Contested and Dangerous Sea: North Atlantic Fishermen, Their Wives, Unions, and the Politics of Exclusion

Abstract

In this concise, engaging study, Colin J. Davis explores the history of a neglected group of workers—transatlantic fishermen. The study compares the problems and political activities of New England and British fishermen after World War II, when foreign competition and technological innovations threatened the men's livelihoods as well as the health of Atlantic Ocean fisheries. Fishermen's trade unions and wives helped to confront these threats, with uneven levels of success. This working-class drama unfolds gradually, and it speaks to major themes in social and labor history.The drama begins with an overview of the North Atlantic fishing business. The book's opening chapter discusses the types of fish that men harvested and areas of the seas where the fish were found. It also describes daily routines and job hierarchies on modern fishing vessels, whose large trawls collected fish by the ton. At that point, the book brings the hazards of deep-sea fishing into sharp relief. Working on a constantly moving trawler for long periods of time presented enormous challenges. Injuries and fatalities were relatively high in this line of work, especially during stormy weather. Trawlers sometimes capsized at sea and entire crews perished.Fishermen's unions struggled valiantly to protect their members’ interests, but only those of the New Englanders had much success. The reason was partly structural. Ignoring old craft traditions, the Americans established unions that included skippers and engineers as well as deckhands and cooks. As a result, the men had more power vis-à-vis shipowners than their British counterparts did. On both sides of the Atlantic, however, getting fishermen to support union goals proved challenging. The men were often at sea and rarely wanted to spend their shore time involved in union activities. Trade union leaders were typically more militant than the rank and file, and union victories hinged largely on their own dedication and hard work.Unlike other labor studies, this book shows how workers’ wives helped to solve industry-wide problems. In chapter 4, for example, readers learn how a group of British women who had lost their husbands at sea protested the lack of safety standards in the fishing business. Speaking publicly about the problem, the women complained that British trawlers often headed out to sea without reliable communication equipment, or even basic medical supplies. The women's speeches drew nationwide attention and eventually shamed shipowners and lawmakers into improving safety conditions. In New England, fishermen's wives created local organizations that highlighted the importance of fishing to coastal economies and thus justified the exclusion of foreign fishing fleets from coastal waters. In 1976, the women garnered support for the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation Act, which significantly extended America's territorial fishing limits and thereby protected their husbands’ jobs.The politics of exclusion occasionally sparked international conflicts. Two chapters of this book discuss “cod wars” that pitted Iceland against foreign fishing fleets. The first of these conflicts began in 1958 after Iceland extended its fishing limits from three to twelve miles, and the second started in 1973 when the island nation stretched the limits to fifty miles. British fishermen had worked along Iceland's coast for generations and initially refused to recognize the new limits. From the British perspective, no nation had the right to exclude fishermen from coastal waters, at least not beyond the traditional three-mile limit. Throughout these conflicts, Icelandic gunboats harassed British fishermen and often cut their fishing nets. When the British navy intervened, the gunboats raced alongside naval ships and even sideswiped a few. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflicts dragged on for months, and the “wars” ultimately proved costly to the entire British fishing industry.In these struggles for markets and job security, the New Englanders had distinct advantages over the British. To begin with, New England's coastal waters were ideal fishing grounds, and American fishermen as well as their supporters viewed those fisheries as their own. The Americans also benefited from the anticommunist rhetoric of the postwar era. In Congress, lawmakers described Soviet fishing fleets in the North Atlantic as another front in the Cold War, and thus another reason to protect fishermen's interests. Moreover, the Americans had a more diverse and powerful coalition of supporters than the British did. As the postwar period drew to a close, New Englanders consequently felt a sense of optimism that eluded the British.Contested and Dangerous Seas is an interesting and valuable study, but the work is fairly short, and some of its story lines deserve more attention. The book's conclusion is only two pages long and ignores a few key topics and themes. It says nothing about the relevance of technological innovations in commercial fishing, for example, or the role of international courts and organizations in fishing disputes. There are useful tables and charts within the book but no maps or illustrations, which leaves much to the reader's imagination. A few images of toiling fishermen and trawlers at sea would have enlivened this study, and even a single map of the North Atlantic would have placed it in better context. The book's brevity is refreshing, however, and anyone interested in the history of the Atlantic world would likely enjoy it.