Catalog entry

Done Fudging (or "Done Fudgin'" or "Dunfudgin'") refers to an area along the Annisquam River, just west of the old Meetinghouse Green. It is now the heavily trafficked site of Grant’s Circle, the first rotary in Gloucester after crossing the Route 128 bridge. It was an area central to transportation in Lane’s time, as it is now. Washington Street came to it from the harbor, traversed the Green, and headed north to Riverdale and Annisquam. The train tracks from Boston crossed the Annisquam River at this point after running along the side of the river, initially on a trestle and later on an earth embankment still in use today. There was a town landing for boats that landed all manner of goods and people moving up and down from Annisquam and Ipswich Bay or crossing onto Cape Ann from West Gloucester.

The name refers to the poling of river craft often necessary in the narrow river because of unfavorable wind or tidal flow. It’s a muddy bottom all along the Annisquam River, and poling a boat was called "fudgin'." There is a strong tidal current coming from both directions, from the south and Gloucester Harbor through the Cut and down the river from Ipswich Bay to the north. The tidal flows meet at Done Fudging. If you were “fudgin'” south against the tide draining into Ipswich Bay, when you reached the area of Done Fudging, the draining tide would change direction and carry you effortlessly out to Gloucester Harbor. Or vice versa, either way when you reached that point you were “done fudgin'." The river also broadens out at this point so at a full tide with a decent wind, sails could be raised and the fudgin’ poles put away, at least for a while.

Lane drew and painted a number of pictures from this spot. It must have been relatively easy for him to get there by carriage from the harbor. One of his early residences, Whittemore House on Washington Street, was only a half mile or so away. In contrast to the constant bustle of the harbor, Done Fudging was a peaceful and verdant place. The small farms with their trees and meadows stretched along both sides of Washington Street, while the salt marsh running along the Annisquam River went from emerald green in summer to gold in fall and brown in winter.

Lane did several views looking west upriver from Done Fudging, such as Looking up Squam River from Done Fudging, 1850s (inv. 26). The two most intriguing are nearly identical and include apparent self portraits of the artist (one with crutches, one without) sitting on a rock and drawing the river scene in the company of several large cows (see New England Inlet with Self-Portrait, 1848 (inv. 77)).

Today, the public landing at Done Fudging is one of the City of Gloucester’s most popular and heavily used public landings. It is located adjacent to Gloucester High School and has a small boat launching ramp which is accessed by a paved road.

The term “wherry”—variously spelled—has a long history with many hull types, some dating from the fifteenth century. (1) The version known to Lane appears to be a variant of the dory hull form and probably was developed by French and English fishermen in the Newfoundland fisheries before 1700. (2) From that time, the wherry and the dory co-evolved, their similarities the result of their construction, their differences the result of use. By the early nineteenth century, their forms reached their final states, if fragments of contemporary descriptions are any indication. (3)

By the time Lane was depicting wherries, the type (as used for fishing) resembled a larger, wider version of a dory. The extra width was due to greater bottom width (both types had flat bottoms), with a wider transom at the stern instead of the narrow, v-shaped “tombstone.” These features are easy to see in one of his drawings (see Three Men, One in a Wherry (inv. 225)) and a painting (see Sunrise through Mist, 1852 (inv. 98)), the latter depicted alongside a dory, clearly showing the differences.

No published descriptions of the uses of wherries on Cape Ann in Lane’s time have come to light, but an example in broadside view offers one use. In Becalmed Off Halfway Rock, 1860 (inv. 344), a pinky (in right foreground) has a dory and a wherry in tow, the latter loaded with a gill net for catching mackerel. (4) The greater size of the wherry is required for stowing the net, as well as setting it while the dory tows away one end to set it in way of the mackerel school.

In Lane’s time, wherries would have been used where bulky gear was called for in the coastal fisheries, i.e. gill nets, and fish traps such as pound nets, fyke nets, and lobster traps. Migrating fish schools (herring, mackerel) and shellfish were the target species.

The dory’s development was first dictated by its use in shore fishing, where small size and light weight made it easy to maneuver around rocks and shallows, and to haul ashore at the end of a day’s work. Its simple design made it easy and cheap to build. This is borne out by the standardized construction and sizes used by Simon Lowell’s boat shop at Salisbury Point, Massachusetts at the turn of the nineteenth century. Lowell called his boats “wherries,” but in Swampscott, Massachusetts, the fishermen, who used them called them “dories,” which may mark the beginning of the latter term’s wider use. (5)

The dories we see in Lane’s paintings are in virtually every way like the ones we know today. One of the best examples (see View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94)) even shows interior detail, including frames, leaving no doubt about its construction. Other good examples are found in Salem Harbor, 1853 (inv. 53), View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97), and Sunrise through Mist, 1852 (inv. 98).

For inshore fishing, dories were used to catch mackerel and herring, either with hook and line or with small nets. Hooks and line were used for flat fish (flounder, dab, and fluke), rock cod, hake, and cunner. Eels were speared (see View from Kettle Cove, Manchester-by-the-Sea, 1847 (inv. 94)), clams were dug, and lobsters trapped. In Lane’s later years, the use of dories in trawling (setting long “trawl lines” with many baited hooks) was in its earliest. This method required six to ten dories carried on board a schooner to fish on the distant banks off New England and Canada. Early records of dory trawling in New England are fragmentary, giving the mid-1840s as the time of introduction. (6) The Gloucester-owned schooner "Anna"  made a successful dory trawling trip to the Grand Banks in 1854, but no depiction of this vessel by Lane has been found or recorded. (5) Despite successful early efforts, dory trawling from Gloucester was slow to be accepted, and the fishery had very limited growth prior to 1860. (7)

– Erik Ronnberg

References:

1. M.H. Parry et al., Aak to Zumbra (Newport News, VA: The Mariners’ Museum, 2000), 634.

2. John Gardner, The Dory Book (Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing Company, 1978), 5–9.

3. Ibid., 25–29.

4. John Wilmerding, ed., Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1988), 89, 92. The “possibly discarded whaleboat” is definitely a wherry.

5. Gardner, 9, 10.

6. Wesley George Pierce, Goin’ Fishin’ (Salem, MA: Marine Research Society, 1934), 63–64.

7. Raymond McFarland, A History of New England Fisheries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1911), 279.