146	Perspectives in American History

output of their shipbuilding yards.37 Salem and (after i^fiy) Mar-
blehead had long been major exporters of cod to Ihma but failed
to develop much of an import trade from Britain^8 By the third
quarter of the eighteenth century most fishern*en had long since
deserted expensive Boston. Between 1771 and 1775, 121 vessels
(14,020 tons) with 4,059 men were engagea in the Massachusetts
whale fishery: of these, only five vessels/^oo tons) with 260 men
came from Boston.39 During 1765-1775, 665 vessels (25,630 tons)
with 4,405 men were engaged in the Massachusetts cod fishery: of
these none were of Boston.40 M^rblehead and Gloucester to the
north continued the great centers of the cod fishery, while Salem
shared in its export trade. Whn the growing volume of the fishery,
local traders had gradually been accumulating the capital and com-
mercial knowledge whichoy the 1740*5 enabled them to act inde-
pendently of their erstyhile great friends in Boston. By the 1760*5
these ports shipped aM their cod directly to southern Europe and
the West Indies (a/Salem had been doing for a century) and not
through Boston/What little cod the Boston port district did ex-
port must havycome from the fishing villages to the southward or
been purchased in Newfoundland. Boston merchants may have
had an interest in these shipments from Gloucester and Marblehead
and Salem, as they had in some from Newfoundland to Iberia, but
this created little activity or employment at Boston.41

Boston's slippage was less marked in shipbuilding than in fishing.
The Bailyns have analyzed the Boston shipping register of 1697-

37. Cf. note 24.

38. On Salem and vicinity, see William I. Davisson and Dennis J. Dugan, "Commerce
in Seventeenth-Century Essex County, Massachusetts," Essex Institute Historical Collec-
tions, 107 (1971), 113-142.

39. Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America
(Hartford, Conn., 1816), pp. 78-79. By 1787-1789, employment in the Massachusetts
whale fishery had declined to i ,611 men, of whom 78 served on Boston vessels. Appendix
C shows only 37 fishermen on Boston's tax lists in 1790. They probably worked close by
for the local market.

40. Ibid., p. 74.

41. During 1768-1772 the customs district of Salem and Marblehead sent 103,700
quintals of dried fish p.a. to soudiern Europe, while Boston sent only 10,321; the former
sent 87,904 qu. p.a. to the West Indies, while the latter sent only 58,193. The shipments
from Boston came not from the town but from the fishing villages to the southward in
the same customs district. PRO Customs 16/1.