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eater

Luternational Fisheries Exhibition
LONDON, 1883

THE

Sell lS FISH TRADE

BY
HIS EXCELLENCY

sr PNCER WALP OWS

LIEUT,.-GOVERNOR OF THE ISLE OF MAN

LONDON

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES EXHIBITION
AND 13 CHARING CROSS, S.W.

1883

ree BRIISH PISH WADE

FEW things are more remarkable in modern politics than
the care which is almost everywhere taken to illustrate,
by statistics the science of government. In the United
Kingdom elaborate arrangements are made with this object.
Public officers are employed in enumerating the flocks and
herds; in recording the crops which are sown ; and in
counting every bale of goods which is either imported
into, or exported from, the country. The writer, who
desires to procure statistical information on almost any ~
subject connected with the growth, the health, the con-
dition, or the industry of the people, is able to obtain it in
an authoritative form, and in a convenient and cheap volume.
The success which the “Statistical Abstracts” have achieved
has induced their authors to extend their scope. The Statis-
tical Abstract of the United Kingdom has been supplemented
by statistical abstracts for the Colonies, for India, and for
even foreign countries. A vast mass of information of
almost immeasurable value has in this way been collected,
and the student or the inquirer is able to obtain facts on
almost every subject to which either his studies or his
investigations may be directed.

Yet the politician or the student, who has had occasion
to consult the excellent statistics which are published by
the British Government, has probably noticed one remark-

B

2 MieiS JERSE El IMSel I IRAIONE

able omission from them. While on every other subject he
finds information, which is usually full and which is seldom
inexact, on one subject he fails to obtain any information
whatever. The editor of the Statistical Abstract does not
seem to be aware that a large number of persons in the
British Islands are dependent on fishing for their liveli-
hood ; that a considerable proportion of the food of the
inhabitants of these islands consists of fish; and that one
of the most important trades of the kingdom is the trade
in fish. The quantity of fish which is imported into these
islands from abroad or which is exported from them is
included in the statistical abstracts. But on the much
greater questions which are connected with the fisheries—
the employment which they afford, the capital which they
attract, and the wealth which they produce—the Statistical
Abstract is uniformly silent.

This silence arises from no fault of the editor of the
Abstract. He gives no information on the subject of
fisheries, because no full information is forthcoming which
is worth publishing. The Fishery Board of Scotland,
indeed, annually publishes elaborate and detailed accounts
of the Scotch herring fishery. The Irish Inspectors of
Fisheries also compile once a year some statistics—which,
however, are admittedly imperfect—to illustrate the de-
velopment, or rather the decay, of the Irish fisheries. But
in England itself little information is afforded to the student
who wishes to ascertain the condition of the English
fisheries. The Inspectors of salmon fisheries are, indeed,
required to report annually on the state of the English
salmon fisheries. But the salmon fisheries of England and
Wales stand in the same relation to the sea-fisheries of the
country as Croydon to London, or Rutland to Yorkshire.
The state of the more important fisheries has to be ascer-

IGIS Ta RIG SIE Saal Wig (DEE 3

tained by reference to a number of more or less authorita-
tive publications, and to be inferred, rather than proved,
from a number of incidental circumstances. There are
no means of ascertaining with any precision such simple
facts as the number of boats employed, or the number
of persons engaged, in the sea-fisheries of England and
Wales.*

This absence of information naturally increases the diff-
culty of any writer who undertakes to describe the fish
trade of the United Kingdom. Instead of moving on firm
ground, he is perpetually fearing that the whole basis of
his argument may give way as he advances. He is forced
to adduce theories where he ought to state facts, and he
has to prove elementary propositions which ought to be
accepted as readily as axioms. The difficulty with which
his task is thus surrounded is his fittest excuse for any
imperfections on his part in completing it; and the best
service, which he can perhaps hope to accomplish, is to
induce the Government to supply some of the information,
the publication of which would have made most of his own
labours unnecessary.

And, in truth, if there be any subject on which statistical
information is desirable, if there be any industry which

* A return is annually published, by the Registrar-General of
Shipping and Seamen, of the number of boats, registered under the
Sea Fisheries Act 1868, belonging to each port in the United Kingdom.
But the return is imperfect for the following reason : “On the 23rd of
October, 1877, an Order in Council was obtained by the Board of Trade,
exempting from registration, &c., undecked boats, fishing or dredging
on the coasts of England, Wales, and Scotland, and the Islands of
Guernsey, Jersey, Sark, and Man, and not going outside the distance
of three miles from low-water mark along the said coasts.” Since the
date of this order, which however never applied to Ireland, and from
the operation of which Scotland was exempted in 1880, the Registry
of fishing boats has become more and more imperfect.

13) 2

4 EGR S5y S Sel WRUSIEE IAI DIE.

deserves to be illustrated by figures stamped with the
impress of authority, the fisheries and fishermen of this
country deserve that recognition. The British Islands,
from a fisherman’s point of view, enjoy a singular ad-
vantage. There are no other waters in the globe so rich in
food-producing fish as those of the North Atlantic Ocean ;
and there is no portion of this great ocean so fishful as that
part of it which surrounds these Islands. If, however,
nature has placed the United Kingdom in a pre-eminently
favourable position, the hardy inhabitants of its maritime
counties have made the best use of nature’s bounty. Their
veins, still warm with the bold blood of their Saxon and
Danish forefathers, the people of Eastern Britain especially
have inherited a love for the sea. Few storms are so
severe as to drive them from their occupation. Their well-
found boats court dangers which other and larger vessels
shun ; and, in the roughest as in the calmest weather, the
dish of fish, which these bold men have risked lives and
fortunes in catching, is procurable, if it consist of what the
trade calls “offal,” for a few pence; if it be composed of
what the trade calls “prime,” for a few shillings in the
London market.

Yet it must not be supposed that the inhabitants of all
the maritime counties of Great Britain or of the United
Kingdom furnish fishermen in equal proportions. It is
Eastern Scotland and Eastern England which supplies the
majority of British fishermen. Cornwall, Devonshire, and
the Isle of Man are almost the only other parts of the
kingdom which furnish a class of men who make fishing
the sole occupation of their lives. In Ireland, indeed, a
movement has, for years past, been in progress to develop
the Irish fisheries. But the seas of Ireland are swept by
Scotch, English, and Manx boats, and, though Irish craft

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. | 5

are found fishing among them, the Irishmen rarely or never
repair in their turn to the Scotch and English seas. In
this respect they are not peculiar. The Highlanders and
Islanders of Western Scotland, sprung from a common
ancestry with the Irish, seldom leave their own lochs, or
their own seas; the Welshman like the Irishman rarely, if
ever, leaves his own neighbourhood ; and Welsh boats are
never seen in English seas. The Cornishman is perhaps
the only example in the United Kingdom of a man sprung
from a Celtic ancestry who follows his fish from sea to sea.
In every other case, it may be suspected that the fishermen
owe some of their skill and courage to the blood of the
bold Saxon and Norse Sea Rovers, who, in the early days
of English History, played their part in what the late Mr.
Green has called the making of England.*

This circumstance is of essential importance. In the
olden time fishing, conducted chiefly in the estuaries of
rivers, or on the coasts of the sea, was a trade which
required little skill, and perhaps little courage. Our fore-
fathers while fishing did not venture far out to sea, but
kept in close proximity to the shore, either in consequence
of the frailty of their boats, or of what an early writer has
called “the fearfulness”” of their minds. Much of the fish
which was served up on table was intercepted in passing

out to sea with the ebb tide by the dams which any

* How far the Devonshire and Cornish people may owe their fish-
ing propensities to the Conquest of South Western Britain by Egbert
in 815 is perhaps doubtful. The Saxons, it is certain, did not succeed
in rooting out the Celtic names which still distinguish this part of
England. But the Saxon conquerors, in all probability, settled and
fused with the Britons in Cornwall, while they only held a strategical
position in Wales. No one, at any rate, can look at a Cornish fisher-
man at the present time, and think that he is descended from the same
exclusively Celtic stock as the Welsh.

6 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE.

labourer, who had no more brains than Caliban in “The
Tempest,” was competent to build.* But the increasing
demands of a populous country have altered this state of
things. Fishermen are no longer able to wait for the fish
to come to them, they go to the fish. Every year which
passes sees the fishing conducted at greater distances from
our coasts.

The best fish are frequently caught farthest from the
land; the most successful fishermen are consequently
those who have the boldest hearts and the stoutest
boats. They are those, therefore, who, other things being
equal, have embarked most capital in their trade. But
the man who has invested his fortune in any business
cannot afford to let his stock lie idle. He must, if he
hope to profit from his investment, constantly use it.
The fisherman, however, who would fish throughout the
year to advantage, must be prepared to lead a nomad life.
Fish are caught in one part of the ocean in one month,
and in another in another. The fishermen who follow the
fish, or, in stricter phrase, go to those seas where the
fish are found, will always beat the fishermen who fish their
own seas, and, when fishing is no longer profitable there,
eke out a scanty livelihood with other work. In the case
of the latter, their capital lies idle while the capital of their
rivals is employed, and they themselves are destitute of the
experience which their rivals acquire. The fishermen of

* The passage in “The Tempest” is curious. Caliban sings :
“No more dams Ill make for fish ;
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring,
Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish.”
The duties with which Shakespeare associates Caliban are of a
menial character requiring no skill; and the dam was evidently a
temporary and not a permanent structure.

EE RISTO See I RICALO ED, 7

the east coast of Britain, the Manxmen, and the Cornish-
men follow the fish from coast to coast, and, in conse-
quence, the whole fishing trade of the country is passing
into their hands,

It may, perhaps, be convenient, before describing the
fisheries themselves, to state approximately the employ-
ment which they afford. In England and Wales there are
probably about 15,000 fishing boats, affording permanent
employment to 28,000, and temporary employment to 14,000
persons. The English statistics are, however, notoriously
imperfect, and no great reliance can be placed on them.
In Scotland there were, in 1881, according to the Report of
the Scotch Fishery Board, 14,809 boats employing 48,121
persons ; in Ireland the Irish inspectors state that there
were in the same year 6458 vessels employing 24,528 men
and boys; but they add that only 1844 of these boats and
7534 of these persons were exclusively engaged in fishing.
In the Isle of Man some 450 boats gave almost continuous
employment to 2872 fishermen; while in the Channel
Islands some 300 boats sustained about 1000 fishermen.
In the British Islands, therefore, some 37,000 boats give
constant or occasional employment to 118,000 fishermen.

It will at once be seen from these figures that the fishing
population is distributed unevenly through the different
branches of the Empire. England and Wales has one
fisherman for about every 600 of its people; Ireland has
one fisherman for every 200 of its inhabitants ; Scotland
has one fisherman for every 75 ; and the Isle of Man has
one fisherman for every 19 of its population. But the
statistics would look very different if they were applied to
particular localities. Of the 42,000 fishermen of England
and Wales, nearly one-third, or 13,000, sail from the four
great ports of the Eastern counties—Grimsby, Hull, Yar-

8 DHE BRITISH, Tel Si VIALE:

mouth, and Lowestoft—nearly one-sixth, or 6,000, sail from
the great Cornish and Devonshire ports—Penzance, Fal-
mouth, Fowey, Plymouth, and Dartmouth. These nine
ports, therefore, supply nearly one-half of all the fishermen
of England and Wales. The whole coast line of Wales
does not support so many fishermen as the single town
of Lowestoft, or the Isle of Man.

