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    In addition to the effects of a wretched and unhealthy environment, of thankless and exhausting labour, the shore workers also had to bear in mind the likelihood of military service at the end of their time on the French Shore. Indeed, it should be recalled that the Seaboard Conscription founded by Colbert in 1670 allowed non-professional fishermen to go to the Newfoundland fishery on condition that they sign up for a mandatory five-year term in the navy. A number of oral testimonies collected from French Newfoundlanders suggest that some deserters from the fishery deserted specifically to avoid this military service.

    The causes of desertion were to be found then in large part in the shore workers' living conditions. Young men were obliged to work for six months or more on an isolated coast, without diversions of any kind, with conditions as unsanitary and as improvised as were the habitations they had to occupy. They were daily menaced by the consequences of untended cuts and by the diverse sicknesses which were rife. They then had the certainty , after four or five years of shore work, of having to spend a similar period in the French navy.

    We are not certain of the precise number of deserters who settled on the Port-au-Port Peninsula. From a study of the distribution of French family names we can place at about fifty the number of deserters who settled there in the period 1816-1904. This is apart from what we believe to have been a small number of individuals who settled in English communities along the Northern Peninsula (the "Petit Nord" coast).