19th Century In-Shore Fishery

The exploitive 250 year old Newfoundland, in shore fishery Truck system.

A few words are in order here to acquaint the reader with the fishing on credit or Truck system that was created for fishermen in Newfoundland’s outports, possibly as early as the 1780s or 1790s, when an in-shore fishery gradually replaced the off-shore migratory fishery that had lasted for several hundred years. Using this system the fish merchant didn’t pay in cash but gave credit on goods purchased in his dry goods store. He set the price for the fish he paid in the fall and charged for the goods that he sold in his store to the fishermen along with a markup. It made for a near feudal economic system existing in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Some say it was the only way that commerce could have evolved where it did, along an almost endless coastline, encompassing as it did many hundreds of small, isolated settlements. Others condemn it outright as the systematic oppression of a voiceless people. At root, an abuse prone system, in the end it served neither fisherman nor merchant. It basically was kept in operation by the local fish merchant in an outport or by an agent of much larger St. John’s Water St. merchants, supplying the fisherman each spring with all he wanted or needed to engage in the fishery for the coming year, in regard to nets, lines, hooks, anchors and the like, with payments made by the cod landed (and cured) in the fall. The merchant set the prices and paid the fisherman for the fish as he saw fit, the fisherman having no say in the matter. The merchant set the price not only for the fish landed but also for what goods the fishing family might need from the shelves of his store to get through the coming winter and spring, this could include everything from nails and putty to flour, sugar and molasses. If the year was good, more goods might be obtained, if bad, the fisherman’s family could be left to the mercy of the merchant. Would they be given extended credit or would they have to go without, during the coming winter? The system was essentially cashless, resulting in no independence for a family that
The system also in time, came to be relied on by the British Navy as an on-going source of trained seamen. That is, until the ongoing 30 years of the American Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, when fishermen became unavailable to travel annually to the Banks fishery in great numbers. Starting at first with just single or pairs of fishermen, but soon followed by other family members, people over time, made the decision to overwinter in Newfoundland, with many staying on, and an in-shore fishery gradually took root. Amazingly, the population of the Island grew to 50,000 between 1785 and 1815 and soon a summer Labrador fishery using Newfoundland based schooners from the north east coast was begun that greatly expanded over the