New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues on Friday, November 20th at 7:00 PM with The Lonely Dorymen, a 1968 National Geographic program about the Portuguese fishermen who fished for cod on the Grand Banks. Dock-U-Mentaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, and the Working Waterfront Festival. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month beginning at 7:00 PM in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, located at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge.
For more than four centuries, young Portuguese fishermen followed their fathers to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Greenland’s banks to fish the cold waters for cod. Intrepid men, set off for the Banks on schooners under full sail, then adrift in a flat-bottomed dory, they bait the hundred of hooks of their long-line, oblivious to fog, rain and Arctic wind, they labor 18 hours a day and haul up cod by the score. Frequently stopping in St. Johns, Newfoundland for provisions, these fishermen were known by Newfoundlanders as the “White Fleet” owing to the white sails of their schooners. This 1968 National Geographic program provides a rare window into this way of life. Retired Portuguese fisherman Manuel Vinagre, who participated in this fishery in the 1970s, will be on hand to share some of his own experiences following the film.
