The New International Encyclopædia/Fishing Bounties

FISHING BOUNTIES. It was the policy of the English Government to encourage the fisheries, as schools for seamanship, in order that the navy might be readily manned in times of emergency. In the reign of Edward VI. we find statutes compelling people to keep the fast days of the old Church, although Protestantism had already been introduced. This was to keep up the demand for fish. A statute of Elizabeth went further, and removed all import and export duties from fish, and another statute of the same reign encouraged by similar exemption the Iceland trade in herring and cod. In the eighteenth century this legislation had its desired effect of excluding the Dutch from the fishing trade in England, except in the case of the whale fisheries. To meet the latter difficulty, bounties were offered in 1733 and again in 1740 and 1749 to the owners of vessels engaged in the whale fisheries. These bounties were considerable, amounting in 1755 to £55,000, but they did not have the desired effect of increasing the industry.

Following these precedents and others of Colonial times, the American Congress offered bounties to promote the fishing industry. In 1789 bounties were given for the export of dried, salted, and pickled fish; these were increased in 1797 and 1799. An act of 1792 offered extensive bounties to vessels engaged in the cod fisheries of Newfoundland. They varied from $1.50 to $2.50 on the ton, according to the size of the vessel, three-eighths of which went to the owner and the rest to the fishermen. These bounties were finally abolished in 1854. Consult: Statutes of the Realm, 2 and 3 Edward VI., c. 19, 5 Elizabeth, c. 5; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (Cambridge, 1892), i. 443-444; ii. 21-22, 115-116, 282-284. For American legislation, consult United States Statutes at Large, i. 229 sq., 260, 533, 692.