Live Lobsters: A Short History

Close your eyes, and picture that large, mouth-watering lobster waiting on your plate for you to crack open and enjoy.  You'd be hard-pressed to think of anything that sounds better.  However, don't rush out for a live lobster dinner just yet. Wouldn't it be fun to learn a little bit about the critter you're craving before you indulge?

We all know that the original citizens of America were the Native Americans.  There were so few of them back in those days and so many lobsters just lying around in tide pools, that they could have all they wanted.  If the truth were told, though, they didn't want any to eat. To them, a lobster was just fertilizer for their fields. They also used the meat as fish bait.

The early colonists didn't like them much, either.  They also considered lobsters to be fertilizer and used them only as food for the poor.  They fed them to their children, slaves, and indentured servants.  Indentured servants eventually started fighting back and refused to sign contracts until they were guaranteed to only have to eat lobster three times a week.  Unfortunately, the children and slaves didn't have contracts.

Up until the early 19th century, people could get all the lobsters they needed by snagging them from tide pools. They had no need for technological advances in the harvesting of live lobsters. The first lobster traps didn't come on the scene until the 1850s. The reason harvesters needed traps is because they had become able to sell their lobsters to canneries.  No one ate the lobsters fresh, and the canned version was so tasteless that few people ate them canned, either.

When our transportation system developed sufficiently to transport live lobsters, the meat finally caught on with the public. They were shipped to the finest restaurants in America's largest cities where only the well-to-do were able to afford to eat them.

Have you ever felt a little funny about watching a lobster resting quietly in a fish tank only minutes before he appears on your plate?  Don't worry. That's been a common feeling since people began eating lobsters years ago. But if you want to experience lobster in its freshest form, this is the way it has to be done.

My great-grandmother lived most of the way through the 1960s. People around her were eating lobsters and other seafood, but she refused to even consider the possibility. It's not that she was a picky eater, because she had been raised to eat everything that was put on her plate. It's just that her sensibilities had been honed during America's Victorian era when ladies would never even think about something as ghastly as tossing a live maine lobster into boiling water. Pass me the smelling salts, please!

It's amazing how tastes change over the years. For centuries the succulent meat of much-maligned lobsters went unnoticed and unappreciated.  Then, almost overnight, lobsters moved from obscurity into the fanciest restaurants of the time.