It must not be supposed that the 118,000 fishermen of
the British Islands are the only persons dependent on
fishing. The Scotch Commissioners estimate that, while
there are 48,000 fishermen in Scotland, there are 48,000
other persons (curers, coopers, &c.) dependent on the
fisheries. It is unlikely that a similar proportion is to be
found in other portions of the United Kingdom. The
Scotch trade, as will hereafter be shown, is essentially a
trade in cured fish; the English, Irish, and Manx trade is
chiefly a trade in fresh fish. It does not require any
elaborate argument to show that a trade in cured fish must
necessarily employ more persons than a trade in fresh fish.
Perhaps it may be safe to assume that, while every fisher-
man afloat in Scotland finds employment for one-other
person on shore, every two fishermen in the rest of the
British Islands finds work for one other person. In that
case the 48,000 fishermen of Scotland give work to 48,000
other persons ; and the 70,000 other fishermen in the British
Islands afford employment to 35,000 other persons. And
thus the grand total may be reached, that 201,000, or say
200,000, people are dependent on the fisheries of the British
Islands for their livelihood.

It is probably even more difficult to ascertain exactly the
amount of capital embarked in the fisheries than to esti-
mate the extent of work which they afford. But, in this
respect, help may again be derived from the returns of

MIG SEukel Ib Sal 1glSel 1 kes Oy a. 9

the Scotch Commissioners. They estimate the total value
of the boats and gear of the Scotch fishermen at 41,400,000.
It is certain that the value of each boat in Ireland is not
greater than the value of each boat in Scotland. Placing
it at about the same sum the capital employed in the
Irish sea fisheries may perhaps be computed at £600,000.
The value of the English boats is much greater than the
value of the Scotch or of the Irish boats. In Ireland and
Scotland most of the boats are engaged in drift fishing ;
and a first-class drift boat, with herring gear complete, is
worth about £550. But in England a large proportion of
the boats is engaged either in trawling or in line fishing ;
and a first-class trawler, ready for sea, cannot cost less
than £1,000 or £1,200; while a cod-smack, fitted for line
fishing, is worth £1,500. It is certain, therefore, that the
average value of the 15,000 English boats is much greater
than the average value of the 15,coo Scotch boats. Placing

it at twice the sum, the capital embarked in the English

fisheries must amount to £2,800,000. The capital em-
barked in the Manx fisheries is about £240,000; and a
gross capital of about £5,000,000 is, therefore, probably
employed in the fisheries of the British Islands.

Thus then, to summarise the conclusions which have been
already stated, some 200,000 persons are probably em-
ployed in the fisheries of the British Islands; and some
£5,000,000 of capital are embarked in these industries.
These figures enable a rough estimate to be formed of the
produce of the fisheries. If it be assumed that every
person employed in fishing earns only £40 a year, and
that only 10 per cent. is required to pay the interest on,
and to replace, the capital engaged, the sea fisheries of the
British Islands must yield a gross sum of £8,500,000
annually. If to this sum be added a further £800,000,

10 LEE BRAT ASED ALS Pd eA) ED,

the estimated produce of the Scotch, Irish, and English
salmon fisheries, it will be seen that the gross value of the
British fisheries must be fixed at some £9,300,000, or say
from £9,000,000 to 410,000,000 a year. It will be shown
later on that other figures, derived from independent
sources, go a long way towards confirming the accuracy of
this estimate.

The fish which are caught in the British seas may be
divided, for the purposes of this argument, into two classes :
1. Bottom fish, or fish which live at or near the bottom of
the sea. 2. Floating fish, or fish which swim at or near the
surface of the water. The former class comprises (@) flat fish,
such as turbot, brill, halibut, sole, plaice, and others ; and (0)
round fish, as they are called in contradistinction to flat fish,
such as cod, haddock, and ling. The most important fish
in the latter class are the clupeide (herrings, pilchards,
sprats) and mackerel. It will be readily understood that
fish which live at or near the bottom of the sea must be
caught by engines different from those employed for the
capture of fish swimming at or near the surface of the
water. As a matter of fact the fish in the first class are
caught mainly either by the trawl-net or by lines; while
fish in the latter class are taken chiefly in drift-nets and
seine nets. It may, perhaps, be desirable, before proceeding
further with the narrative, to describe very briefly these
several modes of fishing. .

The hook and line, which is still extensively used, is one
of the most ancient modes of fishing in the world. “Canst
thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?” so commences a
well-known passage in Job; while in Homer men fish with
hooks, both in the Odyssey and in the Iliad, though in both
poems the hooks are made of horn. Line fishing, however,
as it is now practised differs widely from the art which

DEE SiMe Sil LOST eheA De. II

the ancients used. The Grimsby smacks employed in this
trade are the largest and most costly vessels employed in
fishing. The “fleet” of lines which each boat places at the
bottom of the sea is about seven or eight miles long; and
each “fleet” contains from about 4000 to 5000 hooks. It
will be readily understood that the mere task of baiting
these hooks involves an enormous amount of labour ; and
that the work of supplying bait forms of itself a consider-
able industry. The growing scarcity of mussels, which
form the best and most convenient bait, and the irksome toil
inseparable from baiting the long lines, are perhaps slowly
tending to supersede this mode of fishing with trawling.
A trawl net is a stout purse-like net, with a wide mouth at
one end, tapering almost to a point at the other end. The
mouth of the net is kept open by the upper portion of it
being attached to a heavy beam of wood, which is sup-
ported at either end by two heavy iron sledge-like con-
trivances. The lower portion of the net lies at the bottom
of the sea. The beam of the largest trawl nets is 50 feet
in length; and the great fish markets of the kingdom are
dependent fora large portion of their supplies of fish on
the operations of the trawlers. The fish caught in the
trawl are usually dying or dead when they are drawn on
to the deck of the vessel. The fish caught by the lines, on
the contrary, are generally alive. The line smacks, there-
fore, are usually fitted with wells or chambers into which
the sea water is admitted, and the fish are brought in these
wells alive to land. There, many of the cod are kept
either in chests or cases anchored in the sea; or more
simply, though more cruelly, are tied together by the tails,
and kept in salt water till they are required for the market.
Then they are drawn up, killed, and sold as live cod—
killed, as the technical phrase runs, “to save their lives.”

12 IVER Wey A Sel JOSIa6 SII eAoye,

Such are the chief modes by which bottom fish are
caught. Surface fish, it has already been stated, are mostly.
taken either by the seine or the drift net. The seine-net—
a net by which the fish are encompassed, and either drawn
up on to the shore, or “tucked” into the boat in mid
ocean—is probably the oldest movable net used by man.
It is largely employed by the Americans in mackerel
fishing ; but, except in the pilchard fishery of Cornwall, in
the herring fishery of south-western Scotland, and in the
salmon fishery, it is not extensively employed in this
country. The drift net—a net which floats in the passage
of the fish, and in which the fish are caught by enmeshing
themselves—is the engine by which the herrings and
mackerel are chiefly taken. A first-class boat, fishing for
herrings, will carry a drift net or fleet of drift nets nearly
two miles long. It is computed that the Scotch herring
nets alone would stretch four times across the Atlantic
from Liverpool to New York.

Drift nets were originally made of hemp; in Ireland and
the Isle of Man they were till lately made of flax; they
are now almost universally made of cotton. The greater
lightness of the cotton has enabled the fishermen to extend
the length of the net, and, in consequence, the efficiency of
the engine. But the labour of hauling in even a cotton net
two miles long is enormous; and to facilitate the work,
many of the best boats have of late years been provided
with small auxiliary steam engines. It seems possible
that, when these engines are brought into more general
use, it will be found convenient to supplement the boats
with an auxiliary screw ; and thus the whole fishing trade
may, in consequence, be ultimately carried on, under
certain conditions, by steam vessels. This revolution, how-
ever, is not yet accomplished. Excepting a few steam

IIIS IEMA INSEE JBSIEl TTRAIONE. 13

trawlers, fishing vessels are in all parts of the kingdom
dependent on their sails, and, in consequence, great atten-
tion has been paid to the rig of the vessels.

There are probably few people, even among those who
are best acquainted with the fisheries, who are at all
aware of the great alteration which is taking place in this
respect. Originally the boats used as trawlers were usually
cutter-rigged ; the boats used for drift fishing were lugger-
rigged. An example of the old rig of trawlers may still be
found in Cornwall and in the south of England; and the
Scotch and east of England drift boats are still usually
rigged as luggers. But experience is gradually leading to
the supercession of both these rigs. As the trawlers increase
in size, the large mainsail of the cutter is found too heavy
for the men to work, and in consequence the large trawlers
on the east coast have been built with a small mizen mast ;
the size of the mainsail is thereby reduced, and a small
manageable mizen added. A similar alteration is being
gradually made in the rig of the drift-boats. The old lug-
sail has to be lowered on each tack and re-hoisted. Such
an operation in large boats naturally involves a great deal of
labour. The lugger, therefore, is being superseded by the
dandy-rigged vessel; and the dandy promises to be the
rig which will ultimately be adopted by all classes of
fishing-boats.*

* Fishermen use a “dandy ” rigged boat, a “dandy” wink, and in
hand-line fishing a ‘‘dandy” line. Mr. Holdsworth, in his book on
deep-sea fishing, says that the “dandy” wink is the small wink or
windlass astern of the boat used for hauling in the trawl (p. 67, note).
The name “dandy” line, he writes in another passage, is not very
intelligible . . . . The manner in which the line is worked by moving
it gently up and down points strongly, however, to “ dandle,” as the
real name (p. 154). But, if his interpretation be right in one case, why
should it not apply to all three? The dandy mast would then be the

14 TELE SB RATS. WLS Mike ANDER

Any change of rigging, which relieves the work of the
fishermen, necessarily enables them to prosecute their
calling with more profit, since it allows them to work their
boat with a smaller crew. ‘The crews which fishing-boats
carry depend on the trade in which they are engaged. A
first-class trawler will carry three, or in some cases four, men
and a boy; a first-class drift boat requires seven men and
a boy ;* while a large Grimsby smack will carry nine to
eleven hands. In most parts of the British Islands the
fishermen have an interest in the proceeds of the fishery.
The owner of the boat, the owner of the net, and the fisher-
man, all taking a certain proportion of the profits. In most
parts of the British Islands, again, the lads who are employed
in the boats are the near relatives of the fishermen engaged.
But on the east coast of England, and at Hull and Grimsby
in particular, a different system has arisen, and large
numbers of lads, strangers to the fishermen and unacquainted
with the sea, are apprenticed to the fishing trade. As the
condition of these apprentices has attracted a good deal of
attention of late years, it may be desirable to add a few
words upon it.

