Salt Cod and the Atlantic Empires

Dried, salted cod from Newfoundland fed sailors, soldiers and enslaved people, and tied the Atlantic world together.

Soon after John Cabot reached Newfoundland in 1497, fishing fleets from Portugal, the Basque country, France and England crossed the Atlantic every year to fish the Grand Banks. Cod was split, salted and dried on wooden racks on shore or salted heavily on board. Properly cured, it kept for years.

Fuel for empire

• Navies and armies relied on salt cod as cheap, durable protein.
• Catholic Europe bought huge quantities for meatless fast days; Portugal’s bacalhau tradition comes from this trade.
• Caribbean plantations imported the lowest grades of salt fish from Newfoundland and New England to feed enslaved Africans, while sugar and molasses went north. This trade linked the fishery directly to slavery.

Salt fish is still part of Caribbean cooking, as in Jamaica’s national dish of ackee and saltfish. The cod fishery itself collapsed from overfishing, and Canada closed the northern cod fishery in 1992.

A note on accuracy: colonial cod was salted and dried rather than fermented raw. Fermented fish sauces and pastes belong to other traditions, such as Roman garum and Southeast Asian fish sauce.

Part of the Boston Made Reader’s special collection Courage, Conscience & Service. Written for the Reader and free to read here.