| Summary: | nipper2 n The maritime museum Our "Offbeat history" columnist recently made reference to an article associated with our once-great fishing industry. The article was _"a nipper"_, a woolen article that fishermen wore over part of their fingers and hands to protect them from the cutting effects of a fishing line. The "nipper", which, as its name implies, "nipped" the line, would appear to have been a very use- ful article, implement, perhaps, is a better word, since it was neither a gar- ment nor a glove. Although we are talking about the "nipper" in the past tense, this is not meant to imply that such implements no longer exist or that they are no longer used. Most likely some of them are still in use, and are knitted re- ligiously each spring by the women in the fishing communities where hand- lining is still carried on. The point we wish to make is that there is the sort of thing a maritime museum, of the kind suggested by the Newfoundland Historical Society, could and should accumulate and exhibit. We are reminded too of the little piece of chain that fishermen wore around their wrists to keep the rough edge of their oil-clothes from chafing the skin. These might be considered as rather ordinary, inconsequential articles; yet they are important bits of colour and design in the whole picture of an in- dustry which is now changing rapidly from the stereotyped appearance it wore for centuries to a new, and mod- ern complexion. As such they merit inclusion in a maritime museum, along with many more exhibits of greater size and relatively larger importance. Another aspect of our changing in- dustrial pattern, associated with our maritime history, is, of course, the al- most complete disappearance of cer- tain trades, seal-skinners, coopers, and sailmakers. This has also come about rather suddenly; many people under the age of fifty can recall when these trades flourished in the city; in fact some of them flourished up to the start of world war two. The codfishery and the sealfishery, as two of the most im- ...
|
|---|