Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 186

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(MASSACHUSETTS.) Long run of letters from a hard-pressed Cape Cod codfishing captain to his ship's owners. 30 Autograph Letters Signed from Captain E.L. Jerauld to brothers Edward F. and Charles W. Potter of Dartmouth, MA; most about 8 x 5 inches, generally minor wear. East Harwich, MA and elsewhere, 1878-1886
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Additional Details

Ensign Lewis Jerauld (1834-1917) was a fishing boat captain in East Harwich, MA, at the elbow of Cape Cod. His correspondents were brothers Edward Freeman Potter (1839-1914) and Charles William Potter (1848-circa 1899), who owned several fishing and whaling vessels out of Dartmouth, MA. In these letters, Jerauld solicits the command of the codfishing schooner Racine and then reports on his activities to the owners over a period of several years. He describes the advantages and costs of hand-line fishing using clams as bait on 3 February and 24 March 1879. His first report from out of port was 2 June 1879 from remote Sable Island, a hundred miles south of Nova Scotia. While back in port, he checked in on Potter's tenants and cranberry bogs: "On one lot I found only 3 berries, the vineworm having spoiled the vines; the other lot is very lightly fruited, it being overgrown with grass and rushes" (23 September 1879). 5 June 1881 found him at Bank Quereau off Maine, contending with gales, scarcity, and a sea "covered with French vessels." The next year he went out again "carrying 10 boats and 11 hands," hoping to receive a new seine net which "will run three years without much expense except a little tar to preserve the twine." On 22 February 1882 he expressed disappointment at the lack of proceeds from sale of fish: "My crew (or sharesmen) are dissatisfied and have obtained legal advice . . . and will hold you responsible for their part of loss. . . . My crew are all of them poor men and need what money they have made for family use." On 19 February 1883 he requests gear: "Get No. 13, Job Johnson's hook. Such hooks as I had last season I won't have. They were manufactured in Connecticut and good for nothing." After another poor payout, Jerauld wrote on 5 March 1885: "How about us poor fishermen that have been down to the Banks and eat fogg, endured the hardships of a fisherman life, spent our time & the result of which is worse than nothing." He concludes with a full-page sketch of the ship's seine net. In the final April 1886 letter, facing increasing difficulty in wresting profit from the cod fishery, Jerauld has arranged to sell Potter's boat and seine for $125.

WITH--3 letters to Edward Potter from other ship captains, George E. Gould and Thomas Kendrick, 1875-1882.