The Seine Boat





Three men tending a fish trap, Lanesville shoreline c. 1940 ¹

In perusing the collection of "Pictures from the Past: Lanesville & Vicinity," ¹ another type of row boat occasionally comes into view, beamier and larger than a dory. This spacious double-ended craft accommodating a crew and nets presents a very different outline from the rakish lapstrake * dory of the all-weather solo fisherman.

Seine boats, Lanes Cove, late 1930s ¹
(Note the vintage automobiles to the left rear. The last granite-loading derrick at this spot was swept away in a hurricane, 1935.)
 

A complex of technologies appears in this 1930s glimpse of the Lanes Cove wharf. Several dories represent low-capital individualists. Power boats are moored nearby. Larger rounded row boats of various sizes intersperse the picture. Two in the foreground, nested with a pair of power boats (suggesting that wharf space and fees dictated the configuration), are piled with seine nets. Outfits like this followed the migration of fish with schooling habits as they moved up and down the Atlantic coast. Their method of attempting to find and encircle a school of fish with a long net worked with particular advantage on species that massed near the surface, such as mackerel, herring, and menhaden.

Mackerel had been an abundant and desirable fish since the first days of colonial America. Francis Higginbottom remarked on "infinite multitudes on every side of our ship," off the coast of Cape Ann on the 28th of June, 1629. ² Avid, even frenzied feeders, the mackerel were caught by baited hook. The technique was advanced considerably by invention of the mackerel jig, credited to Abraham Lurvey of Pigeon Cove in 1815.

Gloucester's sailing fleet extended its range to the bays and offshore banks of North America during the nineteenth century. The vessels sought to locate and sail into the middle of schools of fish. Men lined along the ship's rail jigging for mackerel.

In the middle of the century fisherman began to employ purse seines in the open ocean, attempting to row around a school of fish with wall of net, join the ends, and close the bottom of the cylinder into a 'purse' by means of a line running through rings at the weighted base of the net. The technique utilized square-sterned, lapstrake craft averaging 28 feet that resembled a ship's yawl boat.

Seine boat (rear), Higgins & Gifford Boat Yard
Photograph courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum

About 1857 the iconic form of the seine boat was developed at the Higgins & Gifford Boat Yard on the Gloucester waterfront. The proprietors had recently moved from the Cape Cod area, where whale boats carried lines and responsibilities that shaped the seine boat. ³ The thwarts of these new craft were located up forward to seat a powerful team of rowers who would double as the gang standing in ranks to pull in the net, which was piled in the rear. As the industry expanded the seine nets grew to lengths approaching 1500 feet, by 150 feet deep--tremendously heavy, especially if full of fish. ²

Lowering the seine boat from the schooner deck

Setting the seine net

Hauling the seine

Bailing mackerel from the seine ⁴

To accommodate the nets, the largest seine boats increased in length to nearly 40 feet. Like whaleboats they needed to tow and row well. In 1872 Higgins & Gifford converted the planking from lapstrake to carvel for greater speed and durability. Design subtleties improved their steadiness in the water as the fishermen moved vigorously in their different chores. The seine boat was sharpest forward, for speed, whereas the whale boat was sharpest aft, to facilitate backing away after the whale had been struck. ²  


Folly Cove netters, 1930s
William Hoyt Collection, Sandy Bay Historical Society



The Italian fleet at Folly Cove Pier, 1932
Photograph courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum

Seining vessels pursued mackerel inshore on a more modest scale. Diesel-powered boats replaced sailing craft in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and the seine boat gradually gave way to motorized tenders. 

Sources

1. "Pictures from the Past: Lanesville & Vicinity, volume 1," (CD) produced by the Lanesville Community Center, 2009.

2. Materials for a History of the Mackerel Fishery, ed. George B. Goode, The United States Bureau of Fisheries, 1883.

3. Erik Ronnberg, "Vincent's Cove in the 1870s; A Pictorial History of Gloucester Shipbuilding," Nautical Research Journal 41, December 1996.

4. American Fishermen, photographs by Albert Church, text by James Connolly, 1940.

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* lapstrake (clinker) built - with overlapped hull planking, like clapboard sheathing on a building