Tonging.
BALLOU’S PICTORIAL DRAWING-ROOM COMPANION, 1850S
Oyster tongs and nippers, from Ernest Ingersoll’s 1881 study of the oyster industry.
COLLECTION OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
By 1770, New York had grown to be the fourth largest port in arriving tonnage after Boston, which was closely challenged by Philadelphia and Charleston. The New England region had a far larger population than the area around New York and consequently Boston received more goods. And while New York frivolously became a center for piracy, Boston was securing serious contracts trading salt cod, agricultural products, and manufactured goods. New Yorkers even received their British goods from Boston until the 1740s, when New York slapped a duty on Boston’s English products.
The competition between New York and New England, between the ports of New York and Boston, was brutal and coarse. Boston merchants earned hard silver currency from New York, shaved it down, and bought New York wheat with the whittled money, saving the excess silver for other trade. They also refused to buy flour, insisting on whole wheat, which they milled themselves inexpensively and undersold New York flour in the West Indies.
New England, New York, and Pennsylvania all had the same problem. Under the rules of colonialism they were to sell what they produced to the mother country, but they all produced more than England could buy. The solution was to sell their lumber, flour, salted fish, and pickled oysters to the West Indies and Southern Europe. With the resulting income, they could buy more British products. New York products were sold down the Atlantic coast, in the West Indies, and in Southern Europe, and very little in England itself. New York, like Boston, provided the food of the British West Indies, allowing the slave islands to use all their cultivable land for sugarcane. They provided not only pickled oysters but wheat, rye, corn, salted pork and beef, apples, peas, and onions. The New York ships returned with molasses for rum and, more important, credits for New York merchants to buy manufactured goods in England. Eventually, they sailed to Africa and traded rum and manufactured goods for slaves, and traded the slaves along with pickled oysters and other food in the West Indies. The British ignored this illegal trade because it was earning New York merchants the money and credits to buy British manufacturing goods. New York’s imports of British goods grew every year, whereas its exports to Britain remained steady. In 1715, £54,600 worth of British goods entered New York and £21,300 worth were exported from New York to Britain. In 1740, the exports to Britain were about the same, but the value of British goods entering New York had more than doubled to £118,800. It seemed that Britain was steadily increasing its balance of trade with its colony, which was what was supposed to happen with colonies. But this ignored the growing trade that the colony was having with everyone else. In truth, Britain had an ever shrinking participation in the economy of such colonies as New York and Massachusetts. In time, this led to greater economic independence, making political independence a potent concept.
Like Boston salt cod, New York pickled oysters were a by-product of the ports’ involvement in the slave trade. Salt cod had a considerable commercial edge, since far more could be caught and the product yielded far more protein both per pound and per dollar and that was what slave owners were looking for in food. But still, New Yorkers had a profitable pickled-oysters trade with British West Indies slave plantations. New York merchants were paid for the pickled oysters six times or more what they had paid local harvesters for the fresh ones.
In the fall, the oysters would be pickled and shipped out. Although New Yorkers ate oysters all year long, it was believed that the oysters in the months without Rs—May, June, July, and August—were of inferior quality and so they waited for the better oysters to come in the fall. This is an ancient and somewhat mythological belief. In 1599, William Butler, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote, “It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not R in their name to eat oysters.” The myth has an element of truth in the case of New York. Oysters take their cue to begin spawning when the water warms up, which is in May, and it is true that spawning oysters tend to be thin, translucent, and generally less appealing. Some argued that letting the beds rest during spawning season was a good conservation measure. Summer oysters are, however, perfectly healthy unless spoiled in the market by summer heat.
Between eating oysters and pickling them for trade, Manhattan had more oyster shells than ever. Kalm wrote:
On our journey to New York we saw high heaps of oyster shells near farmhouses upon the seashore, and about New York we observed the people had scattered them upon the fields which were sown with wheat, noted with surprise that rather than grinding them up for fertilizer the local farms would simply plough into the soil whole shells.