It is not difficult to determine the reasons which have
induced the boat-owners of Hull and Grimsby to engage
apprentices. The large smacks which are fitted for line
fishing require the services of many hands; but they only
need comparatively inexperienced labour. Almost any boy
can be trusted to bait a hook; to haul in a line; or to take
a fish off a hook. More unskilled labour is thus required

short or small mizen mast ; the dandy wink the small windlass ; and
the dandy line the small hand-line in contradistinction to the long

line.
* This is the crew carried in Scotland and the Isle of Man. A still

larger crew is carried by the Yarmouth boats.

DAE BRADLSE PLS TIRADE, 15

in this branch of fishing than in any other. It so happens
that Grimsby is situated at a convenient distance from the
metropolis, where the Guardians of the Poor have always a
large number of boys whom they are anxious to dispose of.
A philanthropist might readily conclude that nothing could,
under such circumstances, be better than to apprentice the
boy to the healthy life of a fisherman. Yet philanthropy,
unluckily, makes terrible mistakes when it acts without
sufficient knowledge and without adequate inquiry. It is
not every boy who has either the strength or the courage
- which fits him for the hard sea-faring life of a fisherman.
It is not every master of a vessel who has the patience or
the heart to make allowances for the short-comings of a timid,
weak lad. In consequence, a system which was intended to
work for good, has undoubtedly led to much evil. Some
impatient masters have cruelly treated their boys, other
boys have tried to escape the fate of their comrades by
absconding from the boats and breaking their indentures.
The magistrates have been compelled to punish the lads
who have broken their engagement, while, in strict justice,
the punishment ought perhaps to have fallen on the ill-
advised people who sent them into an unsuitable calling.
In 1875 no less than 375 apprentices—or on an average,
rather more than one apprentice each day—were committed
to the County Prison in Lincolnshire, or the Borough
Prison in Hull. Some cases of unusual cruélty have since
attracted the attention of the public to the position
of these poor friendless boys, and the Board of Trade
has appointed a committee to enquire into the subject.
It may be hoped that the report which has thus been
obtained may be the means of alleviating the lot of these
lads. But the true method of terminating the abuses which

have occurred, is to take care that the lads who go to sea

16 TIDE BIRADAS Th GUS eee AD) Le.

shall be, as far as possible, the sons or relatives of the
fishermen who go with them, or shall at any rate have
parents or guardians living at the ports. The lot of a lad,
far from home, far from friends, who is forced to spend much
of his life on board a fishing-boat far from land, must
be uncertain, unless it is protected by some such influences.*

The trawlers, the line smacks, and the drift-boats, all
frequently fish the same waters. Trawlers, indeed, can only
work in those parts of the sea where the bottom is soft and
smooth. The trawl easily gets caught by a rocky bottom,
and the operations of the trawler are stopped or his gear |
lost. But, with this exception, trawlers and drift-boats
commonly fish the same waters. It will be readily under-
stood that different classes of fishermen, using different
modes of fishing and working in the same places, occa-
sionally come into collision. A drift-boat, drifting with
two miles of net in front of it is almost helpless, and a
trawler coming across the net may break through it and
carry away a portion of it. The law, indeed, has pro-
vided against losses of this character ; it has forbidden the
trawlers to come within three miles of the drift-boat. But,

* The following are the chief recommendations made by the
Committee.

(2) No lad under the age of 16 should be permitted to serve on
board a vessel exceeding 20 tons net register tonnage, except under a
written agreement, or an indenture of apprenticeship, to which the
Mercantile Marine Superintendent or the Board of Trade Officer of
the district must be a party, with the power to act as the guardian and
protector of the lad.

(6) No lad to be indentured before he has reached the age of 13, or
for a longer period than seven years.

(c) A month’s trial of the sea life to be allowed to a lad before his
indentures are made absolutely binding.

(d) The master, in every case, to be held responsible for the lodging
and food of the lad on shore as well as at sea.

LTTE SBR IEIS EL, ELSE ARRADE, 17

when large fleets of trawlers and drift vessels, or “drivers ”
(as they are called), are fishing on the same ground at the
same time, as they do for instance in Mount’s Bay, it is
no easy matter for a fisherman to carry out the law; and the
difficulty is increased from the fact that drift-fishing is
carried on solely at night.*

Provision, indeed, has been made against these collisions,
the different classes of boats being required to carry dis-
tinctive lights. A trawler is required to carry one white
light on its mast-head. A driver is directed by the Sea.
Fisheries Act, 1867, to carry two lights, one above another,
three feet apart. So far the directions are plain enough.

* In the text allusion has only been made to accidental collision. A
good deal of angry feeling has, however, lately been provoked by the
discovery that some foreign trawlers were in the habit of carrying a
sharp instrument which they dragged behind them for the purpose of
cutting through the warp or rope of any drift-net which fouled the
trawl. The instrument, which received the expressive nickname of a
devil, caused great mischief to the nets of the drift fishermen. Their
loud remonstrances induced the Government to propose the appoint-
ment of an International Convention to enquire into the matter. The
Convention, which was attended by representatives from Great Britain,
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, met at
the Hague in 1882. It agreed on the following articles : .

“The use of any instrument or engine which serves only to cut or
destroy nets is forbidden. The presence of any such engine on board
a boat is also forbidden. The high contracting parties engage to take
the necessary measures for preventing the embarkation of such
engines on board fishing-boats,

“The high contracting parties engage to propose to their respective
legislatures, the necessary measures for ensuring the execution of the
present convention, and particularly for the punishment by either fine
or imprisonment, or by both, of persons who may contravene the
provisions.”

The convention still awaits ratification ; but it is expected that it
will before long be ratified and brought into effective operation by
laws being passed in the countries which were parties to it.

C

18 WelS SEVIS Sah Sagal WAVE.

Unluckily the person who drew them does not seem to
have observed that the Merchant Shipping Act, 1862, con-
tained contrary orders. ‘This act declared that all fishing-
boats, when attached to their nets and stationary, should
carry one white light, and that this light, and no other,
should be carried. These conflicting instructions involved
the drift fishermen in a singular dilemma. If they obeyed
the rules in the Merchant Shipping Act, they necessarily
disobeyed the Sea Fisheries Act. They could not, on the
other hand, observe the Sea Fisheries Act without contra-
vening the Merchant Shipping Act. After some years
Parliament came to their assistance, and directed them to
follow the orders of the Merchant Shipping Act. But this
decision led to a fresh inconvenience. It forced drift-nets
and trawlers to carry the same lights, and consequently
made it impossible for the trawlers to distinguish the drivers.
The inconvenience was so great that the Government under-
took to effect a remedy. It placed itself in communication
with other countries, and endeavoured to arrange a new
system of lighting to which the fishermen of all nations
should be bound to conform. After years of negotiation, a
new arrangement was made under which drift-net fishermen
were required to carry two red lights, one above the other ;
and trawlers were bound to carry a red and green light, one
above the other. But the new regulations proved almost as
unacceptable to the trade as the law which they had been
framed to supersede. Neither red nor green lights can be
seen at anything like the distance at which white lights of
equal power are visible ; and it is probably impossible to
devise a red light which it will be practicable for a fisherman
to use, and a fishing-boat to carry, and which will be visible
for three miles. This objection was raised so loudly that

the Government was forced to suspend the operation of

WIE, AI TMH Sah JO Sial Tikes yoyo, 19

the new rule before it ever came into force. Since that
time various proposals have been made for obviating the
difficulty. But nothing has yet come of these proposals ;
and the whole subject still remains in an unsettled state.

The development of the fishery is constantly increasing
the difficulty of devising adequate means for keeping the
trawlers and drift-nets apart. But there is one portion of
the British Islands where collisions of this character rarely
occur. Except in the Frith of Forth and on the Ayrshire
coast, there is little or no trawling in Scotland ;* and the
chief portion of the Scotch fishery is conducted by drift-
nets and line fishermen. This circumstance, however, does
not constitute the whole distinction between Scotland and
the rest of the United Kingdom. In England, with few
important exceptions, the bulk of the fish caught are caught
for the fresh market and for the home trade; in Scotland
most of the fish are caught for the foreign market and are
cured. The foreign trade in fish is of such importance that
it may be desirable to describe it in some detail before
proceeding to a review of the still more valuable home
trade.

And, in the first place, it may surprise some people to
learn that the import trade in fish is as important, and
growing at least as rapidly, as the export trade. In 1842,
forty-one years ago, 137,000 cwt. of fish were imported
into the United Kingdom; in 1882, 862,000 cwt., worth
41,659,000, were so imported. In 1842, on the other hand,

* In Scotland the word “trawl” is in common use. But the trawl
of Scotland is not the beam-trawl of England, but the seine-net. It
may be added that in the United States the trawl is the long line.
There seems to be something peculiarly irritating to fishermen in the
name of trawl. Scotch fishermen denounce the seine-net as “a trawl :”
English fishermen denounce the beam-trawl ; and American fisher-
men object to the long lines which they call trawls.

CeZ

20 IEE SIDA Sal IMSMEL TIRADE.

162,000 barrels of herrings and fish of other sorts, worth —
£82,000, were exported ; in 1882, 920,000 barrels of herrings,
worth £1,383,000, and fish of other kinds, worth £440,000, ;
were sent abroad. The import trade has increased rather
more, the export trade rather less, than sixfold in the forty
years. The export trade is divided into four branches.
The first and most important is the trade in Scotch
herrings ; the second is the trade in cured cod and ling;
the third is the trade in Cornish pilchards ; the fourth is
the trade in fresh fish with Paris and other Continental
towns. The causes which produce trade are curious ; the
demands which create it difficult of explanation. The
earliest and most valuable. Scotch herrings are sold to the
upper classes in Northern and Eastern Europe; the bulk
of the Scotch herrings are consumed in the Protestant
States of Germany ; Cornish pilchards find their principal
market in Italy ; while the cod and ling, which are caught
chiefly in the Shetland Islands and Northern Scotland, are
sold in Spain. It is not, at first sight cleariiwhy the
German should prefer a herring to a pilchard, and an
Italian the pilchard to a herring. But the Italian is usually
a Roman Catholic; the Roman Catholics buy fish as food,
and the Italian, therefore, purchases a rich oily fish like the
pilchard. The higher classes in Spain buy cod for the
same reasons which make the salt cod of Newfoundland
the usual dish in English households on the first and last
day of Lent. The German Protestant, on the ‘contrary,
eats his herrings, not as his chief food, but as a relish. He
likes his herrings, as he likes his hams, cured by salt, but
uncooked by fire.

It is said in Northern Scotland that the trade between
Spain and the Shetland Isles in dried fish has existed since
the reign of Elizabeth. Some vessels of the great Armada

SMES LEIS MUNSIEl JQSEl IigeAl Dye, 21

were wrecked in the Shetlands ; the crews were forced to
remain there for many months, and, during their residence,
they formed relations with the inhabitants which, after an
interval of nearly three centuries, are still maintained by
their descendants. About 4,000,000 cod and ling* are
annually caught by Scotch fishermen ; the catch produces
about 150,000 cwt. of cured fish, and rather more than half.
of the whole are exported from Scotland.

