Gull
Rock Breaking
2001 -
Etching and Aquatint
13 X 18 inches (Plate Size)
Study for Daybreak,
the Labrador Sea
2003 - Pencil
16 X 20 inches
Outward Bound for
the Labrador
1985 -
Etching and Aquatint
17 X 36 Inched (Plate Size)
The Flora S
Nickerson Home from the Labrador
1979 -
Etching and Aquatint
11 X 14 inches (Plate Size)
"Cape Harrison,
Labrador Sea"
2004, pencil on paper,7 x 12 inches. |
The Labrador Sea
has historically been the life-blood of the traditional fishing
economy of Newfoundland. In fact, the earliest records of a cod
fishery ‘down on the Labrador’ date from the sixteenth century. In
hundreds of isolated out ports, including my own village of
Wesleyville, the rhythm of communal life was dominated by the annual
departure of the Labrador fishing fleet in spring and the return of
the ships, after a hard summer’s work, in the fall. The fishing
stations of Labrador were a second home for many Bonavista North
fishermen, and tales of doings in places like Domino, Mugford Tickle,
Cape Chidley and Cape Harrison provided yarns for many a winter’s
night in net lofts all over the island. The region has acquired, over
generations, its own distinctive history and a rich tradition of
folklore which remains largely unexplored.
Each year in
May, shortly after the sealing fleet had returned from the ice fields,
preparations for the Labrador fishing season would begin. Ships would
be outfitted and provisioned, crews put “in collar”, and the
Wesleyville fleet (numbering some sixty-three schooners in the 1920’s)
would depart for the Labrador coast, joining up to two thousand other
ships under sail. The voyage from Bonavista North to the Labrador was
often a perilous one. The schooners had to navigate through a maze of
arctic ice slowly drifting southwards on the Labrador Current. In
addition, extremely bad weather and dense fog often added to the
difficulties of sailing north. When they finally reached their
destination, the schooners would anchor in sheltered bays and set
their cod traps. The ideal situation was to have ‘rooms’ down on the
Labrador; fishing stations where fish could be taken ashore, salted,
dried, and then brought home. My own family had rooms at Cape Harrison
for this purpose. Other schooners salted their catch in the hold, and
usually returned to their home ports towards the end of August where,
after the fish had been ‘made’ (sun-dried by members of the crew and
their families), they would be sold to the merchant.
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