By the beginning of the 16th-century Basque fishermen were travelling near Canada to fish. Basques were fishermen and sailors which had greater expertise and a specialised group within whaling and fishing, controlling the fishery along la haute main (northeast coast) for over a century. By 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year in order to fish for cod.

This methodology of sea travel in order to fish for food intrigued the Jersey people alongside the Channel Islands, for example Guernsey, to get involved greatly as lucrative trade routes were and still are, crucial to Jersey’s survival. This pioneered the development of fishing tactics for Jersey fisherman alongside finding ways to ease the imports of food Jersey receives. Because of this, Jersey’s food production economy has shrunk over coming years, resulting in potatoes being near enough the only food source grown and sold – 98% of food sources being imported on vessels from the UK and Europe.

The sea has become a large factor within Jerseys culture, identity, geography, history and economy and has intrinsically helped shaped these.

During the Middle Ages, a large sum of piracy/raiding took place by Vikings, causing jersey to employ many Viking words within the old Norman-French language of Jèrriais to do with fishing, farming, ships and the sea. These include:

• bete, bait, beita ;
• dranet, draw-net, dragnet;
• flie, a limpet, flie;
• greer, to rig, greidi;
• haler, to haul, hala;
• crabe, a crab, krabbi;
• mauve, a seagull, mar.

Piracy in the Channel Islands concluded when Sark became colonised in 1563 by Hellier de Carteret, leaving some pirates hiding out in isolated French and English bays, some sailing up from places such as Turkey too in order to ransom valuable captives or keep them as slave workers.

INVOLVEMENT OF JERSEY MARINERS:

The fishermen of the Channel Islands, many from Jersey, had set up lucrative trade routes between Canada, Europe and America by the 1750s, establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod.  The Gaspé Coast is an area which follows along the St. Lawrence River extending from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This area provided great ease when fishing in the open sea, available at any time of year however fishing closer to the coast was a more difficult task, allowing the Jersey fishermen to obtain great catches.

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. After the American Revolution had died down, he took advantage of the lack of competition to set up a fishing monopoly in 1783 to reap the benefits of the cod trade.

Within Gaspé, despite the fact they were a minority, the Jersey community settled it nicely, speaking Jèrriais in their businesses and day to day lives, almost transforming the Gaspé coast between these years into a Jersey colony. The Jersey people became the economic giants of Quebec. Alongside this, islanders would receive concessions from the people of Newfoundland or the Gaspé coast such as the dried cod produced as well as cloth, wine, wool, leather and household goods. 

However, this would all come to an abrupt ending when problems concerning finance and the disappearance of the cod trade appeared, causing a dwindling of this renowned Jersey fishing company. In the 1870s and 1880s they suffered a credit crunch, as the Jersey banks crashed leaving many companies in huge debt. For example, the Jersey Banking Company crash in 1883, came about due to the bank manager, Philip Gosset, gambling with the funds – a bank of which many Canadian-Jersey companies had borrowed heavily from.

When the banks crashed, vast sums that had been made during the fishing monopoly years were wiped out. The credit system, where fishermen would receive all they needed from the company insured against future catches, also left many workers heavily in debt to their employers. This meant the end of these monopoly trading years.

Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?

The effort towards building harbours didn’t become a concern until the late 17th century, with work beginning on the islet of St Aubins building a pier. It was the 18th century when St Aubins harbour was finally constructed, followed by the development of building a port in St Helier too, however this only began to develop as a port properly towards the 19th century due to the need to raise capital. This then sent forth the movement to developing stone piers at La Rocque, Bouley Bay, Rozel, to accommodate the oyster boats, alongside Gorey which took passenger traffic from Normandy.

What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?

The Jersey merchants exported their findings of cod to places like the West Indies, the Caribbean and other British Colonies to trade for plantation goods. This consisted of sugar, molasses (a thick syrup that people use as a sweetener), rum, tobacco and cotton alongside oils, skins and several types of fur.

In order to export the cod, the fish were dried, salted and dispatched in various wooden tubs weighing about 112lbs. This procedure was done as it meant that the fish would be preserved longer and wouldn’t arrive in an unacceptable state.

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)?

During these times, many Jersey merchants either owned or traded using mahogany, tending to have mahogany plantations in British Honduras – a crown colony south of Mexico renamed to Belize in 1973. The mahogany industry was built through enslaved peoples harvesting, dragging and rolling felled mahogany trunks to riverfronts, then floating the logs, which were chained together, to ships waiting in bays full of sharks and coral reefs.

For example, Sir George Carteret – founder of New Jersey, was a founder of the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa where he would trade in enslaved people, ivory and gold. As well as this, Aaron de St Croix and brothers, James and Clement Henry and Co, George Mauger, Francis Valpy, Francis Alexandre Bradley and George Le Geyt were identified as being part of the mahogany industry.

This trade connection was provided through boats and ships, one being the Speedwell. For example, leaving London in 1663, the Speedwell initially picked up 302 enslaved people at Offer, Benin, followed by the selling of 155 men, 105 women and 22 boys to plantations in Barbados by March 1664. This was only just the start of the hundreds of trades of enslaved people which would take place.