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The Lonely Men of the Dories
Jay Cresswell has been in touch to tell us about some more video of the Grand Bankers of Portugal – see Comments in the left-hand column above left.
He’s also been in touch to say that within a few years, there will be as many as three restored four-masted schooners built in the 1930s for use in the Grand Banks fishing grounds.
But to return to the video, the material he has found is marvellous footage of the schooners, their wooden boats and the fishermen themselves – six sections of film titled The Lonely Men of the Dories – the link above goes to section 1, but the rest are linked below. By the way, don’t let the title you see in the Youtube pages worry you – the voiceovers are in English.
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 1
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 2
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 3
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 4
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 5
The Lonely Men of the Dories part 6
These are fanatastic! If these shots of a dory don't make you want to build one then nothing ever will!
You can see why Alfred Johnson and others that crossed the Atlantic towards the end of the 19th century chose dories for the job. Great stuff!
I have looked for countless years for rare video made on the Grand Banks Cod Dory fishermen, and finding it was a true 'windfall'. Since that time, fishing gear, ships, electronics and knowledge on where to fish for cod has made a quantum leap forward, but this gave a glimpse on how many cod were off the Grand Banks, and this was at the end of the great cod fishing in that region.
A true treasure of fishing history made here. I know of no other documentaries made on and about the foreign fishing fleets in the Atlantic, or how commercial fishermen existed on this vessels, barely removed from the way they fished a hundred or so years prior to when this was filmed.
A big THANK YOU for bringing this here!
EC Newell Man
SUPERB SITE VERY INFORMATIVE
The traditional cod fishery fed the poor of the world for 500years and was a substainable resource.Canada took control of the grand banks in 1949 and distroyed it in 50years