3-078-175 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Newfoundland Fishery Dispute: wharf at St. George's Bay, 1890. 'False alarming reports of an expected conflict between the French and British naval authorities on the west coast of Newfoundland, and the dispatch of British ships and troops from Halifax, Nova Scotia, were published on Monday, June 2, and were contradicted by our Ministers in Parliament that day. The French, who own the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon,...have, by the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, the Treaty of Paris, 1763, the Treaty of Versailles, 1783, and the Treaties of 1814 and 1815, a right to catch fish, and to erect huts and scaffolds, or stages, for drying fish on shore, along nearly half the seacoast of Newfoundland. They exercise this right chiefly towards the south-western extremity of the mainland, from Cape Ray to Burgeo and St. George's Bay, for the purpose of procuring herring, capelin, and squids, to be used as bait in the cod fishery,...far in the Atlantic, beyond the limits of British maritime sovereignty. The actual dispute is only between the French fishermen and certain English colonists who have recently started a local company for catching and potting lobsters on that shore. We are indebted to the Rev. Henry D. Nicholson for the Sketch'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.