[Sca-cooks] Basque Food

[Terry Decker]

Actually, gutting, cleaning and salting were done on shipboard by blue water 
fishermen as would have frequented the Grand Banks.  As I recall, Rudyard 
Kipling's "Captain's Courageous" has an extensive description of the 
practice as done in the 19th Century and the practice hadn't changed much 
since the Middle Ages.

The Basque whaling station dates to a period just before the development of 
whaling ships large enough to process the kill at sea.

Bear

> One of his hypothesizes that I found interesting was the the Basque 
> actually found North America long before Columbus did. They were  probably 
> getting a lot of their cod (I think) off Newfoundland. But  the salting 
> (or drying?) couldn't be done on shipboard so would have  had to have been 
> done on nearby land. since the location of these  fisheries was an 
> important trade secret, they kept their knowledge of  the New World to 
> themselves.
>
> Stefan