The European botanist did not think much of this practice, believing that limestone worked better. But New Yorkers needed to find a use for their growing heaps of oyster shells. Since New York City’s oyster trade grew up side by side with the larger New York State wheat trade, the two always had connections, often sharing markets and even containers. In the late nineteenth century, the colonial habit of packing oysters in flour barrels was still common.
The population was growing and New York was building. The city was not only paving streets but lining them with trees. Affluent New Yorkers were now building two- and three-story brick structures with tiled roofs and gables, often with a balcony on the roof from which to view the harbor or the town or Brooklyn across the East River. Families passed pleasant summer evenings on their balconies. Several stone churches were built, the grandest of these projects being Trinity Church, an Anglican citadel to compete with the newly constructed Dutch Reformed church.
All of this building required mortar, and mortar required lime paste, which could be made by burning oyster shells. Trinity Church was formed by a royal charter in May 1697, and by that August had already put in its order for “oyster shell lime.” Burning oyster shells for lime was such a common activity that private homes in the New York area built their cellars with one side open for burning shells when household repairs were needed.
The smoke of burning lime was thick and acrid, and an increasing number of New Yorkers believed that it could not be healthy to be breathing it. On June 19, 1703, the New York provincial government passed an act that prohibited both the distilling of rum, a growing economic activity as the port became involved in the Caribbean slave and molasses trade, and the burning of oyster shells within the city limits or within half a mile of City Hall. The royal governor, Lord Edwind Hyde Cornbury, in urging passage argued that “These industries contributed to the fatal distemper” in New York the summer before. But Lord Cornbury was a dubious leader, infamous for not paying his debts—it was alleged that people hid from his wife because she borrowed dresses and jewelry and never returned them. An attempt to repeal the law in 1713 failed, and on March 24, 1714, a tougher city ordinance was passed “that no oyster shells or lime be burnt in the Commons of this city on the south side of the windmill commonly called Jasper’s Windmill.”
But no ordinances were passed to deal with the mosquitoes that came out in summertime or the garbage in the swamp.
New York oysters remained plentiful and large. Kalm wrote, “About New York they find innumerable quantities of excellent oysters, and there are few places which have oysters of such size.” The size was significant because it meant that the number of oysters taken was still a small enough percentage of the total to leave oysters growing many years before picking. New York was still an Eden where resources could be used with extravagance. Gowanus Bay in Brooklyn was particularly known for large oysters. In 1679, Jasper Danckaerts, the Dutch traveler, and his companion Peter Sluyter stayed at the home of Simon Aerson De Hart near Gowanus Cove. Danckaerts wrote:
We found a good fire half way up the chimney of clear oak and hickory, of which they made not the least scruple in burning profusely. We let it penetrate thoroughly. There had already been thrown upon it to be ro
asted, a pailful of Guanes oysters, which are the best in the country. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot in length.
In truth nobody really wanted to eat a foot-long oyster. In the nineteenth century, British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray complained that eating an American oyster was “like eating a baby,” which presumably was not an endorsement. At the De Hart residence on Gowanus Cove, the largest oysters were pickled and shipped to Barbados.
Apparently oysters were plentiful enough and easy enough to harvest that they remained inexpensive. A notice in December 1772 advertised “in the different slips of the harbor, no less than 600,000 oysters for sale.” Kalm not only noted the profit made on buying fresh oysters and selling them pickled abroad, but he noted that the poorest people in Manhattan lived all year on “nothing but oysters and bread.” In 1763, a restaurant opened in a dark and unfavored location, the basement of a building on Broad Street, the old oyster-selling street. This working-class basement oyster bar was New York’s first oyster cellar.
On November 22, 1753, an article in the Independent Reflector contended that no country had oysters of the quality of the city of New York. “They continue good eight Months of the Year and are, for two months longer, the daily food of our poor. Their beds are within view of the town, and I am informed, that Oysterman industriously employed, may clear Eight or Ten Shillings a Day.”