It is impossible to give any exact statistics of the produce
of the pilchard fishery, because there is a large and in-
creasing consumption of fresh pilchards in Cornwall and
the adjoining counties. But a private firm has, for many |
years, published statistics of the export trade in this fish,
which may be relied on with confidence.. From these
accounts it is evident that the pilchard fishery is one of the
most uncertain of the harvests‘of the sea. Since 1869 the
export trade has varied from rather more than 6,000 hogs-
heads in 1869 to nearly 46,000 hogsheads in 1870. But
the average export trade of pilchards may probably be
placed at about 12,000 hogsheads a year, the average value
at about £3 a hogshead.

The curing of pilchards is not carried on with much
care. The fish are piled on the stone floors of the curing-
houses in masses five or six feet high, each layer of fish
being covered with salt. The “ bulk,” as it is termed, is
left thus piled up for a month. During this period the
weight of the mass forces the oil out of the fish, and this

* The cod fishery of Scotland is probably capable of development.
It is insignificant compared with the Norwegian cod fishery. “I was
informed by Mr. Smidt, the Secretary to the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Norwegian Fisheries, that the coast of Norway, from the
Lofoten Islands (latitude 68° N.) to Finmark (latitude 71° N.), annually
produces 50,000,000 cod fish, but the production in 1877 amounted to
70,000,000 cod” (zoth Ann. Rep. Insp. Salmon Fisheries, p. 22.)

22 [aE JI Sah JUBSIEl STRAUOVE:

oil is run into cisterns and is used by the poor of Cornwall
for lighting purposes. At the end of the month the fish
are taken from the bulk and packed in hogsheads. As
each hogshead contains about 2,500 fish, and is worth,
according to the season, from about £2 to about £4, five
to ten cured pilchards are sold for one penny. It is,
perhaps, doubtful whether the same amount of nutritious
animal food is procurable at as low a price in any other part
of Europe.

It must, however, be admitted that, if pilchards cured in
Cornwall form a cheap article of food, very little care is
exercised by the curer. Far different is the course pursued
with Scotch herrings. The Scotch herring fishery has been
a favourite object of protective legislation. Sir Robert Peel,
in the great debates on free trade, once declared that every
one was in favour of free trade until his own interests were
affected: he had “a Scotch correspondent who was a
good free trader in everything except herrings.” Many
Scotchmen of the present day, who would resent the alle-
gation that they were Protectionists as an insult, are still,
in their hearts, of the same opinion as Sir Robert Peel’s
correspondent, and think that free trade is inapplicable to
herrings. Yet the Scotch herring fishery is a standing
example of the wisdom of free trade ; and it is probable
that the remnant of protection which still clings to it is
actually more harmful than beneficial to the fishermen.

The Scotch herring fishery has had a history of about
120 years. In the first half of the last century, Young, in
a passage in the “ Night Thoughts,” which has frequently
been quoted, declared that the British looked on

“ Shamefully passive, while Batavia’s fleet

Defrauds us of the glittering finny swarms,
That heave our firths, and crowd upon our shores.”

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 23

The complaint which was thus raised by Young was
echoed in other quarters; and in 1750 a company was
formed with a nominal capital of £500,000 for managing
the fishery. But the company was not left dependent on its
own exertions. Parliament offered a bounty of 30s. a ton
on all decked vessels fitted out for the fishery, and Frederick,
Prince of Wales, the father of George II]., became the
patron of the company. But neither the patronage of the
Court nor the bounty of Parliament saved the enterprise
from failure. In 1757 the company was forced to ask for
higher bounties, and, in the thirty years ending in 1782,
Parliament actually spent more than £300,000 in de-
veloping a fishery which, notwithstanding this expenditure,
was with difficulty supported. In 1786 a new society,
which still exists, was formed for the extension of the
fishery. The society purchased estates in Mull, in Skye,
on the west coast of Ross-shire, and subsequently at Wick
on the east coast of Caithness, and built on them fisher-
men’s houses. But it achieved only a doubtful success. It
has long since ceased to take any direct part in the fishery,
though it still draws from its property an income which is
heavily burdened. It is very doubtful whether it has, in
any way whatever, effected the object of its promoters.*

The system of bounties, which was originally thought
indispensable for the prosperity of the fishery, continued to
exist for more than fifty years after its institution. Bounties
were granted, in the first instance, on every ton of shipping

* It is an instructive circumstance that the Germans, this century,
have undergone the same experience which disappointed our fore-
fathers last century. A company has been formed by some patriotic
Germans to promote the German herring fishery. It has been sup-
ported by loans free from interest, and by heavy protective duties.

Yet “neither help at home nor protection against the foreigner enables
the company to flourish.”—Inspector’s 20th Ann. Rep., p. 29.

24 TALE BRAT SE VESTED ARAL Ta.

employed in the fishery. The result was obvious. As
Adam Smith put it in the “Wealth of Nations,” vessels
were fitted out to catch the bounty, and not to catch the
fish. This evident result induced a Protectionist Parliament
to propound a fresh remedy. In addition to the bounties
on the tonnage of the vessels, a bounty of 2s., which was
subsequently raised to 4s., was paid on every barrel of
herrings cured. There is no doubt that under this system
the fishery was rapidly developed. The number of herrings
cured rose from about 90,000 barrels in 1809 to more than
350,000 barrels in 1828, when the bounty was abolished.
But it is not clear whether the vast increase in the trade
was due to the existence of the bounty. During the nine-
teen years which succeeded the abolition of the bounty the
trade continued to increase at an almost equal rate, and
560,000 barrels of herrings were cured in 1847, 640,000
barrels in 1848, and 770,000 barrels in 1840.

Bewildered, perhaps, at the rapid increase of a trade
which, in the first instance, had seemed to require so much
fostering protection, many people imagined that the increase
of the fishery must produce its own ruin, and that a fish
which was being caught in season and out of season would
sooner or later be exterminated. Influenced by such
arguments as these, Parliament in 1851 adopted a new
policy, and initiated a system of restrictive legislation.
These restrictive measures retarded the development of the
fishery, and, at the close of the seventeen years during
which they lasted, the average quantity of herrings cured
was no larger than it had been at the beginning. In 1867,
in accordance with the wise recommendation of a special
commission, restrictive legislation was repealed. The
fishery, in consequence, increased ; and in 1874, for the first
time in its history, upwards of 1,000,000 barrels of herrings

TIEWE IY SINS al TEESTeh MISA OUG a 25

were cured. Then, however, a decrease to 942,000 barrels
in 1875, and to 598,000 barrels in 1876, created a fresh
alarm. A new Commission was appointed to investigate the
allegation that the fishery was being over fished. The Com-
mission thought the decrease was due to accidental causes,
and declined to recommend a return to protective measures.
Their opinion has been justified by the result. In the five
succeeding years the fishery yielded on an average 1,035,000
barrels a year. In 1880 no less than 1,473,000 barrels of
herrings were cured in Scotland.

This rapid increase is the more remarkable because the
great majority of the herrings cured have always been
cured for export, and the course of the export trade has
entirely changed. During the first third of the present
century most of the herrings were exported either to the
West Indies or to Ireland. The slave-owners of the West
Indies found Scotch herrings a cheap food for their slaves,
and bought large quantities of them annually. But the trade
was actually destroyed by the abolition of slavery, and the
export of herrings, to “places out of Europe,” which had
always exceeded 50,000 barrels, and which occasionally
was more than 80,000 barrels, dwindled away to nothing.
Ireland, however, still continued to purchase large quan-
tities of herrings till after the famine of 1847. The poverty
of the people in the first instance, and the rapid decrease of
the population afterwards, terminated the Irish demand ;
and Ireland, instead of taking 100,000, or even: 180,000
barrels of herrings a year, now only purchases about 20,000
barrels annually.

Thus the two main markets, which had stimulated the
growth of the Scotch herring fishery during the first half
of the present century, were cut off from the exporter, and,
if no new demand had arisen, the trade must have perished.

26 MIR SEVIS HSIEL IESIEL TIRADE.

At the time, however, at which the Irish and West Indian
markets were closed, a variety of circumstances stimulated
the Continental demand for Scotch herrings. The trade
with the Continent commenced in the closing year of the
great war. But up to 1843 the Continent never purchased
100,000 barrels of Scotch herrings. Since that time the
Continental trade has been rapidly developed. The
measures of Sir Robert Peel had probably, indirectly, the
effect of enabling Germans and Russians to increase their
purchases, while the reduction and the ultimate repeal
of the timber duties lessened the cost of the barrels in
which the herrings were packed. The Continent purchased
upwards of 250,000 barrels of herrings in 1850, upwards of
290,000 barrels in 1860, 486,000 barrels in 1870, and
976,000 barrels in 1880. The whole of this vast increase, it
should be recollected, has taken place during a period in
which bounties have ceased, and in which trade, so far as
this country is concerned, has been free.

It must not be supposed that this great trade in fish has
risen without difficulty or without competition. On the
contrary, the Germans have for some years placed heavy
import duties on cured herrings with the express intention
of protecting their own fishermen. But protection has
proved absolutely powerless to develop the fisheries of
Germany; and the German fishing fleet, though it is
fostered by the patronage of the wealthy and protected by
the import duties of the Legislature, lies idle in Emden,
while the German markets are supplied by Norwegian,
Dutch, and British fishermen. The competition of Norway
and Holland has, in fact, proved much more formidable
than the import duties of the German Legislature, and, if
Britain should ever lose the trade, the loss will apparently

be due to the competition of these nations and not to the

MES, SEIS Sak, Jalal IIe AUDUR. Ny)

protective duties of Germany. The increased attention,
which both Dutch and Norwegian fishermen are paying to
the cure, is being rewarded by a constantly increasing sale
of Dutch and Norwegian herrings in German markets.*

In the past all three nations have taken exceptional
measures to secure the sale of their own fish. The Dutch,
Norwegian, and British Governments have been in the
habit of branding the barrels in which the herrings are
packed ; and the brand has been taken as a guarantee
both of the quantity as well as of the quality of the fish.
In Scotland the brand is a survival of the bounty system.
The bounty was paid on each barrel of herrings branded,
and the brand was retained after the bounty had been
abolished. |

A system, which has no example in any other industry,
which is a mere survival of a policy of protection, and
which is opposed to all the maxims which regulate modern
legislation, has naturally been the subject of attack. In
1848 the Treasury instructed one of the ablest members of
the Civil Service—the late Sir John Lefevre—to enquire
into the matter. Sir John naturally reported that “the
system. of authenticating the quality of goods by the

agency of a Government officer is objectionable in prin-

* The figures will be found in the Appendix to the Report of the
Select Committee on the Scotch Herring Brand. It is there stated,
on the authority of a Report published in 1857, that the quantity of
herrings imported from Great Britain into the ports of Stettin,
Kénigsberg, Hamburg, Dantzic, and Harburg, increased from 100,297
barrels in 1848 to 318,263 barrels in 1855; whilst the Dutch imports
into the same places declined from 5,019 to 1,300 barrels, and the
Norwegian from 194,862 to 122,423 barrels. In 1879, however, Nor-
way sold to Germany 630,127 barrels ; Scotland 545,993 barrels, and
Holland 98,026 barrels. It is plain, if these figures are reliable, that
the Dutch and Norwegian trades are increasing more rapidly than
the Scotch trade.

