation, 363, Voyages à
Terre-Neuve, 1752: Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy 1752. Journaux de
navigation, 364, Terre-Neuve, 1753: Journal de Jean Marin Le Roy
1753.
11 First known trip: left Honfleur on
May 14, reached the Bank in June and returned on November 25,
1752. In 1753: reached the Bank on May 9 and returned on August 22,
1753.
12 C. de la Morandière, Histoire
de la pêche française, vol. 2, pp. 75-76.
13 J.-P. Bardet, P. Chaunu, J.-M. Gouesse,
P. Gouhier, A. and J.-M. Vallez, "Laborieux par
nécessité: l'économie normande du XVIe
au XVIIIe siècle", in Michel de Bouard, Histoire de
la Normandie (Toulouse: Privat, 1970), p. 297.
14 The man who salted the cod on the ships
employed in the fishery on the Bank or the area around Newfoundland.
He earned more than the other fishermen because the quality of the
cargo depended on his skills. According to Willaumez, the salter was
often also the cooper and storekeeper. (Vice-admiral Jean-Baptiste
Willaumez, Dictionnaire de marine, 1820-1831, reprint,
Douarnenez, Le Chasse-Marée/Armen, 1998, p. 513.)
15 A ring consisting of a band of iron or
a piece of rope with the two ends spliced together. It is inserted
into the groove around a pulley or a deadeye, or is used to rig a
yard. Also, a rope that holds the oars on the tholes.
16 The odds are that Captain Fafard also
received food and beverages of better quality from the captains
who lent him their surgeons. How else can one explain the fact
that the health of the crew improved?
17 An old unit of distance (approximately
4 km). Nautical league: one-twentieth of a degree of a
large circle of the earth, equal to 3 miles or 5,555.5 metres.
18 Boats of various sizes similar to
shallops and canoes, and pointed at both ends. The largest had
two masts. The front one was quite slanted and the middle one
straight. The sail on the large mast was more than double the
size of the one on the foremast. (J.-B. Willaumez, Dictionnaire
de marine, p. 79.)
19 Short pieces of rope attached to
sails. They are tied when reefing sails and untied when
unreefing.
20 Cap Lévy (commune of
Fermanville, département of la Manche) is a
triangular peninsula surrounded by reefs that is easy to
distinguish because it stands out clearly from the coastline
between Cherbourg and Pointe de Barfleur. Its hilly surface
extends as far as Anse de la Mondrée. (Henri Elhaï,
La Normandie occidentale entre la Seine et le golfe
normand-breton : étude morphologique, Bordeaux,
Imprimerie Bière, 1963, pp. 410-416.)
21 Reefs in the Channel Islands, an
Anglo-Norman archipelago that includes the islands of Jersey,
Guernsey, Alderney, Herm, Sark, Brechnou, Jethou and Lihou,
as well as a group of reefs: the Roches Douvres, Minquiers,
Ecrehous, Dirouilles, Paternosters and Casquets.
22 Battered by westerly winds, the
island of Yeu, near the coast of Vendée, northwest of
Sables-d'Olonne, is 9.8 km long and 3.7 km wide. Its Breton
character, with its crystalline schist terrain, is what first
catches the eye. The coast that is turned towards the open sea
is reminiscent of Belle-Île. The south and east coasts
are more like the Vendée area, with their pines, dunes,
evergreen oaks and long fine-sand beaches. The climate is
moderate because the island receives the warm currents from
the Bay of Biscay. On the south coast, Vieux-Château, a
medieval fortress in ruins whose ghostly silhouette overhangs
the sea, used to be a pirate stronghold. What is now
Port-Joinville was called Port-Breton before 1818, a name also
given to a harbour on Grand Bay, on the coast of Labrador, in
the sixteenth century (Carrol Cove).
23 Tack: manoeuvre that
maintains the lower end of a sail on the windward side. On a
starboard tack, the ship receives the wind on the starboard
side.
24 The Pertuis breton is a strait
that separates Ré Island from the coast of the Marais
poitevin.
25 Le Roy did not make the usual
distinction between Thursday, January 31 and Friday, February
1.
26 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches...
(Paris: Saillant & Nyon, et Veuve Desaint, 1772), vol. 2,
section 1, part 2, chap. 5, pp. 53, 61.