But all was not well in Eden. In the late seventeenth century, New York and New Jersey started passing conservation measures. As early as 1679, the Long Island town of Brookhaven had passed an ordinance restricting to ten the number of vessels allowed in the Great South Bay, a huge natural oyster bed between Long Island and Fire Island. The European settlers in Brookhaven quickly realized the potential of Great South Bay oyster beds. In 1767, the town negotiated an arrangement recognized by the king of England in which the town, in exchange for control over the oyster beds, agreed to give the crown’s recognized owner William Smith and his heirs forever half of all “net income accruing to the town from the use of the bottom of the bay.”
Oyster beds are very different from fishing grounds because the oyster permanently attaches itself to the bed. For that reason and because oystering was recognized as valuable, the new New Yorkers were fighting over ownership of underwater land—a notion that the Lenape would have found even more absurd than the concept of fighting over abundant dry land.
In 1715, the colonial government, as a conservation measure, banned oystering in the months without Rs, May 1 to September 1, because it was the egg-laying season. The measure also reduced harvesting by barring slaves and servants from taking or selling oysters. The law was aimed at New Jersey residents who shared with Staten Island Raritan Bay and Arthur Kill, both rich in natural oyster beds. Nonresidents caught working Staten Island beds had their vessels and equipment seized. In 1719, the colonial assembly of New Jersey retaliated with an act “for the preservation of oysters in the province of New Jersey.” The act closed all New Jersey beds from May 10 until September 1 and also stated “that no Person or persons not residing within this province” shall directly or indirectly “rake, gather up any Oysters or Shells within this Province, and put them on board any Canow, Periauger, Flat, Scow, boat or other vessel” and that any non-resident caught would have his vessel and equipment confiscated. By 1737, Staten Island officials were also becoming concerned about the survival of their beds and they barred oystering for anyone other than Staten Island residents.
In colonial times, such laws depended on local citizens for enforcement. Oystermen caught working beds off season would claim they were harvesting clams, and the local enforcers lacked the expertise to argue the point. This ineffectual system of citizens’ arrests on the oyster beds continued into the nineteenth century.
By the mideighteenth century, warnings were already being voiced of the possible destruction of oyster beds in the New York area. New Jersey passed a 1769 law to further contain avaricious neighbors. The practice of raking up oysters simply to burn for lime was banned. One of the reasons behind stricter enforcement was concern that oysters remain a cheap source of food and available means of income for the poor. The 1719 law argued that preserving the oyster beds “will tend to great benefit of the Poor people.” But a 1769 law stated that the 1719 one “hath not been sufficient to preserve the oysters” and that:
Practices are made Use of, not provided against by the said act [of 1719], which, if permitted to continue, will in a short Time, destroy the Oysters in the Rivers and Bays of this colony.
Jamaica Bay, named not after the Caribbean island but from the Canarsee name Jameco, was rich in oysters, clams, and crabs, especially on the northern side, which is dotted with islands that appear only at low tide. The residents of Rockaway attempted to regulate oystering in the bay as early as 1704, when nonresident oystermen found working the bay were arrested. In July 1763, a proclamation stated:
Whereas diverse persons, without any right or license to do so, have of late, with sloops, boats and other craft, presumed to come in to Jamaica Bay and taken, destroyed and carried away quantities of clams, mussels and other fish to the great damage of said town, this is to give warning to all persons who have no right or liberty that they do forbear to commit any such trespass in the bay for the future, otherwise they will be prosecuted at law for the same by Thomas Cornell Jr. and Waters Smith by order of the town.
In 1791, it was ruled that anyone taking oysters in Jamaica Bay had to pay the town of Rockaway one shilling for every thousand oysters. The penalty for failing to do so was forty shillings.