28 LILLE BEAD SIA LORS ee AE,

ciple ;” but he hesitated to risk the possible “ derangement
and contraction” of the foreign trade, which he thought
might result from its abandonment. He took the middle
course, therefore, of suggesting that a fee should be charged
for the brand, and that the enterprising curer should be
encouraged, by the prospect of saving his fee, to rely on
his own brand instead of that of the Government. Nothing
came of the report till 18 55, when the Treasury decided on
abolishing the brand. The remonstrances, however, which
the decision excited in Scotland induced it, instead of
abolishing the brand, to appoint a new Commission to
enquire into it. The new Commissioners spoke with an
uncertain sound. One of them recommended the termina-
tion of the system ; two of them adopted Sir John Lefevre’s
compromise, and proposed that the brand should be re-
tained, but that a fee should be charged for it. The
Treasury adopted the advice of the majority of the
Commissioners, the brand was saved, and the fee was
imposed. —

This arrangement has not, however, had the effect of
terminating the controversy. In 1866 an able Commission,
the ablest Commission to which the subject of fisheries
has ever been referred, condemned the brand ;* in 1870,
however, a new Commission appointed by the Treasury
declined “to undertake the responsibility of advising” its
discontinuance. Finally in 1881, a Select Committee of
the House of Commons recommended its retention.

These. various reports and conflicting opinions have
necessarily involved the subject in a good deal of con-
fusion; and statesmen still hold contrary opinions on the
expediency of the brand, who would be unanimous in

* The Commission of 1866 consisted of Mr. (now Sir J.) Caird, Pro-
fessor Huxley, and Mr. G. S. Lefevre, Sir J. Lefevre’s son.

USER JSIRIICUS TE IM Slel IRAU OE? 29

condemning the introduction of a similar system into any
other branch of industry. The great and increasing im-
portance of the trade, the circumstance that the brand
places, or is supposed to place, the small curer on a level
with the large one, the knowledge that branded herrings
command a higher price in the German markets than
unbranded herrings, are all confidently quoted as reasons |
for continuing the system; while the fact that the fees,
charged for the brand, exceed the cost of the establishment
which awards it, is cited as a conclusive argument for its
retention.

These views, however, would be stated with less confi-
dence if men would condescend to apply general principles
of policy to this particular question. If it be a legitimate
function of Government to guarantee by its brand the
quality or quantity of a particular article, there is no
reason whatever why the Ministry should draw the line at
herrings. The Government used to undertake to guarantee
the quality of cured cod; at an earlier period it actually
stamped linen and woollen goods; and there is no very
clear reason why if its action is justifiable in one case, it
should not be extended to all industries. The advocates
of the herring brand, indeed, declare that, as the pur-
chaser is unable to examine for himself the quality of the
herrings packed in the barrel, there is an exceptional
reason for giving to him the guarantee which a Govern-
ment brand affords. But it is obvious that the argument,
if it has any cogency, is capable of almost indefinite exten-
sion. Take, for instance, the most important industry in
which Englishmen are engaged. The Chinese complain
that cotton goods are constantly adulterated by excessive
or impure sizing. Will the Government undertake to guar-

antee that every bale of cotton goods is free from improper

30 Se, TIA Sal JEN Sal WIR AUDIE.

sizing? The cotton manufacturers might very possibly
undertake to pay a small fee for the privilege of such a
guarantee, and the Government might consequently obtain
a remunerative duty. The folly of such a course would,
however, at once prevent its adoption. Government, it
would be said, has nothing to do with the manufacturers.
It must leave them to attend to their own business,
and to bear the consequences of their own errors ; or, if
they are dishonest enough to commit them, to suffer the
penalty which sooner or later attends fraudulent practices.
Nor is it quite clear that the brand does afford the
guarantee which it is its whole object to supply. Com-
plaints of the bad quality of branded herrings occasionally
reach Scotland from German buyers. Those who desire to
see the complaints themselves will find samples of them in
the “Appendix to the Report of the Select Committee on
the Herring Brand.” It was broadly stated to that Com-
mittee that the brand was awarded to a low average of
cure; it was stated that even this average was not main-
tained. Its existence, therefore, was alleged to discourage
improvement, and to afford no real protection to the
curert.
It is said, however, that the brand has the effect of
placing the small curer on a level with the large one; and
that its abolition would give an advantage to the large
capitalist whose private brand would be known, and so
tend to ruin the smaller one. It is an obvious reflection
that this argument, if it be sound, is applicable to other
industries besides that of the curer; but it is equally
evident that it is no part of the function of Government to
try to remove the advantageous distinctions which men
have secured from their own industry or from their own

skill. If alarge curer has from his success succeeded in

WIEID W5sdgol I Sal IIE Ie! IRA ON. 31

obtaining a certain reputation for his own fish, it is not just
that he should be deprived of the advantage which he is
entitled to derive from the pains which he has taken, or
that he should be placed on a level with other and less
successful men. Protection to the small curer may too
often mean protection to the less energetic tradesman.

But there is another and a graver objection to the
continuance of the brand. Any government guarantee
necessarily implies conformity with certain prescribed con-
ditions. The brand has, therefore, the effect of stereotyping
the trade and preventing improvement. The herrings must
be packed in specified barrels, made in one particular way ;
they must be cured in a prescribed manner and mixed with
a given proportion of salt. If an intelligent curer ventures
to think that he can improve the process, he must do so at
the certain risk of losing the brand, and so of lowering the
value of his fish. If even, as happened in the great fishing
of 1880, the stock of available barrels is exhausted, the
curers are unable to supplement the deficiency by using
Norwegian barrels, since their use would not entitle them to
the brand. Everything, in fact, must be done by rule;
every departure from regulation must be followed by a
pecuniary loss to the curer, and the trade, in consequence,
is carried on, year after year, in the same unvarying manner,
with a Conservative aversion from change, which would
be worthy of the Chinese Empire.

Nor is there any reason for assuming that the trade
would, in any sense, suffer from the abolition of the brand.
In the first place there is no brand on the west coast of
Scotland; and there is a large trade between the west
Goast of Scotland and the Continent in “miatties”’* ‘or

young herrings cured. In the next place, the brand does

* Mattie is a Dutch word ; it signifies, literally, maiden.

32 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE.

not fulfil the purposes for which it was designed. It has
been already stated that the Continental buyers occa-
sionally complain that they buy branded herrings which.
are not of a quality that would entitle them to the brand.
It is difficult to see how any other result could happen.
The duty of the fishery officers, who award the brand,
becomes more difficult precisely as the take becomes
larger; and, however zealous the officers may be, it is
impossible for them to see all the contents of every barrel.*
The brand, therefore, occasionally covers bad articles. It
might be possible to argue that a brand, which proved the
quality of the fish as accurately as the stamp of the Mint
proves the quality and quantity of the gold in a sovereign,
served a useful purpose. It is difficult to see what advan-
tage can ensue from a brand which does not and cannot
fulfil this object. It is a mere wanton restriction on the
curer, which should be got rid of at the first opportunity.

It is remarkable too that this conclusion, still stoutly
resisted in Scotland and Parliament, has already been
accepted by other nations. Some years ago Norwegian
herrings were regularly branded; and in 1856 Admiral
Sullivan, the member of the Commission of 1855, who
dissented from the conclusions of the majority of its

members, wrote of Norwegian herrings that “with the

* The fishery officers are required to test the quality of the fish by
opening a certain proportion of the barrels presented for the brand at
the rate of

g barrels per hundred in parcels of 100 barrels.
8 55 3 35 from I00 to 300 barrels.
7 3 3 Pe of above 300 barrels.

The barrels selected for examination are, as a general rule, to be
opened alternately ; z.e. No. 1 is to be opened at the head end : No. 2
at the bottom end, and so on.—Report Select Committee on Herring
Brand, p. 253.

TELE LES LOLS EL LERCA LOE, 33

exception of a small and unimportant portion, they are
so inferior in quality when caught that no mode of cure
will enable them to compete on equal terms with the
Scotch, which appear to have the entire command of the
principal German and Polish markets.” Since these words
were written the brand or “ brack,” as it is called in Norway,
has fallen into disuse; and the Norwegian herrings now
constitute the principal supply, and command the highest
prices in the German markets. So plain a lesson, which
has not yet been learned by statesmen in England, has not
been lost on the Dutch, who, in their turn, have abolished
the brand. The striking fact, therefore, remains that
this country, which had the distinction of initiating free
trade, is the only nation having an important fish trade
which still clings to an obsolete and vicious system. The
fishery continues to flourish; but it flourishes in spite of,
not in consequence of, the brand.

It is perhaps necessary to add that the brand affixed to
the barrel is supposed to indicate the quality of the fish.
The highest brand is awarded to what are technically called
crown full herrings, that is large herrings full of roe, care-
fully gutted with a knife. The next highest brand is given
to crown matties, a “ maiden ” fish—that is, smaller herrings
with minute roes. Shotten herrings, or herrings which have
cast their roe, are branded as crown spent; while herrings
of all these qualities, packed in the same barrel, are branded
crown mixed. The barrel contains 262 imperial gallons,
or 32 gallons English wine measure.

It has been already stated that the chief market for
Scotch herrings is found in the Protestant States of
Germany; but a large number of herrings cured in a
different way are sold in the United Kingdom. These
consist of red herrings, kippered herrings, and _ bloaters.

D

34 TLE, SB RITLS EL ELSA CAE,

Red herrings are fish which after being kept in the salt
pickle from two to fourteen days, are washed, dried, hung
up in the smoking-house on spits, and smoked with oak or
ash smoke for ten or fourteen days more. - Kippered
herrings, after being salted, are cut open and slightly
smoked; while bloaters are the best fish that can be
procured, smoked for a much shorter period. Red
herrings are usually packed in barrels or boxes, and
are either exported or sold in the large towns. In this
country, however, they are perhaps gradually being super-
seded by the kipper and the bloater; and a large and
increasing trade is continually being conducted in these two
kinds of cured fish.*

In addition, however, to the trade in cured herrings, large
and increasing numbers of herrings are annually sold fresh.
The railways, in fact, by ensuring a rapid delivery, have
enabled fish to be sold fresh, which half a century ago could
not possibly have reached the fish markets in good order.
The fish which are caught on the English, Manx, and Irish
coasts, are to a great extent disposed of in this way ; and
fresh herrings form one of the cheapest kinds of animal food
procurable in the United Kingdom.