27 It was Sunday, February 3. Le Roy
does not mention going to mass, but he writes about what they
did at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., so they must have taken the time to
go to mass and perhaps eat in La Rochelle, as they did on
other Sundays.
28 At this point, we return to
the text of Le Roy's log.
29 A Christian feast commemorating
the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the purification
of the Virgin Mary. Candlemas is always celebrated on
February 2.
30 Clinch: To fasten with a
half hitch to bend the hawser to a ring.
31 This may refer to the small anchor
or the anchor ring (an iron ring at the end of the anchor
shank to which the cable is fastened).
32 Portlast: The boom
that receives the foresail tack. It holds or supports the
sail's luff. The mainsail tack is also a portlast. A synonym
of bumpkin: a short boom projecting from each bow of
a ship to extend the lower edge of the foresail to windward.
Also applied to similar booms for extending the mainsail and
the mizzen. (Oxford English Dictionary, compact
edition, Oxford University Press, 1971.)
33 A cove opposite the salt marshes
at Loix, between Pointe du Grouin and Saint-Martin-de-Ré.
34 The roadstead of La Flotte, east
of Saint-Martin, opposite the village of La Flotte, on
Ré Island.
35 It is not clear what Le Roy meant
here. Was he referring to Jacques Philippe Nopvice or to an
apprentice (novice, in French), a young sailor who
was with the carpenter? Since Le Roy does not mention the
carpenter's name, I presume novice refers to Jacques
Philippe's rank. In the bank fishery, the apprentices and boys
helped the fishermen or worked 'tween-decks and in the hold
preparing the salt cod; they helped the salter.
36 Le Roy wrote "Rade de Loye"
(the roadstead of Loye).
37 Beat: sail in a zigzag
course to take advantage of a head wind, turning one side of
the vessel then the other to the wind. Beat close-hauled:
as close to the wind as possible.
38 The fort on Pointe du Chapus
stands out about 400 metres from the coast. It is also
called Fort Louvois because it was built by order of
François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, who
was Secretary then Minister of War. Built in 1692 for coastal
defence, according to Vauban's plans, it protected Le
Château-d'Oléron. It is horseshoe-shaped to
control a 180° area. Its low battery, for shots that
grazed the water, is combined with a tower-keep that
dominated ships with high sides and served as a lighthouse.
(Charente-Maritime : Aunis, Guide Gallimard, Paris,
Éditions Nouveaux-Loisirs, 1994, p. 257.)
39 South of Pointe du Chapus, the
mouth of the Seudre and La Tremblade peninsula delimit a
small landlocked sea, half of which is enclosed by Pointe
de Gatseau and Pointe d'Arvert.
40 Le Roy has the details a bit
mixed up: "Nous y sommes restés le restant du jour
et de la nuit; la marée était trop tardive
pour mettre à la voile à la marée de
l'après-midi en raison du vent contraire." (We
spent the rest of the day and the night there; the tide
rose too late for us to sail with the afternoon tide
because of a head wind.)
41 The Seudre estuary provides
remarkable shelter close to the salt marshes of Marennes.
42 The anchors were cast in such
a way that their cables crossed to provide better protection
against the wind and the current.
43 A village located in the salt
marshes near Rochefort.
44 E. and J. Vigé, Brouage,
vol. 2, Capitale du sel et patrie de Champlain
(Saint-Jean-d'Angély: Vigé, 1990), pp. 69-72,
translation.
45 The admiralty of Saintonge had
a registry in Marennes, just like in La Rochelle and La
Flotte. The captain had to go there to get his clearance
stamped, make his declarations and pay fees.
46 Tonneau: unit of measure.
1 tonneau = 1,000 kg.
47 The crew no doubt went to
Saint-Pierre-de-Sales Church in Marennes. The English-style
church can be seen from afar, with its high square 15th-century
tower, supported by corner buttresses and topped by a spire
ornamented with crockets that reaches a height of 85 m. It
served as a landmark for navigation. (Poitou,
Vendée, Charentes, Michelin guide, Paris,
Michelin, 1998, p. 127.)
48 Muid: unit of measure. 1
muid = 1,200 litres.
49 C. de la Morandière,
Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1,
p. 138, translation.
50 Ibid., p. 124.
51 C. de la Morandière, Histoire
de la pêche française, vol. 1, p. 124.
