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This interactive dashboard correlates North Atlantic Fishery Catch Averages with the sites of major naval battles between 1563 and 1802.
The European discovery of the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas in the fifteenth century inaugurated the age of mercantile capitalism, opening the world’s oceans and their fisheries as major theatres of commerce and war.
From the fifteenth century, a naval arms race between England and the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal led to the creation of massive Man ‘O Wars—“ships of the line” with three masts, square rigs, and at least sixty guns: “by the late sixteenth century, European warships had become large, heavy cannon platforms, built to withstand enemy fire more than to evade it. They were as large as any wooden ships ever built, as much as two thousand tons.”
Atlantic fisheries served as naval training centres for Britain, France, and the rebellious Continental Congress and were transformed into theatres of battle during Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713 CE), the Seven Year’s War (1657–1763CE), and the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783 CE).
Bourgeoning imperial and mercantile wars over “New” World fisheries, and territories led to an unprecedented need for oak and other hard timber.
“At the beginning of the eighteenth century the building of a warship could consume 4,000 trees and for smelting iron. Forests were being depleted faster that they could regrow.”
The Grand Banks Bio-Engine Battle (1762)
Grand Banks bathymetry and British-French cod Landings 1700–1900
Upper Left: Visualization of Augustine Fitzhugh’s 1693 A chart of the coasts of Newfoundland.
Blue dots: English offshore boats.
Red dots: French fishery ships.
Lower right: 1762 French attack on Newfoundland near St. John’s.
Newfoundland and the Grand Banks emerged as a contested ecotonic and economic theatre, pitting the British against the French in a conflict that would not be resolved until the Seven Years War (1756–1763). Augustine Fitzhugh’s A chart of the coasts of Newfoundland, with the fishing districts marked, a platt adorned with two elaborate compass-roses, weaponized the Grand Banks fishery with blue and red flag symbols to differentiate the small, inshore Newfoundland fishing boats from the large, surrounding offshore vessels to shape the English public perception that French fleets were encroaching upon the crown’s fishing waters. This 1693 chart followed the 1692 anonymous staging of a revised version of a William Shakespeare drama titled The Tempest of Enchanted Island as the war was reaching its conclusion. At the end of the play, Prospero, restored as the rightful Duke of Milan, proclaims, with a prophetic resonance:
… I have bedimmed
The noontide sun called forth the mutinous winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread- rattling thunder
Have I given fire.
The Tempest, Act V, Scene I.
In June 1762, the French captured St John’s, Newfoundland, burning English vessels and fishery infrastructure. However, coinciding with The Tempest’s restaging in September, the British counterattacked, bringing its “roaring war” and “dread-rattling thunder” to life by recapturing Newfoundland and securing the Grand Banks, as illustrated by Fitzhugh’s chart, as an essential ecological cog and economic jewel in the colonial machinery of a growing global empire.
Source: Charles Travis (2024) Environment as a Weapon: Geographies, Histories, Literature. Springer Press.
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