Passage III

Lobster Lore

In the early seventeenth century, lobsters were plentiful among the New World. They could be gathered by hand in shallow waters or caught by the dozens in nets tossed over the sides of boats.After heavy storms, for example, shorelines were often littered with lobsters, sometimes in piles two feet high. Among European colonists—though—plenitude did not lead to popularity.

Apocryphal stories have overemphasized this idea that lobster was rarely eaten by choice. They claim that servants' contracts specified limits as to how often servants would partake of lobster and that Boston dockworkers went on strike, fed up with the indignity of being forced to eat lobster as often as three times a week. Snippets of quotations are often spun to bolster such stories of colonists' disdain for the crustacean. When welcoming a new boat of colonists in 1622,William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, confessed, some say, to his humiliation at having to serve lobster. But what he expressed was regret over serving it, "without bread or anything else but a cup of fair water." The message was this: Lobster was plentiful. It was a good source of protein.

These stories present an exaggerated truth. (38) With so much lobster and so little else, colonists indeed tired of lobster. They preferred using it as fishing bait to seeing them on their dinner tables. In Europe, however, lobster was scarce, expensive, and in high demand. Soon, technological innovations would soon allow New Englanders to profit from their lobster wealth.

Specialized boats, called smacks, were constructed to enable lobstermen to catch and hold large numbers of live lobsters. With improvements in canning methods in the mid-1800s meant that lobster could be preserved and shipped to people far from the New England coast. Lobster pounds soon dotted the shoreline. The once-plentiful but poorly appreciated lobster eventually becoming a mainstay of the New England economy. Who knew?