Fishermen Beat Pilgrims to New World

Long before the Pilgrims, a group of hardy English fishermen lived a rough life on islands off the New Hampshire coast. There was no turkey or pumpkin pie, just lots of fish, as big as 150 pounds.

The fishermen, who first lived in small shacks resembling overturned boats, didn’t even allow women. And unlike the travelers who landed at Plymouth Rock, these settlers didn’t keep enough records to make a big splash in history books.

“They were a lawless bunch, certainly not the staid Thanksgiving image we have when we think of Plymouth,” said Marcia Schmidt Blaine, who teaches at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire. “They were known as being rowdy. Later, people from the mainland didn’t want to associate with them.”

The settlement on the Isles of Shoals, about six miles off the coast at Portsmouth, has been documented through archeological studies and some records. But there are no detailed descriptions of everyday life. The fishermen didn’t keep voluminous diaries and apparently didn’t have pen pals.

“Primarily what we have is captains’ logs and shipping lists,” Blaine said. “A lot of what we know is hearsay.”

The fishermen, mainly from southwestern England, began spending summers on the islands in the late 1500s, said David Switzer, a Plymouth State professor. The Pilgrims settled what is now Plymouth, Mass., 70 miles to the south, in 1620.

“There were certainly white people here before the Pilgrims, but they were not here as people thinking about settling a village originally,” Switzer said.

Although the fishermen’s first permanent settlement may have been established before the Pilgrims landed, there is not enough proof to support that theory. An explorer’s account of a visit to Star Island indicates that a permanent settlement had existed there since at least 1622, said Bob Tuttle, president of the Isles of Shoals Historical and Research Assn.

The fishermen lived a rugged life, and captured huge codfish--up to 3 feet long and 150 pounds--dried them and sent them overseas, said John Hunnewell of the Isles of Shoals Steamship Co., which organizes tours of the islands.

Some historians believe that the fishermen--and their germs--were responsible for a plague that wiped out a significant number of Indians living along the coast between 1614 and 1616, Blaine said.

Records indicate that women were barred from the islands until at least 1647. That year, a man was taken to court for bringing his wife to live with him, and for owning pigs and goats.

The settlement grew to 600 by the mid-1600s, making it one of the largest and wealthiest communities in what is now New England, Hunnewell said. By 1660, settlers had turned from the seas to the forests on the mainland for their livelihood.

Today on the Isles of Shoals, tourists visit the White Island lighthouse, which is more than 200 years old, and researchers work at the Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island. As for Star Island, a hotel built in the 1870s draws annual church conferences.

With no agriculture to speak of, it is unlikely that the fishermen had any kind of harvest feast like the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving until much later, when they brought their families and settled in what is now Dover, Rye, Exeter and Portsmouth, Tuttle said.