MAINE SEA FISHERIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF A NATIVE INDUSTRY, 1830-1880, by Wayne M. O’Leary, Boston, Northeastern University Press 1996, illustrations, notes, maps, bibliography, 392 pages, $24.95 paperback.

Nearly 40 years ago Russian scientists orbited a satellite, Sputnik, around the Earth. Reaction in the United States was immediate. How could that backward country achieve such a feat before the United States? The inevitable post-mortems of the event found a scapegoat — the failure of American higher education. Congress then created funds to redress this problem in the National Defense Education Act.

The University of Maine applied for and received federal funds to establish doctoral programs, one of which was in the area of history. Professors were hired, graduate students accepted, teaching assistants employed, theses and dissertations researched and written. In the 40 years that graduate program has been in place, some 150 master’s theses and close to 40 doctorates have been awarded. Wayne O’Leary was one of those doctorates — a product indirectly of the congressional mandate to beef up graduate education.

When the program was begun at Maine, only a small amount of graduate work had been accomplished in history. The new professors who were hired, one of whom is the writer, decided that these funds offered an opportunity to research and write deeply in Maine history. Virtually every aspect of Maine history has received attention. These funds have provided an opportunity for Mainers to study and understand their past.

Among the first studies to be undertaken were those about the lives of ordinary people. Logging, papermaking, agriculture (especially the commercial crops), shipbuilding, commerce, the granite and lime industries, the climate, migration and the interaction with the Maritime Provinces all have been studied. It was also clear from the outset the fisheries industry was extraordinarily important, but its history was almost unknown.

O’Leary undertook the massive task of studying this occupation, and he has succeeded in producing a readable, fact-filled, important contribution to the history of this state. In fact, readers and researchers could do a lot worse than begin their study of Maine history with this book.

The offshore fishery to the Grand Banks and the Gulf of St. Lawrence was an immense industry in its heyday, from 1820 to the turn of this century. Maine ships, usually smaller than their competition, sought cod and mackerel. They left on their dangerous voyages, caught their “fare,” salted them down, and returned to port, often in terrible weather; the men badly fed, overworked, but with an air of heroes.

By 1845, and until after the Civil War, Maine vessels and Maine men led the nation in these pursuits, followed by their Massachusetts cohorts, and they were competitive with their counterparts in the Maritime Provinces. O’Leary describes this life in a wonderful chapter simply titled “The Hard and Dangerous Life.” One can almost hear the music of the fishermen — once the vessels were back at home — as in “Sailing Along the French Shore.”

One of the most important contributions of this book is the analysis of government aid over time to the fisheries. Tariffs, rebates on the salt trade, subsidies for fishing gear, and the establishment of better sales mechanisms at home, along with support for newer, better, faster gear such as purse seines and the development of line fishing from dories all are demonstrated in this book.

For Mainers, the discovery that virtually every coastal town participated in the fisheries, usually returning to the same sea location year after year, along with glimpses of various ships and men whose few traces remain in what was virtually an anonymous business, enriches the pleasures of reading about this industry.

The development of the relationships between competitive areas, the impact of larger and more costly vessels, changes in food intake, the development of the railway into the hinterland, the shift from salt to ice in preservation and the impact of government, whether it be the Civil War or reciprocity treaties, are clearly demonstrated in the book. A last chapter describes inshore work — the menhaden, lobster and sardine fisheries.

The book is based on wide-ranging research in all the available archives, and it wears its learning well. Among features of the book are remarkable illustrations and copious appendices showing the statistical details of the fisheries, the location of the trade, the ownership of vessels, amounts landed, movement of wholesale prices, markets, the sociology of the workers and the re-creation of a voyage to the banks, as well as ship losses due to wrecks.

This will be the standard book in its subject for our lifetimes, if not longer. It already has begun to receive accolades, winning the Maine Maritime Museum’s 1997 Captain W.J. Lewis Parker Award for the best work in Maine maritime history and the North American Society for Oceanic History’s John Lyman Book Award for the best book in American maritime history published in 1996. Readers can think of the Sputnik impact as they read, and also may ponder the impact of the government infusion of funds and the good work it has brought.