Around the New York area, local governments were feeling increasing pressure to bar outsiders, even neighbors, from local beds. Apparently the oystermen who worked the beds could see that even Eden had its limits. While Manhattan above the waterline still had enough spare land to hunt, and walk in the woods, and throw out garbage, ownership of the land under the shallow brackish sea was being contested.
It was not necessary to leave Manhattan for a trip to the country. A well-known house in rural Manhattan called the Union Flag had a tavern with twenty-two acres of open land, a wharf, and landing. The tavern offered drinking, cockfighting, and gambling, which was illegal. With seventeenth- and eighteenth-century transportation Manhattan was a large island. Danckaerts described Harlem as a village three hours from the city. New Yorkers journeyed up the East River to Turtle Bay. In 1748, a visiting English clergyman, Reverend Burnaby wrote:
The amusements are balls and sleighing expeditions in the winter and in summer going in parties upon the water and fishing, or making excursions into the country. There are several houses, pleasantly situated up the East River, near New York, where it is common to have turtle feasts. These happen once or twice a week. Thirty or forty gentlemen or ladies, meet and dine together, drink tea in the afternoon, fish and amuse themselves until evening, and then return home in Italian chaises [the fashionable carriage of the time] a gentleman and a lady in each chaise.
For in-town recreation, the common was a place for lawn bowling and cricket. Americans won a famous match against the British in April 1751.
More and more taverns opened. They were not only for drinking but also places of business and politics. In 1766, 282 taverns were operating in New York. By 1773, the number had risen to 396. Drinking was cheap. New York rum had to compete with New England rum called “Kill-devil” that was only twenty-five cents a gallon and cheap young New Jersey applejack called Jersey lightning. Alcoholism was a growing problem. It was sometimes claimed that alcohol was a substitute for the increasingly foul New York drinking water, which came from wells and natural streams until the first pipelines were installed in 1799.
Prostitution remained a New York trade, though Griet Reyniers, said to be Manhattan’s first prostitute, married a pirate, that other not-uncommon Manhattan-based trade, and the two had enough money to move to Long Island and become wealthy landowners there. In 1770, reportedly five hundred prostitutes were wor
king in New York, a city of slightly over twenty-one thousand people.
The city was growing, the port was prospering, money was being made. The rich lived in brick houses with a view of the harbor or the rivers and roasted oysters in cozy fireplaces. The poor lived in wooden shacks, near the garbage-strewn pond, the Collect, and ate oysters in basements. A city of pirates, entrepreneurs, and the struggling poor—New York was well on its way to being the city that is known today. And then came a catastrophe.
CHAPTER FIVE
Becoming the World’s Oyster
In point of sociability and hospitality, New York is hardly exceeded by any town in the U.S.
—NOAH WEBSTER,
in a letter on leaving New York, 1788
No American city suffered more, or gained more, from the American Revolution. When it was over, New York was a port that could supply a new, vigorous, and growing nation. But during the war it was an occupied city, under hostile military rule, its commercial and social life shut down, its connections to the rest of America cut off, its population dwindled to those who had not wanted or had not managed to escape.
Poet Walt Whitman argued for years that August 27 should be celebrated with pomp equal to July 4. On August 27, 1776, the British began a battle through the fields and farms of Brooklyn. One of Whitman’s great-uncles was among the many dead that day, the beginning of a five-day engagement then called the Battle of Long Island, or Nassau Island, as it was usually known in the eighteenth century. But today it is more precisely pinpointed as “the Battle of Brooklyn.” It was the largest battle of the American Revolution.
Looking for a port as a base of operation, the British military chose New York City, which had been their headquarters and home to many British officials until the war broke out in 1775. They unleashed a three-month campaign to take it back and hold it. In the meantime, from the loyal northern colonies, Canada, a military force would take Albany and the upper Hudson. After New York City was secured, the British would control the Hudson and New England would be cut off from the other rebellious colonies.
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