My Character by Katherine Pym

Now Available

When I began researching a good heroine for our Newfoundland story, I didn't think I'd find someone like Sara Andrews, later Lady Sara Kirke.

From the few historical texts that mention her, they confess she was one hell of a lady. Historians say after the arrest and subsequent death of her husband, Sara took the bull by the horns and for a good thirty years ran a very successful plantation (farm) in Ferryland, Newfoundland Labrador.

I haven't found any portraits of Sara Kirke. If there are any, they are locked away somewhere and off the internet grid. A pencil drawing of her husband exists but it's considered a modern rendering of what he may have looked like.

In 1638 David Kirke moved his family to an abandoned plantation named Province of Avalon, Ferryland, NL. (The term plantation was originally known as a colony, a settlement in a new land.) Ferryland is located on the coast southeast of St. John's. It has a natural harbor that kept ships afloat during storms.

The Kirkes settled in a nice stone house previously built for George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore. He moved to Ferryland thinking he could establish a Roman Catholic utopia, but after one hard winter and trouble with pirates, the myriad of fishermen who showed up on his shore, Baltimore threw up his hands and ran for the exit.

It took a lot of work to sustain a plantation household, that of their servants and fishermen who worked the sea, but Lady Sara Kirke was up to the task. She partnered with her husband and turned their plantation into a fishery. They owned several boats, salted fish and produced cod oil. They traded their products for wine and other sustainable goods with England and the Europe. Once the colonies of New England gained their footing, the Kirkes obtained goods from warmer climes down the Atlantic Coast.

After Sir David Kirke was arrested and returned to England, Lady Sara continued to work the plantation. Based on historical facts, Sara is considered North America's first and foremost entrepreneur, so no mewling babe here. When I built her character, I did not want to start with a shy, weak woman who over trials of life became strong and independent. I made her a force to be reckoned with from the get-go.

She came from a wealthy merchant’s family and married into another. I made her a partner in the Kirke’s wine business, had her outfit ships for sail to the New World, had her stand up to her husband’s gruff and stubborn ways. This made her capable for anything when she single-handed ran the Ferryland plantation, a single mother with three sons (there’s no record of her remarrying), where she had to contend with fishermen from so many nations who felt they could do what they wanted, when they wanted.

I came to like and respect Lady Sara Kirke, and am happy to have been a part of her story. 

Let’s Go Fishing by Katherine Pym

Release date July 1, 20017

I wrote “The End” on my first draft of Pillars of Avalon, a story of 17^th century Newfoundland, Canada. When I first started this project, I thought this would be difficult since settlers in the New World struggled to stay alive. They hunted, fished and peeked over big boulders to see if wild savages lurked in the distance, waiting to scalp them. 

How could I write a full novel of almost 95,000 words on episodes of crude survival that would numb the reader over time? It would make them think: Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live then. What a pain!

Then I came upon Sir David & Lady Sara Kirke. They were wine merchants living in London. King Charles I gave David and his brothers carte blanche (in the form of a letter of marque) to pillage and destroy French settlements along the Canadian coast. 

I thought, Oh good. A pirate story. I’ve always liked heroes with a slightly wicked bent. If one is too good, he/she is boring. 

But David Kirke was more than a king sanctioned pirate. While he pillaged and set ships afire along the St. Lawrence River, he was also a businessman. He saw opportunity wherever he went. One of those places was Ferryland, Newfoundland, where the fishing was supreme-o.

Fishing on the grand banks NL with icebergs

Men returned to England after a season along the grand banks and enthused how the waters teemed with fish. The cold waters were so crowded that to breathe, the fish jumped into fishing boats just to get away from the overwhelmingly packed seas. 

London and Dartmouth merchants leased ships of sail and traded goods like wine, clothing, and farm implements from England in exchange for dry salt fish and cod-oil. No money was to exchange hands. To transport money was illegal. Everything was traded, or supposed to be. When you see or read pirate stories, their chests filled with silver and gold coins, (if they are law abiding fellows) the money would have come from Spain or Portugal, France or any port of call in the Mediterranean. 

But I digress: 

Crude Fishing Equipment

Closer Look at one end

Boats with 5 men fished daily in the late spring to early autumn months. They were expected to haul in over 300 cod a day using the most primitive of tools. (In high summer, 1000 fishing boats could be in the water at the same time.) Cod could be as heavy as 120 lbs (54.43108 kg). Nets were apparently not used. Seins were used for the smaller schools of fish, like herring. 

Depending on the day and who did what, a fisherman would use this primitive device to haul upward to 100 fish per day. One would think the hemp line would slice through a leather glove and cut your hand. 

Every day, fish would be brought ashore to be processed. The fish would be gutted and beheaded by men called ‘Headers’. Cod livers would be thrown into barrels for cod-oil. The Header pushed the gutted fish to the ‘Splitter’ who opened the fish and removed the spine.

Notes have come down through the ages how quickly this could be done, up to “24 score in half an hour”.  If a team of gutters and splitters processed fish for 10 hours, that’s 9,600 fish per day—that’s one team. 

After the fish were gutted and salted, they were washed off in sea water, then laid flat on a rocky shore or flake. A flake is a low table covered with pine boughs or such which allow air to pass around the fish and dry uniformly. Boys would stand by, waving a large enough object to keep the flies away since maggots would destroy a dry salt crop.  

Fish Flakes covered with Cod

The calculations are like this: 

In the summer months, a period of 8-10 weeks, a crew of 5 would be expected to catch and cure 200 quintals (quintal=112 lbs or 50.80234kg of salt fish). That is an amount of 22,400 lbs/10,160.47kg of fish in a season. At 11 shillings per quintal (17th century prices), the merchants would garner several thousand pounds sterling per fishing boat per season. If a merchant owned several fishing boats, the numbers are staggering. 

Sir David & Lady Sara Kirke saw the potential and eventually went into the "sack" trade, where goods were traded for fish. They exploited this when they moved to Ferryland in 1638, and by the time of Sara's death in 1684 or 1685, she was a wealthy plantation owner. 

So, that’s one story line, but how many fishing tales are good for a long novel? Well, I found a whole bunch of other stories that filled the breach, which I will relate in another blogspot post. Very exciting.

 PILLARS OF AVALON will be released July 1, 2017. 

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Many thanks to WikiCommons, public domain and

Pictures of fishing lines, page 26, Fish Into Wine, The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century by Peter E. Pope (University of North Caroline Press, 2004