52 Oléron, the largest island
off France's Atlantic coast (30 km long and 6 km wide), is a
natural extension of Saintonge. The Pertuis d'Antioche (a
passage) and the Pertuis de Maumusson, which has dangerous
currents, separate the island from the coast of Charente. Low
on the horizon, with many windmills, Oléron has a
limestone terrain and long series of sand dunes that are
forested to the north and west. There were many salt marshes
near Ors, St-Pierre or La Brée. They have since been
converted to oyster beds. Before retiring to Fontevraud Abbey,
where she died in 1204, Eleanor of Aquitaine set about bringing
some order to her island. The dangerous coast attracted looters
of shipwrecks. She also had a series of rules drafted related
to the seas, ships, masters, seamen and merchants. This
maritime code, known as the Rôles d'Oléron, served
as a basis for everything that was promulgated on the subject
after that.
53 Le Roy did not record anything in
the log on these two days. Since the ship had run aground off
the island of Oléron, he must have had more pressing
matters to attend to. What he wrote on the days that followed,
in particular March 6, provides some clarification.
54 Once again, Le Roy remains silent.
The repairs were carried out slowly as the tides allowed. On
the days that followed, the pilot wrote little about the
mundane work.
55 Le Roy wrote "sur La Rade de loye"
(on the roadstead of Loix).
56 Barrique: a barrel of
about 200 litres. Ships employed in the Grand Bank fishery
carried enough water for the whole expedition. They also
carried enough wood for the stove in the storeroom because
they could not pick up new supplies during the expedition.
57 Pierre Bouguer, Nouveau
traité de navigation contenant la théorie et la
pratique du pilotage (Paris: Chez Hippolyte-Louis Guerin
& Louis-François Delatour, 1753), pp. 234, 245.
58 C. de la Morandière,
Histoire de la pêche française, vol. 1,
pp. 145-146, translation.
59 Hierro (Ferro) Island is the most
southwesterly island in the Canaries. According to The New
Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ferro, then the most westerly
place known to ancient European geographers, was chosen c. A.D.
150 by the classical geographer Ptolemy for the prime meridian
of longitude, and until the 18th century some navigators
continued to reckon from this line." (Micropædia,
vol. 4, p. 748.) In 1634, a scientific commission appointed by
Louis XIII and consisting of a group of mathematicians set the
prime meridian (meridian 0) there. This decision was adopted
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by most European
nations. During the French Revolution, France adopted the
meridian of Paris. In 1911, it switched to the Greenwich
meridian. (Le Petit Robert 2, 1974, p. 646. M. Mourre,
Dictionnaire d'histoire universelle, vol. 1, p. 952.)
60 Le Roy uses the abbreviation "te"
to designate both the minutes of a degree and the fractions
of a nautical league. I have replaced this abbreviation with
the symbol for the minute that corresponds to one-sixtieth of
a degree angle ( ´ ).
61 Lie to: to shorten sail
so as to bring the ship almost to a stop.
62 Halyard: a rope or
tackle used to raise or lower a sail, flag, etc.
63 Tack: rope used to
secure the lower fore corner of the sail. Haul:
to pull a rope.
64 Foresail: the bottom
sail on the foremast. Foremast: the mast nearest
the bow.
65 Sheet: rope used to
secure the lower after corner of the sail.
66 Topsail: square sail
on a topmast. Top: rounded platform at the top of
a lower mast. Topmast: the second section of a
mast, above the lower mast. Main topsail: on the
mainmast.
67 Antoine de Conflans mentioned
their biscuit bread in 1513, in his Traité
concernant le navigaige. (Charles Bréard,
Vieilles rues et vieilles maisons de Honfleur du
15e siècle à nos jours, Honfleur,
Société normande d'Ethnographie et d'Art
populaire, 1900, pp. 39-41.) Honfleur could easily obtain
wheat from Caux or the plains in Caen.
68 François and Colette
Boullet, Ex-voto marins (Rennes: Éditions
Ouest-France, 1996), p. 44.
69 France, Archives nationales,
Marine, D2, 54, cited in C. de la Morandière,
Histoire de la pêche française, vol.
1, p. 147, translation.
70 Lie to: to shorten
sail, keeping only the mainsail on the mainmast.
