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    The results surpassed expectations : 170 men, almost exclusively from Île-aux-Chiens - a small island in the Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon archipelago - sailed to the French Shore during the campaign of 1894. These consisted of : Red Island 8 small boats and 15 fishermen (who, according to the nota to the ministerial dispatch let it be known that the French shipowner had again that year the concession at site 4 on Red Island), at Tweed Island 5 small boats and 10 fishermen, at Anse à Bois 7 small boats and 16 fishermen, at Port au Port (Points des Galets) 27 small boats and 65 fishermen, at Port au Port (Broad Cove) 29 small boats and 64 fishermen.

    These figures remained steady until the loss of the French Shore in 1904. For the fishermen of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon who hardly ever saw an abundance of cod around their islands before the month of June, the French Shore offered the possibility of an excellent spring campaign. Understandably, in 1899, sensing that France was ready to give in to the English on the question of fishing rights, fishermen had written to their representative in mainland France.

    The abandonment of our rights to the French Shore, carries with it our ruin, from the point of view of economic living conditions. At Saint-Pierre and at Île-aux-Chiens, many families live exclusively by the grace of the results of the French Shore fishing and, if our rights on the west coast were abandoned, these families would be reduced to worrying about building a new way of life (...) We are justifiably afraid for the future as it is easy to see that the English are today pursuing the complete annihilation of the economic prosperity of the colony. They well know that the vitality of the Islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon rests in large measure in that same maintenance of our rights to the French Shore.

    What a waste of time ! The French shipowners no longer had any interest in this remote coast, the French authorities found that their dispute with England over the French Shore had lasted long enough and as a consequence, the well-founded fear of the small boat fishermen of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon weighed but lightly in the balance. On the 8th of April 1904, France abandoned its exclusive fishing rights in Newfoundland in exchange for an out-of-the-way island in Africa for which she will never have the slightest use.

    The fishermen of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon had the right to one last campaign that year and that was the end of the French Shore and the Newfoundland fisheries which in the 18th century represented "the most precious French possession in North America".

    From that time forward, the settlement at Red Island ceased to be used. The French, for the most part deserted sailors joined the Acadians who were settling on the coast in the villages of Mainland, Cape St. George or Three Rock Cove. The English had no further use for this barren island which quickly became again deserted. The cabins collapsed, the buildings fell into ruin and soon nature reasserted her rights.

    It is difficult to believe today, to look at Red Island, that barely a hundred years ago there could be found here one of the largest French fishing settlements of the French Shore, in any case, without doubt, the largest settlement of the Port-au-Port Peninsula.