What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?
More than 400 years ago, the first Islanders crossed the Atlantic ocean in search of pastures new (a new place/ activity that offers new opportunities). They went over in order to raid the cod-rich seas of the American and Canadian coast, which would then be sold later. (Merchants).
Its unclear when the first Europeans reached Canada, but it is thought to be Italian explorer John Cabot’s descriptions of ‘new found landes’ and a sea swarming with fish in 1497 that drew fishermen to the north of the continent. Around 1600, English fishing captains still reported cod shoals.
By the beginning of the 16th-century Basque fishermen were travelling to the region to fish and, by 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year to fish for cod. Channel Island fishermen were among these and by the 1750s they had set up lucrative trade routes between Canada, Europe and America, establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod. One of the biggest companies on the Gaspé coast was operated by Charles Robin, a Jersey merchant, who set up a fishing post at Paspebiac in 1767 after Canada passed to the English.
Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?
Jersey ships sailed to the Gaspé Coast in which they then salted and prepared the cod they had caught. The nearer the fishermen were to the coast, the harder it was to catch the cod, but Channel Islanders experience with coastal fishing made use of their skills. Some other ports they sailed to was on the Newfoundland and South America.
What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?
Cod from Canada produced by Jersey merchants was consumed by enslaved people. Jersey cod-merchants also exported cod-fish to British colonies in the West Indies and later Brazil too in exchange for plantation goods, such as sugar, molasses, rum, cotton, coffee and tobacco which it brought to markets in America, Europe and the UK (inc. Jersey). Within that context Jersey benefitted from the profits made in the British Empire build on a capitalist model of a slave-based economy.
To what extent, has the island of Jersey benefitted from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)?
Jersey was not a bystander in the transatlantic slave trade – but played an “active” and even “pioneering” role in it
Jersey had grown prosperous through its strong connections to the United Kingdom. People generated wealth from trading enslaved people. For example, the founder of New Jersey, Sir George Carteret. Some of the most common Jersey structures to end up involved with the salve trade were boats eg Speedwell, commandeered by Sir George Carteret’s son, James Carteret.
Jersey’s links with the slave trade “chiefly” stem from the mahogany industry. Mahogany was harvested using enslaved people. Many Jersey merchants either owned or traded in mahogany and some Jersey families even had mahogany plantations in British Honduras.