Herrings are measured in Scotland by the cran. A cran
contains thirty-six gallons and holds from about 800 to 1000

* The colour is given to the red herring—which is occasionally a
yellow herring—by the fuel with which it is smoked ; by altering the
fuel the curer can alter the colour of the cured fish. Perhaps few
people know that the term kipper is derived from the kype or hook on
the lower jaw of the spawning male salmon. The male salmon from
this kype became known as the kipper. The male fish was usually
cured, and known as kipper salmon. The term was soon corrupted
into kippered salmon, and the word “kipper” turned into a verb
became synonymous with to cure. Bloaters are an invention of the
present century.

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 35

herrings. A barrel of full herrings contains 700 to 750 fish.
As, however, a certain proportion of herrings is unsuitable
for the curer, probably one cran of herrings must be caught
for every barrel of herrings that is cured. In other words,
about 1,000,000,000 herrings must be annually caught in
Scotland for the purposes of the curer. Assuming that only
one herring is sold fresh in Scotland for every four that are
cured, the surprising number of 1,250,000,000 of herrings
must be annually taken in Scotland. In Ireland and the
Isle of Man herrings are measured by the mease, which
contains 525 fish ; and the Irish fishery, according to the Irish
Inspectors, produces from about 50,000 to about 200,000
mease a year, or from about 25,000,000 to about 100,000,000
fish a year. In England, herrings are usually sold by the
last, each last nominally containing 10,000, but in reality
13,200 fish.* It is impossible to give any accurate statistics
of the yield of the English Herring Fishery. But it will,
perhaps, be reasonable to assume that its produce is half as
great as that of the Scotch fishery. In other words, that it
yields 600,000,000 or 625,000,000 of fish a year. It is
probable, therefore, that British fishermen draw nearly
2,000,000,000 herrings annually from the British seas. The
value of these fish, placing them at a farthing apiece, must
exceed £ 2,000,000.

From a naturalist’s point of view, sprats, or “garvies,”
as they are called in Scotland, are closely connected with
herrings. They are caught in enormous quantities in the
estuary of the Thames and in the estuaries of eastern
Scotland. It is said that as much as 200 tons of these fish

* The Last, a German word, is computed in this way :—
4 herrings = I warp.
33 warps = 1 hundred.
10 hundred = 1 thousand.

36 (el2 ISH TsiSyah I2Slal Wea Ole

have been brought to London in a single day ; and they are
sold wholesale in London by the bushel for from 2s. to 8s.
They are so numerous that it is frequently impossible to
dispose of them for food ; and large quantities are occasion-
ally sold at a still lower price as manure. The season for
sprat fishing commences early in November and lasts for
about three months. No food equally nutritious is ever
procurable at so cheap a rate by the poor. If sprats were
only as dear as salmon, perhaps no food would be more
prized on the table of the rich.

No available means exist for determining the value of the
Sprat fisheries : the same thing is true of Whitebait. The
Whitebait of commerce consist of a variety of small fish ;
but chiefly of young sprats and young herrings. They are
mainly caught in the estuaries of the Thames and of the
Medway, but they are found on almost every part of the
_ British coasts, and fisheries for them are gradually springing
up in various places. They are commonly sold in London at
about Is. a quart, and are thus included among the cheaper
kinds of fish. The destruction of them year after year is
enormous; and there is perhaps no better proof of the
marvellous fertility of the sea than may be deduced from
the circumstance that the continuous destruction of white-
bait is making no impression whatever on the supply either
of sprats or of herrings.

The Mackerel fishery is conducted in many places by the
same boats and by the same fishermen as the herring
fishery. Its importance has gained for the fish a singular
exemption. By an old act of Charles II., which is still in
force, no wares, goods, fruit, herbs and chattels, may be sold
on Sunday. By an act of George IIL, which is also on the
Statute Book, fish brought to London on Saturday night is
expressly ordered to be publicly sold on Monday morning.

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 37

But a different rule is applied to mackerel, and permission
is given for its sale either before or after Divine Service on
Sunday. The distinction probably arose from the convic-
tion that a rich oily fish like the mackerel, which commonly
reached London in hot summer weather, could not be
kept fresh for the additional twenty-four hours. The strict
observance of the Sabbath, however desirable it might be,
could not compensate for the loss of valuable food. Mackerel
used usually to be taken in the English and in the Bristol
channels, but of late years a large fishery for this fish has
sprung up at Kinsale in the south of Ireland. The fishery
is attended by English, Scotch, Manx, and Irish boats, and
is every year extending further and further round the south-
west coast. The Irish inspectors compute the value of the
mackerel caught off the coast of Kerry and Cork at nearly
£150,000, but a further sum must be added _to this amount
for the fish taken off the coast of Clare. It is probable that
the Irish mackerel fishery thus produces a gross sum of
£175,000 annually : if the whole of the Channel fisheries
for mackerel is only of the same value as those off the Irish
coast, the mackerel fishery of the British Islands must be
worth £ 350,000 annually.
Thus the drift fishermen, fishing for surface fish, are
dependent for their harvest on herrings, mackerel, sprats,
and pilchards.* If the yield of the herring fishery may be
placed at £2,000,000; that of the mackerel fishery at
£ 350,000 ; that of the pilchard fishery at £ 50,000—£ 36,000,
for the foreign, and £14,000 for the home trade-—it will

* These fish are not, of course, solely caught with drift nets.
Herrings in Loch Fyne are caught with a ground seine net ; or, as it
is locally termed, a trawl net. Pilchards are also largely, and mackerel
occasionally, caught with seines. Sprats are caught with seines in
some places, and in stow boat nets in the estuary of the Thames.

38 LAE BLATT SD ELSE LAD E.

perhaps, be justifiable to assume that these fisheries and
the fishery for young sprats and young herrings, known as
whitebait, yield to the fishermen a gross revenue of from
£2,500,000 to £2,750,000 a year. This sum, which is
purposely computed in the most moderate manner, repre-
sents the value of the fish on the coast, and not its much
higher value in the markets.

Before proceeding to deal with the great line and trawl
fisheries which form the main source of the fish supply, it
may be convenient to add a few words on the fisheries for
migratory fish. There are four kinds of migratory fish which
are taken in this country : Salmon, including in the term |
all migratory fish of the family; smelts, the 4er/an of France,
or the sparling of northern England; shad or twait, and
eels; of these, salmon are by far the most important.
They are caught by fixed nets on the coasts of Scotland,
and by fixed engines in the rivers, by seine-nets, or by net and
coble, to use the Scotch term for a seine-net ; and by drift-
nets off the coast of Northumberland and in some parts of
Ireland. The Irish Salmon Fisheries are estimated to yield
£579,000 ayear. This estimate, however, has been made by
computing the value of the fish at Is. 6d. a lb. Placing
it at the more moderate price of 1s. a lb., the yield of these
fisheries may be estimated at about £400,000. The value
of the Scotch salmon fisheries is certainly not less than
£250,000 annually, and probably reaches £ 300,000. The
yield of the English Salmon Fisheries has been frequently
computed at £100,000 a year.

It seems, therefore, not unreasonable to assume that the
salmon fisheries of the British Islands yield to the fishermen
some £800,000 annually. It is perhaps fair to suppose that
the fisheries for other migratory fish—eels, twait, and smelts
—produce at least £100,000 a year. If then the value of

LUTE BIMIMSED SLSR ERA D EE, 39

the drift fisheries and of the analogous fisheries for pilchards,
sprats and whitebait, may be placed at from £2,500,000 to
£ 2,750,000, and that of the fisheries for migratory fish at
£900,000, it is a safe and moderate estimate to compute
the produce of the whole of these fisheries at £ 3,500,000
annually.

_ These fisheries, however, important as they are, bear no
comparison with the great fishery for bottom fish, which used
to be exclusively taken by lines, but which are now chiefly
captured by trawl-nets. It is no exaggeration to say that
London and the great centres of population are dependent
for their supply of fish on trawlers; and that if, from any
cause whatever, trawling were suddenly terminated, its ter-
mination would be followed by famine in the fish market.
No clear history of trawl-fishing has ever yet been written ;
and its origin is uncertain. There are, however, many
reasons for believing that trawling, to a limited extent, has
been practised for centuries in Britith waters, and that
trawlers worked in Torbay in the reign of Elizabeth.

Trawling, however, if it were practised by our ancestors,
was chiefly confined to Devonshire, and was carried on in
only a humble fashion. The vast extension of this mode
of fishing did not take place till ourown time. Till, indeed,
railways were invented the present system was impossible,
since no means were available for carrying the tons of fish,
which were thus caught daily, from the ports to the markets.
Trawling is now carried on off almost all the coasts of this
country. The Fleetwood trawlers work in Morecambe Bay,
the Liverpool trawlers on the smooth bottom of the sea
between the Isle of Man and Lancashire, while they occa-
sionally leave their ordinary grounds and go as far south
as Aberystwyth. The Brixham trawlers working mainly
in Torbay and Mount’s Bay also frequently visit the

40 Ieh3, Val POI Sal VailSiel Tigyg iOVe.s

Bristol Channel, while Dover, Ramsgate, Hastings, Rye,
and other ports all contribute their trawlers to the English
Channel. :

But the main home of trawling at the present time is to
be found in the ports which fringe the North Sea, and it is
no exaggeration to say that these ports form the most
important fishing stations, and the North Sea the most
productive fishery, in the world. Most people have some
acquaintance with the shape of the North Sea. It is com-
paratively small, it is shallow, and it is surrounded on
three sides by the different countries of Europe which are
watered by large rivers. All these conditions are favour-
able for the production of fish of a high quality. The
rivers bring down from the adjacent land a vast quantity
of minute life which forms the food of young fish; the
sandy plateaux which fringe the shores are the nurseries
for the fry ; while the deeper depressions, which are to be
found here and there in the bottom of the sea, afford shelter
for the mature fish in cold and stormy weather. The gulf —
stream is unable to force its way into the basin of this sea,
and its waters are consequently colder than those of the
Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea. Its colder waters, though
unfavourable for mackerel and a few other fish, improve
the quality as food of its cod, its haddock, and its other
habitants.

The bottom of the sea resembles the surface of the land.
It is an undulating pasture intersected by valleys in some
places and hills in others. The submarine slopes and
depressions in the North Sea are not indeed very great.
The hills and valleys, like those of Eastern England, are of
moderate height and depth, and there are few if any places
in it, south of the 55th parallel, which are more than
300 feet deep. Just as the shepherd drives his flocks in

LAIR: Jes HISIEl TEARSIE IIR A SOU Dp 41

summer to the hills and in winter to the valleys, so in
summer the fish frequent the sandy elevated plateaux
beneath the sea, while in winter they withdraw into the
deeper submarine depressions. The sandy or muddy
eminences in which the fish are found in summer fringe
the coasts of England, Holland, Germany, and Denmark.
But in addition to the elevations which surround the basin
of the sea, a great block of high tableland, about 200 miles
long and about 30 miles broad, runs from south-west to
north-east almost in the middle of the sea. This is the
Dogger Bank where, rather more than a hundred years ago,
Dutch and English fought a sharp and indecisive action, and
where now hundreds of British, Dutch, and French fisher-
men obtain a livelihood. In the immediate vicinity of the
south of the Dogger, the land abruptly slopes away into a
valley which was probably once a river estuary, and which
is now known as the outer Silver Pit ; while south of this
again the southern shore of the old watercourse is formed
by some elevated ground known as the Well Bank.
Between the Well Bank and the English coast the high
tableland is intersected by two deep depressions, known as
the Sole Pit and the Silver Pit. North-west of these again,
the stony foreshore which runs from Flamborough Head
bears the name of California.