71 Pierre Bouguer, Nouveau
traité de navigation, p. 142.
72 A plateau about 270 miles long
and 200 wide, located between 48° and 54° west
longitude (from the prime meridian).
73 For example, the surgeons who
visited the ailing captain and crew of the Maréchal
de Saxe in 1752 and 1753.
74 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 50.
75 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 61.
76 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 57.
77 Ibid., pp. 64-66.
78 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, pp. 50-51.
79 "In Normandy, green cod was sold
by the hundred, but since the fish were always handled in
twos - either loose or tied together with a string around
the tail - the hundred consisted of 66 handfuls, or 132
cod. That was called a grand cent or grand
compte (large hundred or large count). The petit
compte (small count), which was 60 handfuls, consisted
of only 120 cod and was the one commonly used in Paris trade.
In general, in Honfleur a hundred of cod (132 cod) was sold
for 95 livres cash or 100 livres with a three-month term, for
example. For that price, the buyer got a hundred of cod of the
highest quality, of cod of lesser quality at two for one, or of
cod of the lowest quality at four for one." (C. de la
Morandière, Histoire de la pêche
française, vol. 1, p. 193, translation.)
80 Assuming that a cod of the
highest quality weighed about 5 pounds once it was salted,
the Saint-André returned to France with about
35 tons of fish.
81 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches, vol.
2, p. 50.
82 Ibid., p. 48.
83 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 50.
84 Ibid., p. 64.
85 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 63.
86 Ibid.
87 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 68.
88 Sound: the air
bladder of a fish.
89 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 66.
90 The cod sometimes had one or
two pounds of roe, or eggs, depending on its size. The roe
was salted separately in barrels. It was excellent bait for
the sardine fishery. Basque fishermen sold it to the Spanish
from the coast of Biscay at a price of 60 to 120 livres for
a barrel weighing about 5 quintals. (Ibid., p. 70.)
91 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 56.
92 Ibid., p. 68.
93 H.-L. Duhamel du Monceau,
Traité général des pesches,
vol. 2, p. 68.
94 Ibid., p. 88.
95 Box bed: a bed
enclosed in a cupboard.
96 Nicolas Denys, Histoire
naturelle des peuples de l'Amérique septentrionale,
vol. 2, Paris, 1672, pp. 83-84, translation.
97 Ibid.
98 Nicolas Denys, Histoire
naturelle des peuples, vol. 2, p. 84.
99 Topsail sheet: a rope
that is used to control the angle at which the sail is set
and to secure the lower after corner of the sail.
100 Crews whose ships were
outfitted in Granville, Cherbourg, Honfleur and Fécamp
often found that they could get a better price for their cod
in Dieppe than in their home port, according to C. de la
Morandière (Histoire de la pêche
française, vol. 2, p. 530).
101 A cape at the southwest end of
the Cornwall peninsula, in England.
102 A small British archipelago in
the English Channel, about 40 km from the southwest tip of
England (Land's End), consisting of about 100 small
uninhabited islands and 5 inhabited ones: Tresco, St.
Martin's, St. Mary's, Bryher et St. Agnes. (Le Petit
Robert 2, 1993, p. 1640.)
103 Le Roy views the Channel as
Breton, just as the English view it as theirs by calling
it the English Channel.
104 The Étang de Gattemare,
a lagoon near Gatteville and Pointe de Barfleur. (Henri
Elhaï, La Normandie occidentale entre la Seine
et le golfe normand-breton : étude morphologique,
Bordeaux, Imprimerie Bière, 1963, pp. 420-421.)
105 Pointe de la Percée, on
the coast of Calvados, is in the commune of
Louvières, between Englesqueville and Vierville,
northwest of Port-en-Bessin. (Henri Elhaï, La
Normandie occidentale entre la Seine et le golfe
normand-breton, pp. 488-489.)
106 C. de la Morandière,
Histoire de la pêche française,
vol. 2, p. 538.
107 Ibid.
108 C. de la Morandière,
Histoire de la pêche française,
vol. 2, p. 538, note 64, translation.
109 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing
Limit, brochure published by Environment Canada,
Fisheries and Marine Service, 1976.
110 Ibid.
111 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing
Limit, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Marine Service,
1976.
112 Canada's 200-Mile Fishing
Zone, brochure published by the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, 1981.
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