Tag Archives: “Fishing widow”

September 28 – 1889: Cape fishermen heading for South Africa for mackerel

“Fishing widow” will now become a year-round occupation. A century ago the fishermen on Cape Cod were making plans to spend the winter fishing for mackerel off the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa, a distance of almost 8,000 miles away from homeport. For the wives of the Cape’s fishermen that would mean nearly year-round widowhood as the trip a century ago took weeks under the best of conditions and mackerel were believed to abound in South African waters after December 1st, the same fish seen here six months later. >click to read< 14:08