These salient features in the physical aspect of the North
Sea ought to be understood by any one who desires to
form a clear idea of the fishing trade of the United
Kingdom. The names which, in modern times, have been
given to some of these submarine valleys and hills, such as
the Silver Pit, the outer Silver Pit, and California, sufficiently
indicate the importance which fishermen attach to the
grounds. In cold weather, indeed, the flat fish are congre-
gated together in the valleys and fall an easy prey to the

42 LAE BRITISH FISH TRADE:

trawler ; and the chief fishing port of the United Kingdom,
Grimsby, owes its origin and prosperity to the fact that it
is immediately adjacent to the Silver Pit.

This fact is so curious that it is worth while to trace the
rise of Grimsby during the last half century. Rather more
than fifty years ago, Grimsby is said to have owned one
fishing-boat. In 1843 the Silver Pit was first worked, but
it was worked by Brixham and other vessels coming to the
port. But the trade, when it once began, rapidly developed.
The Manchester and Sheffield Railway was carried into
the port. Large sums of money were spent in building
docks, the fishing fleet increased by “leaps and bounds,” till,
in 1881, the port, which in 1830 had possessed one boat,
owned 607 vessels registering 35,000 tons, and employing
nearly 4000 persons.

The North Sea trawlers follow two systems of fishing.
Some of them, fishing the adjacent grounds, return con-
stantly to port, and send their fish direct by railway to
London or to other populous towns ; others of them repair
in fleets to the distant grounds, and are absent from home
for weeks at a time. In consequence of their prolonged
absence they in turn have created a fresh industry.
Steamers are employed to repair to the fleet and take the
fish which have been caught from the boats, and carry them
to England. Boats for this purpose ply from Hull, from_
Grimsby, and from London. The fish are carried from the
smack to the steamer in open boats, and some loss of life
unfortunately results from this ferrying trade. No means,
however, have yet been invented of transferring the fish from
the smack to the steamer without the assistance of the
small open boats.

In addition to the legitimate trade of carrying the fish

from the fleet to the market, another more objectionable

THE VBRIDLISED LS DRA E, 43

system has of late years sprung up in the fishing fleet.
When men are absent from home for long periods, they
require to be supplied with various articles ; and, in conse-
quence of the demand which has thus sprung up, smacks
have been fitted out for the sale to the fishing fleet of
spirits, tobacco, and other things. As these smacks buy
their goods abroad, and do not return to a British port
before they are sold, they naturally escape the customs
duties, and are consequently able to sell spirits and tobacco
at the lowest possible rate. Cheap drink is perhaps always
objectionable, and an unregulated liquor traffic is usually
liable to abuse. The boat-owners complain that the
coopers, as these smacks are called, are floating grog-shops
of the worst description, and that they are under no control
whatever. They demoralise the fishermen and tempt them
to part with fish and gear for spirits and tobacco. It is
not, however, easy to see how these evils, great as they are,
can effectually be terminated. If coopering were forbidden
in English vessels, the only result would be to drive the
trade under a foreign flag. The true method of terminating
abuse probably consists in endeavouring to make the trade
itself more respectable. If the boat-owners would encourage
smacks sailing under proper control, and dealing not merely
in spirits but in coffee and other necessaries, to attend the
fleet, the respectable trade might perhaps in the long run
destroy the disreputable one. If people will not condescend
to supply a well-ascertained demand in a regular way,
irregular means of meeting it are certain to arise.

It is not very easy to obtain any reliable statistics of the
value of the trawling trade. The same ports which own
the chief trawlers own the chief smacks engaged in the line
trade ; and the fish which both classes of vessels produce

are consequently sold through the same markets. Nearly

44 THE BRITISH FISH VERA DE,

75,000 tons of fish are, however, sent away annually by
railway from Hull and Grimsby alone. It is, perhaps, a
fair assumption that for every three tons brought away from
Grimsby by land, one ton is either carried direct from the
smacks to London or sold in the neighbourhood. If this
assumption is accurate, some 100,000 tons of fish must be
annually caught by the Hull and Grimsby boats. Placing
the value of these fish at the ports at rather less than
2d.a |b. or £20 a ton, the smacks of these ports must
annually obtain fish worth £2,000,000. It is almost certain
that the fish caught by lines and trawls in all the other
ports of the kingdom exceed in quantity the fish caught
by the trawlers of Hull and Grimsby alone. If it is only
equal to the quantity caught by the boats of these two
ports the trawl and line fish of the British Islands must be
worth £ 4,000,000 annually.

Thus, if the estimates in the foregoing pages be reliable,
it is possible to form some idea of the value of the fishing
industry of the BritishiIslands. It was shown on an early
page of this essay that merely testing it by the value of the
capital employed and the number of fishermen engaged, it
was probable that the fishery produced from £ 9,000,000 to
£10,000,000 a year. It has now been shown specifically
that the trawl and line fisheries in all probability yield
£4,000,000, the herring fishery £2,000,000, the salmon
fishery £800,000, the mackerel fishery £350,000, and that
the fisheries for pilchards, whitebait, and smelts bring up
these totals to at least £7,500,000 annually. To these
must be added the fisheries for fish, which, strictly speak-
ing, are not fish, for crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs,
prawns, and shrimps: and for molluscs, such as oysters,
mussels, whelks, and winkles.

It is no easy matter to give any estimate, which is worth

INE IRIN SIE IRUSTEl ITE AIOND 45

publishing, of the value of these fisheries. It is stated in
the last edition of the “ Encyclopcedia Britannica” that 2000
gallons of shrimps a day are sent away occasionally from
Leigh in Essex. Assuming that the whole annual catch is
only fifty times the catch of a single day, 100,000 gallons of
shrimps must be taken at Leigh alone. Their value, at Is.a
gallon, would be £5,000 a year. But Leigh is not the only
or the chief home of the fishery. Wherever a sandy shore
fringes the coast shrimpers are at work, and their gross take
must be very large. If it be only twenty times the take at
Leich, it must amount to £100,000 annually. Perhaps it will
surprise still more persons to learn that the cockles which
are eathered in Morecambe Bay are sold for at least
£20,000 a year,* and that more than 2,500 tons of peri-
winkles are annually consumed in London. Yet More-
cambe Bay is not the only place in which cockles yield a
fertile harvest to the neighbourhood, and London is not the
only large town where people buy periwinkles by the ton
load. Shrimps, cockles, and periwinkles form, however,
only a small portion of the trade in shell fish. The more
important portions of this trade are the trade in mussels,
the trade in lobsters and crabs, and the trade in oysters.
More than thirty years ago, according to a return which
was published by the Deep Sea Fishery Commissioners of
1866,f 498,000,000 oysters, or, in round numbers, 500,000,000
oysters were sold in London. Placing them at only a
halfpenny apiece, and omitting the large quantities sold on
the coast and other places, the value of the oysters sold
must have exceeded £1,000,000. There is reason for
fearing that the continual decrease of oysters during the
last quarter of a century must have diminished these sales.
But, if the number has decreased, the price has increased ;

* See “ Fisheries Comm.,” 1879, p. 238. Teese

46 THE ERE RSE FIST RADE,

and the total value of the smaller quantity of oysters sold
now must be at least as great as that of the larger quantity
of oysters sold thirty years ago. If, however, the oysters
alone are worth £1,000,000, it is not a very excessive
estimate to presume that the other shell fish—lobsters,
crabs, prawns, shrimps, mussels, cockles, whelks, and
winkles—produce another £1,000,000. In other words,
while the fish taken off our coasts yield some £ 7,500,000
annually, the shell fish raise the total yield of the harvest
of the sea to £ 9,500,000.

These figures, it will be seen, agree with the original esti-
mate based on the number of fishermen employed, and on
the estimated capital embarked in the fisheries. And, if
attention be paid to another portion of the trade, it will be
seen that the calculation is further corroborated. Hitherto
this essay has dealt chiefly with the catching of the fish;
but no account of the fish trade would be complete without
some explanation of the manner in which the fish caught
are distributed. The distribution is effected in four ways:
(1) The largest proportion of the fish caught is conveyed
inland by railway to the great markets; (2) a further pro-
portion is carried to the markets by sea or river ; (3) large
quantities of fish are exported; and (4) considerable
numbers of fish are consumed near the ports where they
are taken.

In 1881, 206,000 tons of fish. were conveyed inland by
railway from the English ports, 59,000 tons were conveyed
inland from the Scotch ports, and 7000 tons were conveyed
inland from the Irish ports. The fish sent away from the
various ports by train amounted in the aggregate to
272,000 tons. If the value of the fish is placed at £20a
ton, the fish so carried must have been worth 45,440,000 ;
42,000 tons of fish were carried direct from the sea to

WII, IEIITM Sal JPN SIal IAAIONE 47

Billingsgate ; estimating them again at 420 a ton, the total
value of the fish carried by railway to inland towns, and by
water to Billingsgate, must be worth £6,280,000. It has
been already shown that the value of the fish exported
exceeds £1,820,000 a year. It is possible, therefore, accu-
rately to account for fish worth £8,100,000. If it be recol-
lected that Liverpool, one of the most important fish
markets in the country, is largely supplied by water, that
Shields, Edinburgh, and, to a certain extent, Glasgow, are
also supplied by water, and that all round the coasts a
population—counted by tens of thousands.in the summer
season—is consuming fish, it seems not unfair to assume
that another £1,000,000 or £1,500,000 worth of fish may
be accounted for, and that the gross yield of the fisheries
may again be raised to £9,000,000 or 410,000,000 a year.
There are several points connected with these figures
which are well worth attention. The first circumstance
which will strike everyone is the insignificance of the yield
of the Irish fisheries. Only 7,000 tons of fish were conveyed
-inland by Irish railways. It is true that large quantities
of fish are taken direct from the Irish ports to Holyhead
and Milford ; but, if it be assumed that the whole of the
fish taken inland from these two ports was Irish, the Irish
fisheries will still only supply 20,000 tons of fish to the
markets. The Irish fishermen are mainly engaged in
supplying the home markets ; the Scotch fishermen are
largely occupied in supplying the foreign markets ; and yet
Ireland only sends one ton of fish to the home markets for
every three tons which the Scotch fisheries, after complying
with the requirements of a great foreign trade, are able to
consign to them. It may be thought that the situation of
Ireland, its distance from London, and the intervening

channel are responsible for this state of things. But there

48 IGUE. SII SIE ITES al IRAQI E Ss

are islands on the west of Scotland which are as remote
from the markets as Ireland itself. The Western Hebrides,
till lately, sent their fish to London either by Glasgow or
by Strome Ferry. In 1880 the opening of the Oban railway
gave them a new outlet for their industry ; and, in 1881,
upwards of 12,000 tons of fish were despatched from Oban
alone by railway, while upwards of 1,000 tons were sent
from Strome Ferry. The remote islands, which are known
as the outer Hebrides, are probably, therefore, sending two
tons of fish to the British markets for every three tons that
arrive from the whole of Ireland.

