PAGE 1/2/3/4/5/6

Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, the French Shore and Red Island

    Only five years after the return of the islands to France, the inhabitants asked for and obtained fishing rights in Newfoundland waters on a par with the fishermen of the French mainland. Thus, by the decree of 1820, Saint-Pierrais and Miquelonnais could fish off the south coast, more precisely in the "harbours of Codroy, their two rivers and island in Bay St. George, Red Island and Port au Port". These areas were exclusively theirs as explained by historian Charles De La Morandière:

    Certainly, cod-fishermen from metropolitan France had the right to sail in the gulf but not the right to anchor nor to process their fish on shore at the places we have listed. If a metropolitan company obtained a concession in this region it had to hire exclusively in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.

    In 1840, for reasons which are not clear but which doubtless had much to do with the high productivity of the Red Island fishery and with the considerable influence of the metropolitan ship-outfitting industry on the French government, the regulations were modified and a ship-outfitter of Granville, Champion-Théroude, obtained concession number 4 for Red Island. He was required to employ there about fifty fishermen of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. This is the only exception of the nature to be seen on the west coast of Newfoundland.

    Fishing was good, returns, excellent, and the group from Granville were living on Red Island. Campion-Théroude became the Compagnie générale maritime, and then the Compagnie générale transatlantique in 1855. Through the years, the company maintained an important settlement on Red Island, as is forcefully expressed by Count Arthur de Gobineau in his work Voyage à Terre-Neuve (See first person accounts). In 1870, the Compagnie générale transtlantique employed on Red Island 120 men as well as a doctor and a surgeon. The following year there were "132 men, all Saint-Pierrais under the direction of one manager".