Migration

Seafaring, an activity taken up by the Brythonic tribes after their arrival in Brittany, has constituted one of the main aspects of Breton identity. The tribes first settled in the interior of Armorica where they practised agriculture and viticulture, but rural overpopulation and poor agricultural yields led them to the coastal area of Armor. By the fourteenth century, wheat and wine production in the interior along with development of the Breton salt marshes and the silk industry had led Brittany to begin to export its products by sea. This activity culminated in the sixteenth century when neighbouring regions vied for Breton products.

With the experience of the sea acquired from this coastal trade, Bretons turned to the fishery. While herring had made the fortune of seigneurs along the Breton coast throughout the Middle Ages, Breton fishers were now primarily interested in cod. Population was growing both in Brittany and in Europe as a whole, and cod, abundant and rich in protein, met the new nutritional needs of this larger population.

Once the fish stocks of the European coast were no longer enough to meet demand, Bretons looked out towards the open sea and quickly reached the coast of the New World. In 1508 the courts heard a dispute between two Norman merchants sharing the provisioning of a ship leaving for Newfoundland from Bréhat, an island off the Breton coast. Two years later a mutiny occurred on board La Jacquette, a fishing ship from the Breton port of Dahouet, as it was returning from a voyage to North America. Then in 1526 a Breton sailor, Nicolas Don, believed he had discovered new lands while fishing in the vicinity of Cape Breton.

The Breton sailor Jacques Cartier, whom King François I of France sent to North America in 1534 to take possession of the land in his name, reported the existence of numerous fishing stations on the Labrador coast. Revealingly, one of these stations was named Brest. Leaving from Saint-Brieuc, Paimpol, Erquy, Lannion, Croisic, Pornic, and Ploemeur, Breton sailors criss-crossed the Gulf of St Lawrence throughout the sixteenth century. The area around Cape Breton – the name is no accident – was familiar to them, and not far away they competed with the English in the Magdalen Islands.

The Breton fishing effort intensified in the seventeenth century, to the point where the port of Saint-Malo sent 112 fishing ships to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the year 1628 alone. Bretons not only fished on the high seas but also had harbours on the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, including some organized, although sometimes sparsely populated, fishing stations.

The preference of the Breton captains was for the northeast coast of Newfoundland, which they called the Petit-Nord. Between fifty and sixty ships – sometimes as many as seventy – made the voyage to that coast each year. That meant there were several thousand fishers at close quarters, and fierce battles for harbours ensued. In 1640 the shipowners of Saint-Malo asked the Parlement of Brittany to adopt a regulation covering the appropriation of coastal spaces.

Bretons also landed in southern Newfoundland, from Bonavista to Cape Race, an area they called the Coast of Chapeau Rouge. Every year they sent fifteen to twenty fishing ships, each drawing between 100 and 300 tons, to Chapeau Rouge. On the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, there were so many crews in 1662 that the shipowners once again were in the position of asking the Parlement of Brittany to regulate the allocation of drying spaces equitably.

After France lost Newfoundland in 1713 Breton shipowners sent their ships to the interior of the Gulf of St Lawrence, where their presence became increasingly prominent with time. Ten or twelve ships from Saint-Malo anchored off the coast of the Gaspé peninsula each year. This meant that each fishing season between 300 and 900 fishers, cutters, and salters worked to prepare the fish – 6,979 people in Gaspé in the decade of the 1720s alone.