When an order is received for live lobsters, those which have been longest in the cars are usually shipped.  Flour barrels holding about 140 pounds or sugar barrels holding about 185 pounds, with small holes bored in the bottoms for drainage, are used for the shipment.  Formerly the lobsters were packed close together in the barrel, and a large piece of ice was put in at the top, but this was found to kill a number of them.  The present method is to split off about one-third of a 100-pound cake of ice the long way, and place it upright about half way of the length of the barrel, the lobsters then being packed snugly on all sides of the ice.  In handling them the packer seizes the lobster by the carapace with his right hand, bends the tail up under the body with his left hand, and quickly deposits it in the barrel.  The packer usually has his right hand covered with a woolen mitt or wrapped in a long piece of linen, for protection from the claws of the lobster.

When the barrel is nearly full the lobsters are covered with a little seaweed or large-leaved marine plants, and the rest of the space is filled with cracked ice.  The top is then covered with a piece of sacking, which is secured under the upper hoop of the barrel.  Packed in this way, lobsters have easily survived a trip as far west as St. Louis.

Owing to the high prices realized in England for live lobsters, attempts have been made to ship live American lobsters to that market, generally from Canadian ports.  In 1877 Messrs. John Marston & Sons, of Portland, made a trial shipment of 250.  They were placed in a large tank 20 feet long by 8 feet wide and 3 feet deep, and constantly supplied with fresh seawater through six faucets by means of a donkey engine, a waste-pipe preventing any overflow.  The trip was fairly successful, as only 50 died, and the balance brought from 60 to 75 cents per pound.

The smacks and dealers buy lobsters by count, as the fishermen generally have no facilities for weighing them; but the dealers always sell by weight.  The mortality among the lobsters from the time they are put aboard the smacks until they are barreled for shipment is estimated at about 5 per cent.

BOILING.

Live lobsters are much preferred by the trade throughout the country, and only those that can not be marketed in such condition are boiled.  The number boiled fluctuates considerably, owing to the condition of the markets.  When the fresh markets of Boston and New York are overstocked, the lobster dealers of Rockland and Portland, where most of the Maine lobsters are boiled, proceed to boil their surplus stock.

The following description of the boiling is from The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, section v, vol.  II, p. 684: