The Significance of Newfoundland Fishing Rights in the 1783 Treaty of Paris

Following the ratification of the Franco-American Alliance on February 6, 1778, France informed Great Britain that it had joined forces with America in its war with England. As an integral part of this arrangement, France and the United States had agreed that neither would form a treaty with Britain without the approval of the other. On the assumption that victory might be close at hand, France had also requested that Congress enlist the aid of Conrad Alexandre Gerard, the first Minister Plenipotentiary of France, to help delineate the terms of any subsequent peace arrangements.

The following year the Congressional delegates, along with Gerard, met in Philadelphia to review a number of potential treaty terms.[1] As a starting point for discussion on February 23, 1779, six items were suggested as “absolutely necessary for the safety and independence of the United States” together with six other items said to be negotiable.[2] Beginning on March 1 and ending five and a half months later (August 14), the committee as-a-whole met twenty-two times.

Of the twelve items under consideration, only three that eventually became part of the 1783 Treaty of Paris “provoked sharp controversy.”[3] These were the proposed boundary lines (Article Two), the Newfoundland fishing rights (Article Three) and the Mississippi River navigation rights (Article Eight). Of these, the Newfoundland fishing rights generated the most debate. Whereas the Committee discussed the right to navigate the Mississippi on only three occasions (March 17, 24, August 5) and the proposed boundary lines on five occasions (March 1, 17, 19, August 4,14), it debated the fishing rights on seventeen occasions (March 17, 22, 24, May 8, 12, 13, June 3, 19, 24, July 1, 17, 22, 24, 29, August 4, 5. 14). Needless to say, this emphasis on the importance of the Newfoundland fishing rights is striking, since before the war this was not an issue of concern.

Not only did these rights monopolize nearly 75 percent of the time allocated to all three items, when a further issue arose over the possible need for compromise during final negotiations to end the war with Britain, the significance of this one item became even more important. While the Commissioners were advised to allow certain adjustments to the boundary lines if this could lead a shortening of the war, they were specifically told not to allow any changes in America’s demand for the Newfoundland fishing rights even if this meant a prolongation of hostilities.[4] In fact, the Commissioners were also told that they were not to consent to any treaty “without an explicit stipulation on [Great Britian’s] part not to molest or disturb the Inhabitants of the United States of America in taking fish on the Banks of Newfoundland.”[5]

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In his comprehensive coverage of the lengthy negotiations surrounding the Treaty, historian Richard Morris in 1965 offered reasonable explanations for the rationale behind the American and the French needs to secure the proposed boundary lines as well as the navigation rights on the Mississippi River. Morris also offered the following synopsis of an important French reason for wanting the Newfoundland fishing rights.

It must be borne in mind that eighteenth-century statemen looked upon the fisheries as the nursery [training ground] of seamen and as holding one of the keys to a powerful maritime and naval establishment. In the light of this traditional point of view the French national interest in the North Atlantic fisheries seems perfectly comprehensible.[6]

The same was not true though for the Americans. Hampered by the limited evidence available at the time, Morris was unable to offer any American reasons for wanting these rights. Since Morris’s wirtings, important findings have come to light which means it is now possible to ask why, near the end of the negotiations on August 4, 1779, Congress resolved that

at the expiration of the war, [the United States] should continue to enjoy [once again] the free and undisturbed exercise of their common right to fish on the banks of Newfoundland.

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The Importance of the Newfoundland Fishing Rights

Since the fifteenth century, superlatives like the following written in 1497 have appeared in many reports depicting the abundance of cod off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland: “The sea is covered with fish which are caught not merely with nets but with baskets.”[7] This unprecedented abundance resulted from several factors. Aside from relatively warm water temperatures during the summer months, the Grand Banks are somewhat shallow, and the bottom surface is fairly rocky. Together this means that cod, as ground feeders, have an abundant food supply in the enormous number of invertebrates that inhabit this area. Cod also chiefly spawn in the summer when the temperature is ideal for hatching and are extremely prolific. A female forty inches long can produce around three million eggs while a fifty-two-inch cod can produce as many as nine million.[8]

New England fishing crews typically arrived at the Grand Banks around May or June, remain throughout the summer months and depart in the early fall after drying and salting their catch. In port the fish were sorted and prepared for shipment. Those deemed of superior quality were usually destined for European markets, the most prominent being the Iberian Peninsula.

Although extremely plentiful off the coast of Newfoundland, cod also were relatively plentiful off the coast of New England, especially Massachusetts. The first publication that permitted a direct comparison in profitability of cod caught off the coast of Newfoundland versus cod caught off the coast of Massachusetts appeared in 1981.[9] In the years preceding the American Revolution the amount of Newfoundland cod sold to Spain and Portugal was substantially greater than the amount of New England cod, also sold to Spain and Portugal, from either of the two major Massachusetts fishing ports, Salem and Boston. Stated in terms of profit margins, the sale of Newfoundland cod was nearly six times greater than the sale of New England cod exported from Salem, and nearly ten times greater than cod exported from Boston.

