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By the 1400s, western European fish merchants were aware of techniques developed by Vikings in the North Sea, including the on shore air drying of cod. Air-dried cod requires first the salting of the cod (the cod trade was always dependent on a supply of salt), followed by the drying of the cod on the shore. To this aim, fisherman may either create simple wood structures to hang the cod or place the cod on rocks to dry.[6] Dried cod may keep for up to twelve months, allowing for a much more extensive trade of the fish. The Catholic church dictated the consumption of fish on “all Fridays and Saturdays, the six weeks of lent, and the vigils of important festivals such as Christmas eve,” and cod from the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the western approaches of Ireland was sold in Europe’s fish markets to meet religious demand.[7] While the earliest people to fish for cod in Europe were Scandinavian, the cod trade grew to include merchants and fisherman from Brittany, the Basque Country, the west country of England, Portugal, and Italy.[8] As fishing of cod does not require nearby settlement, fisherman from the Basque country may fish for cod south of Iceland as easily as a fisherman from Bristol.

The natural living area of Atlantic Cod stretches from the Russian arctic to the coasts of New England, and, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, European cod fishermen pressed further west in search of new fishing areas.[9] The cod trade became a breeding ground for a generation of European explorers. Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Gaspar Corte Real likely all worked in the cod trade before their American explorations, and Bristol fish merchants “may have” made trips to the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland “as early as 1480.”[10] However, it was not until John Cabot’s voyage in search of a Northwest passage in 1497 that Europeans discovered the marine wealth off the coast of Newfoundland.[11]

Undersea banks, areas of a raised sea bed, are home to high levels marine life activity and have served as the primary fishing areas for the cod trade in Europe and America.[12] The Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland and the Georges Bank off the coast of New England are comparable to European banks such as the Dogger Bank in the North Sea and the Porcupine Bank west of Ireland.[13] Sebastian Cabot wrote of the Grand Bank’s while on sailing with his father. The sea “abounds in fishes, and those very large, [seals], and salmon … but, above all, there is a great abundance of those fishes which we call bacualos [cod].”[14] Colonial competition quickly began as Basque, Portuguese, English, and French fishermen began sailing from Europe to fish for cod in the northwest Atlantic.

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European Northwest Atlantic cod fishing quickly integrated into the pre-existing cod market. The earliest concrete evidence of a cod fishery in Newfoundland was developed by English fishermen 1531.[15] In the sixteenth century, cod merchants developed a three cornered trade wherein vessels would leave Europe with salt and supplies, catch cod in the Grand Banks or Georges Banks, sell the cod in Catholic southern Europe in return for salt, before either returning to the northwest Atlantic or bringing Mediterranean goods to northern Europe.[16] Following the development of the sugar islands in the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, lower quality cod was be sold in the Caribbean in return for sugar before selling that sugar in Europe.[17] In the sugar islands the cod served as one of the main food supplies for the enslaved population. The Atlantic cod trade was regularly interrupted by international conflicts in the sixteenth century. The destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, for instance, displaced much of the Portuguese and Basque presence in the Grand Banks.[18] In the seventeenth century, as major European settlement began in New England and New France, fishermen based in those colonies, some of whom had previously worked in the cod trade in Europe, began to compete with European fishermen in the Grand Banks.[19]
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