Fish Flake - History

History

Captain George Cartwright had noted the use of flakes in his journal in the 1770s and in common use at that time. The journal of James Younge depicted a sketch of a flake c. 1663; and the illustration from Moll's map (c. 1712) shows little difference in the basic design of the flake.

These structures took on a very distinct appearance within a fishing village, so much so that in his book Voyage to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador, Edward Chappell (1818, pp. 44–45) gives a description of the flakes of St. John's not long before the great fire that destroyed most of St. John's:

On first entering the bays and ports of Newfoundland, the attention of a stranger is mostly attracted by the remarkable appearance exhibited by the innumerable stages erected along the sea-shore for the salting and drying of cod. The shores around the harbour of St. John's are entirely covered with them, and their construction is particularly simple. Numerous supporters, exactly resembling "Kentish" hop-poles, are first fixed in the ground: over these is placed a horizontal platform of similar poles; and the whole is finally overspread with a covering of dry fern. This sort of structure is called, by the fishermen, a Fish Flake: but there are other stages, erected in a similar manner, although standing partly in the water, with a hut at their extremity, for the reception and salting of cod, previous to its final removal to the "Flakes", for the purpose of being dried in the sun.

Flakes were used well into the twentieth century, but the demand for dried fish lessened as cold storage and freezer units came into use. However, in the mid 1980s flakes were still being used in smaller outport communities to dry fish for family use and local sale of dried salt-cod.