In addition, since cod are high in protein without being fatty, when dried and salted the inferior grades became an inexpensive food source on many of the slave-holding plantations in Virgina, Maryland, and the Carolinas as well as in the West Indies, with sales to the latter being even more profitable than sales to Southern Europe.[10] Nearly twice as much Newfoundland cod was exported and sold in the West Indies than was exported and sold in the Iberian Peninsula.[11] It has also been said that cod was literally worth its weight in gold “because of its long-standing reputation for bringing solid specie into London coffers.”[12]

On December 11, 1781, a delegation of Massachusetts cod-fishing merchants urged their representatives “to ensure that the common right of fishing in the Atlantic Ocean be secured to the United States whenever a Treaty of Peace shall be concluded.”[13] The delegation justified their request, not because their primary occupation was the fishing industry, but because it was widely accepted throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century that during wartime a highly skilled navy was essential to the defense of the country, and the best training grounds to man such a navy was the North Atlantic fishing region. The reason for enshrining the Newfoundland fishing rights in Article Three, however, did not emerge from this knowledge alone but from the terms in the Restraining Act.

The Impact of the Restraining Act

Approved by Parliament on March 21, 1775, the Restraining Act amounted to a “complete moratorium on the colonial New England cod fishing industry”:[14]

after July 20, 1775, all ships, &c. not belonging to G. Britain or Ireland, or the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, Sark, Alderney, or Man, fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, the coast of Labrador, in the gulf of St. Lawrence, or any other part of North America, or having on board material for such fishing, shall be forfeited together with her guns, furniture, etc. unless the master shall produce a certificate from a governor or commander in chief of the British North American colonies [granting such permission].[15]

Although the Crown had argued that the justification for the Act was in retaliation for the misdeeds of colonists in launching the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act Riots, recent findings suggest that this was not Britain’s major reason. Instead, a central factor was the need to eliminate the chief source of financial competition suffered by the British cod fishing industry located on Britain’s west coast, caused by the American cod fishing companies in New England.[16]

Both the New England companies and their British counterparts made heavy use of the Grand Banks fishing region as well as the Iberian Peninsula sales market, but it took only ten days for New England fishing vessels to arrive at the Grand Banks, whereas British fishing vessels needed around five weeks to arrive there.[17] This left British companies at a competitive disadvantage due to the extra wages and food required by their fishing crews which, in turn, needed to be factored into the British cod-selling prices once their vessels reached Spain and Portugal.

To deal with this matter, over the years Parliament had been subjected to considerable pressure from the four British fishing companies. By taking advantage of the recent uprisings in America, the Crown judged that now the time was right to justify implementing punitive measures requested by the British cod fishing industry to eliminate their New England competition. Hence, the real purpose of the Restraining Act was “a mercantilist attempt to regulate colonial commerce in such a way as to make colonial economic interests subordinate to similar interests in the mother country.”[18]

The Rationale for Article Three

The Congressional delegates were undoubtedly aware that once a treaty to end the war was signed and the Restraining Act was lifted, the competition between British and New England cod fishing could very well resume. If this occurred Great Britain once again could either enact legislation or simply tolerate behavior designed to harass American cod fishing companies in order to protect the west coast British cod fishing industry. Indeed, well before the war was over and in anticipation of just such a possibility, on August 14, 1779, Congressional representatives in France were advised to deliver a strong warning to Britain to avoid even any thoughts of this occurring:

if after the conclusion of the treaty or treaties which shall terminate the present war, [should] Great Britan . . . molest or disturb the subjects of the Inhabitants of the said United States in taking fish on the Banks, seas and places formerly used and frequented by them . . . [France] and the said United States shall make it a common cause, and aid each other mutually with their good offices their councils and their forces, according to the exigences of conjunctures as become good and faithful allies.[19]

The Congressional delegates, all lawyers, recognized that should this warning fail, the most appropriate means for preventing any future harassment would be to enshrine the Newfoundland fishing rights within the 1783 Treaty. If any of the British west coast fishing fleets subsequently attempted to bother the New England fishing companies, they would be acting in direct violation of an internationally recognized legal document. Such action would provide the United States, with the aid of France, the right to resume their war with Britain, which certainly would have not been in the Crown’s best interests.

In essence, although Articles Two and Eight were inserted in the Treaty of Paris to gain territory which the United States did not possess prior to the onset of the American Revolution, the same was not true for Article Three. Instead, Article Three was needed to protect a right which the Americans had always enjoyed prior to the Revolutionary War but could once again be lost owing to the highly competitive nature of the British west coast fishing industry.

[1] John J. Meng, “Antecedents of the Treaty,” The Treaty of Paris of 1783: Address in Commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of its Signing (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1935), 18.

[2] Journals of the Continental Congress, 13:241-243.

[3] Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965), 18.

[4] Worthington C. Ford, ed., The Journals of the Continental Congress, 34 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1905-37), 14:959-961.

[5] Ibid., 14:961.

[6] Morris, The Peacemakers, 14.

[7] Dean Bavington, Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse (Victoria, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 1.

[8] Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, revised edition, 1978), 3.

[9] James G. Lydon, “Fish for Gold: The Massachusetts Fish Trade with Iberia, 1700-1773,” The New England Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4 (1981), 545.

[10] Christopher P. Magra, The Fisherman’s Cause (London, England: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 38-39.

[11] John J. McCusker and R. R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 108 Table 5.2.

[12] Magra, The Fisherman’s Cause,107.

[13] Ibid., 218.

[14] Ibid., 150.

[15] Anonymous, “An account of the other restraining-act,” The Scots magazine, vol 37 (April 1775), 180.

[16] Magra, The Fisherman’s Cause, Chapter 7.

[17] Christopher P. Magra, The New England Cod Fishing Industry and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburg, 2006, 50.

[18] Magra, The Fisherman’s Cause, 144.

[19] Journals of the Continental Congress, 14: 965.