The Lunenburg waterfront as a place of drawing sustenance, livelihood and security from the sea began centuries ago for peoples living along her shores. Our inner harbour is a pretty well protected bay (can be rough in south east gales) with good anchor holding. Once known as Merligueche back in Mi’kmaq and Acadian times, Lunenburg Harbour has a gently sloping shore where first native canoes, then colonial shallops were drawn up and later, magnificent wooden square-rigged ships, trading and fishing schooners were built and launched. Construction of stone-crib wharves jutting out into deeper water allowing vessels to tie up, to fit out, load and discharge, began with the town’s formal founding in 1753 and grew as the ‘Foreign Protestants’ – German, Swiss and Monbeliard farmers recruited by the British to settle here – gradually turned their attentions from the poor and rocky soil to an abundant sea.
courtesy of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic
For over 200 years, fishing and less well known today but extremely important in the earlier days, ships that conducted deep-sea trade, under sail defined the waterfront of Lunenburg. Trading and then fishing created the wealth that would later come from fishing alone and take that industry to legendary heights, indelibly burning into a collective self image a society who identified strongly with the sea.
Blue water trading in locally-built wooden sailing ships to Europe, the West Indies, South America, and the “Boston States” and further afield created the wealth and pride of place that resulted in the building of the famed homes and buildings of the Old Town, resulting in the celebrated architectural presentation of the community we know today. But these beautiful 18th and 19th century homes and buildings are a little like the dinosaur tracks and fossils one can find; magnificent in themselves, but the true glory is what is now gone, the dinosaur himself. Or almost gone, as Lunenburg is still a seaport and refuses to give up that which created her architectural glory; wresting her living from the sea. Famous indeed were the men who sailed these ships; the “Bluenose” mates and crew of many an American or British or Canadian deepwater windjammer. Enterprise was what built this beautiful town on the hill, seagoing enterprise and hard work. And this deep sea trading under sail provided the capital that built and grew the fishing schooner fleet creating the oft referred to “golden age” of this waterfront; a time associated with magnificent fishing schooners, most notably the famous fishing and racing Schooner Bluenose.
In due course the motorized draggers took over from sail, still built locally and with them, a move to larger and larger fish companies and vessels. Yet, the waterfront remained, and this is key, a diversified mix of fishing, boat building, repair, refit and outfitting. There were sailmakers and rigging lofts, blacksmiths and block makers, machine shops and chandleries. And, yes, taxis, pubs, eateries, hotels, lawyers, hardware stores, lawyers, doctors, dentists, cobblers, schools and so on.
In 1917, our Dory Shop was established to build dories for the hundreds of fishing schooners from not just Lunenburg, but up and down the shores of Nova Scotia and across the Maritimes. Even Gloucester schooners routinely put into Lunenburg to hoist aboard a stack of Lunenburg dories. Our predecessors selected a pair of old fish stores in which to set up shop. Fish stores used to pepper harbours from Massachusetts and Maine to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, through Newfoundland and Labrador in the days of salt cod fishing from dories. The schooners would bring in their catches of cod, gutted, headed, split and ‘green salted,’ and packed in the holds of the vessels. Once unloaded at their wharf these fish would be rinsed and re-salted and set out to dry in the sun, being flipped regularly to dry and cure evenly. Every night all of these fish had to be stored inside to avoid the damp or rain, hence the name, fish stores. It took about two weeks to properly cure fish this way. These fish stores also stored various fishing gear.
courtesy of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic
Building dories in a former fish store allowed for easy launch and delivery of the boats – just push them out the door into the harbour! The Dory Shop was also a boat yard where smaller craft were hauled up for repair and small Tancook-style inshore fishing, freighting and maybe smuggling schooners were built – just as we are building two, 48-foot schooners today. Quite a sight it is too!
Over time and due to a decent road to and from Halifax, deep sea trading out of Lunenburg faded. No matter, fishing was going stronger than ever and fishing and its support industries became virtually the sole businesses of Lunenburg. Over time things change, as things are want to do. Fishing schooners with their ecologically passive form of hook and line fishing gave way to bottom and mid-water dragging, even over the protests in the 1930′s of the voices of Nova Scotian dory trawling/schooner fishermen’s associations predicting that these new methods of harvesting the sea would result in declining fish stocks within a couple of generations. Dry-docks, block makers, net makers and dory builders all still had work. With the decline of the ground fishery in the early 1990s, offshore fishing came to mean scalloping. Big changes came in the late 1900s with consolidations to the fishing and scalloping industry. But until recently all these fish draggers and scallopers needed dories too, as dories were recognized as excellent deep sea boats in the hands of a North Atlantic fisherman. And so our Dory Shop built dory after dory, hundreds of them, even thousands. And there were three dory shops in town back in the schooner days; all spitting out the Lunenburg Dory with her particular rocker and full knee frames, making her stronger and more durable than many others. Every waterfront fishing town had their dory builders. The Dory Shop of Lunenburg, nestled right on the waterfront of Lunenburg, her ‘fish stores’ and boatyard grounds unchanged, alone remains as the last original, never relocated, never amalgamated, nor merged, steadily sending dories out the doors.
courtesy of the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic
In 2003 the big scalloping company that had gathered up much of the quota and thus the shore facilities of several other fishing firms was moving into larger, more modern vessels that all hoped would be a less grueling way of making a living at sea for the men. But these new large automated ships had outgrownLunenburg Harbour. The company needed to divest itself of its Lunenburg holdings. No need to own all these eight wharves and large wood frame warehouses as charming as they might be on postcards or tourist posters for Atlantic Canada. This created a rare opportunity, though it did not immediately feel that way to many. There was fear of some wealthy unnamed offshore entity with no sensitivity to the town’s unique heritage or its social and economic fabric coming in to purchase the properties on spec. There was fear of the insensitive development experienced in other waterfront communities. There was concern for the community’s economy, its identity and culture, and its appeal as a place to live; all these things relate to the town’s status as a working waterfront community. It turns out that this fear of the offshore company buying the whole place up was without foundation- because none wanted it. The other concerns remain. And we in Lunenburg are working quietly and diligently to rebuild the working waterfront not to what it once was but to what it can be – drawing upon the principle that made it work for so long ago - a good place to conduct waterfront businesses amongst a rich diversity of trades. Today we still have a very successful deep sea scallop fishing company, lobster boats, metal boat builders, a shipyard, wooden and fiberglass boat-builders, block-makers, riggers and sail lofts and we at The Dory Shop, well, we keep building dories, as well as skiffs, punts and prams, fixing boats up and, yes, we are also building schooners. Really cool schooners.
D. Moreland