The desultory operations of the Irish fishermen will be
still better understood if the figures are examined in another
way. The 42,000 fishermen of England and Wales despatch
to the home and foreign markets 260,000 tons of fish, or
about six tons for each fisherman. The 48,000 Scotch
fishermen send about 60,000 tons of fish to the home
markets, and about 100,000 tons of fish to the foreign
markets, or nearly 4 tons to each fisherman. But the
24,000 Irish fishermen only send away about 20,000 tons
of fish, or less than 1 ton for each fisherman: and these
figures, striking as they are, do not, it must be recollected,
represent the whole truth.* A large proportion of the Irish
fish are not caught by Irish fishermen, but by Scotch, ~
Manx, and English fishing-boats. A large proportion of
the English and Scotch fish, moreover, is consumed on the
coasts, while there is no large consumption of fish on the
Irish coasts. :

These facts will appear still more remarkable if they be

* In the preceding figures I have assumed (1) that all the herrings
exported were exported from Scotland ; (2) that 10 barrels of herrings
weigh 1 ton; (3) that all the other fish exported were exported from
England. I have computed this at 22,000 tons.

WD, SEV IITESIGE IAS Iel Ie AIOE, 49

compared with the statistics for Wales. Irish fishermen
have been the favourite object of state patronage for years:
so long as this patronage continues there will always be a
race of Irish fishermen. But no politician has yet risen up
who has demanded state patronage for Welsh fishermen ;
and in consequence, the Welsh fisheries can hardly be said
to exist at all. If Holyhead and Milford be excluded, the
whole of the Welsh ports did not send 1,000 tons of fish by
railway to the markets in 1881. Yet North Wales on a clear
day can look upon the hills of the Isle of Man, which has
nurtured the hardiest race of fishermen in the world ; South
Wales is not much more distant from the opposite coasts of
Cornwall whose people draw a rich harvest from the sea ;
while in West Wales stranger boats .pursue a profitable
herring fishery. It is almost an inevitable deduction from
these facts that the Welsh and Irish fisheries do not prosper
because the Welsh and Irish people do not take readily to
sea-fishing as a pursuit.

Of the 272,000 tons of railway-borne fish, which were
carried inland in 1881, about 90,000 tons were brought to
London. The Metropolis, therefore, in addition to the large
quantities of fish which it received direct from the sea,
absorbed one-third of the whole of the fish carried inland
by railway. The supply of fish to London has been steadily
increasing for several years ; rising from about 95,000 tons in
1875, to about 130,000 tons in 1880. Out of this vast supply
of 130,000 tons, more than three-fourths, or 100,000 tons,
were drawn from the North Sea. London, however, is not
the only market which is dependent on the North Sea.
Out of the 206,000 tons of fish which are borne annually
from English ports by railways, 164,000 tons are carried
from ports situated on the North Sea. The North Sea,
therefore, is the main source of the fish supply of the United

E

50 TELLS VB IRALELS 1G EAS a eA Ea

Kingdom, and its fisheries are more productive than many
countries. If it be recollected, indeed, that in addition to
British fishermen, its waters are fished by Norwegian,
Danish, German, Dutch, Belgian and French fishermen,
some idea will perhaps be formed of the fertility of this sea.
It is probable that fishermen extract from its waters every
year fish worth £ 25,000,000.

It must not be supposed that the whole of the fish brought
to London are consumed in the Metropolis. On the con-
trary, London is the central source of the supply of a district
which every year tends to become larger. One of the most
certain consequences of improved locomotion is the con-
centration of trade. It is found practically more convenient
for buyers and sellers to meet in one place than to scatter
themselves among a great many places. In nothing is this
tendency more perceptible than in the fish trade. London
and Birmingham, and, to a lesser extent, Manchester and
Liverpool, are the markets from which nearly the whole of
England is supplied with fish; and London is annually
becoming to a greater extent the centre of the supply.
Gentlemen residing in distant counties have their dish of
fish regularly sent to them by a London tradesman : fish-
mongers in provincial towns receive their fish uniformly
from Billingsgate; and Billingsgate is thus becoming a
central fish exchange for the whole country.

This state of things could not have arisen except from
two circumstances. In the first place, the development of
the railway system has enabled large and small parcels of
goods to be despatched at a comparatively slight cost to
distant places ; and, in the next place, the importation and
the manufacture of ice have made it possible to keep
perishable goods from decay during transit. As distributors
of fish, the railways would have lost half their utility without

TLE ND LSD ELS Les CALE, 51

ice ; while ice, as a preservative, would have been too heavy
for the old conveyances to have carried. Ice, as an article
of commerce, has not had a history of fifty years. Before
the development of railways and the trade in ice, fish were
brought to London in welled smacks. The welled smacks
are not even now entirely superseded. They are still used
in the Grimsby line trade, and Dutch eels are brought to
the Thames in the same way.* But the railway has become
the great carrier of fish; the railways bring the fish whole-
sale to Billingsgate ; they distribute them subsequently in
small parcels throughout the country.

If these facts be borne in mind, it will be easily under-
stood that space is eminently desirable at Billingsgate. A
market which is already the centre of an enormous trade,
and which every year is required to transact a larger business,
must provide adequate accommodation for those who
frequent it. Unfortunately Billingsgate does not fulfil these
requirements. Built originally at a time when London was,
eompared with its present dimensions, a small town, and
when the fish trade was only a humble undertaking, it is
inadequate to supply the wants of the largest capital in the
world. Nor is it easy to see how its shortcomings can be
dealt with. Situated as it is in the centre of London, the
surrounding land is occupied by property of a valuable

* There is a curious circumstance connected with the carriage of
Dutch eels which is worth recording. The increasing pollution of
the Thames made it impossible to bring even eels alive to London.
“ For ten years,” so said Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons
in 1828, “the water was deteriorating in quality, as was found by
various fishermen who had found it necessary to abandon this mode
of obtaining a livelihood, in consequence of the insalubrity of the
water driving away the fish. In truth, the fishermen’s trade was
destroyed ; and, strange to tell, eels imported from Holland would not
live in Thames water.”

Ky 2

52 IER IBIIISS IEC SEES IEE INCA ONE.

character, and the expense of acquiring additional space in
the immediate neighbourhood would strain the resources
even of so wealthy a corporation as the Court of Common
Council. This circumstance has induced some authorities
to believe that the true way of relieving Billingsgate is to
build a new wholesale market in another part of the city.
The Corporation has actually, in the last few months,
devoted to the fish trade, a market constructed for other
purposes.

The reason commonly assigned for the construction of a
second market is plausible. Part of the fish which London
receives—so it is said—arrives by railway ; another portion
of it comes by water. The railway-borne fish, it is argued,
should be consigned to a market conveniently near to the
termini of the great railways; the river-borne fish should
be sold in a market contiguous to the river. One class of
fish should, therefore, be sent to a place like Smithfield ; the
other class can continue to be disposed of in Billingsgate.
This argument, plausible as it is, crumbles away when it is
tested. What is a wholesale market? It is obviously
a place where buyers and sellers meet, and where all the
operations of the trade should be concentrated. The ordi-
nary tradesman, if he can get all his fish at one market,
will not take the trouble or incur the expense of driving
every morning to two markets. He will select one of the
two markets, and to that market he will go; and his
selection will not depend on mere considerations of
geography. The best fish reaches London by water. The
tradesman who wishes to have the best possible turbot, for
instance, on his slab, must go to the waterside market. But
it is easy to see that, if this be true, the railway-borne fish
will also goto the same market. The salesman at Aberdeen
or at Grimsby will not consider which of the two markets

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 53

will be most accessible from Liverpool Street or King’s
Cross ; he will simply ascertain which of the two markets is
attended by the retail tradesmen, and at which of the two
markets his fish will consequently command the best price.
No expenditure on the part of the Common Council will
induce the retail fishmonger to drive to Smithfield if he can
get all the fish which he requires at Billingsgate. It is
certain that he will be able to get fish at Billingsgate which
he will not get at Smithfield ; and to Billingsgate he will
accordingly go. The moment this is made plain to country
salesmen they will as a matter of course send all their fish
to Billingsgate; and Billingsgate will thus be never super-
seded except by a new market on the waterside.

It does not, of course, follow from this reasoning that it is
inexpedient to establish other fish markets in other parts of
the Metropolis for the convenience of the retail trade. The
only possible argument against the institution of retail
markets seems to be that they are opposed to the habits of
the ordinary London householder who, as a rule, seems to
expect that his tradesman shall come to him, and that he
shall not be required to go to his tradesman. But the suc-
cess which has attended the establishment of co-operative
stores proves that the householder, for the sake of an ap-
preciable advantage, will change his habits ; and, if fish can
be bought more cheaply at a retail market than in a shop,
the householder in the long run will probably go to the
market. But a retail market of this description will depend
on the wholesale market for its daily supply. Its institution
will in no way remove the necessity for one wholesale
market.

What then are the requirements which a wholesale
market should possess, and does Billingsgate fulfil them ?
“A market does not deserve the name which does not

54 IER ISIN SIal IDESIEL JAANE.

afford (1) accommodation for buyers and sellers; (2)
standing room, and, where perishable articles are con-
cerned, standing room under covered ways for the vans
which are being unpacked; and (3) easy access.”* The
accommodation in Billingsgate itself is scanty; but it is
perhaps sufficient. The accommodation outside the market
is disgracefully insufficient. The vans which bring the fish
into it are forced to stand while they are unpacked in the.
adjoining street ; and this street which only extends along
one side of the market is a narrow and inconvenient
thoroughfare. The vans, therefore, are often delayed in
their approach to the market, they are frequently forced to
move on while vans with other fish for which there might
be a greater demand at the moment are being brought up
and unpacked, and these operations, which would be objec-
tionable in any case, are doubly objectionable in the case
of a perishable article like fish on a hot summer morning.
The time, therefore, has obviously arrived when the
market and its approaches should be rendered adequate, or
the market itself should be removed to some other situation.
It must rest with the Corporation of London to determine
which of the two courses should be taken. The Corpora-
tion owns the market, and is therefore the only body
which can be expected to improve it. The reasons which
make improvement preferable to removal must be plain to
every one. Nothing is so conservative as trade, and
nothing is so difficult as to alter the channel in which a
particular trade flows. It may take time before any
market, however convenient it may be, can supersede
Billingsgate. On the other hand, the expense of making
the approaches adequate for the trade is enormous. Bil-

* T have quoted in this paragraph a report of my own on the
subject. ;

Weld, IVI TM al JORSIEl I UIDYB. 55

lingsgate stands on one of the most valuable sites in
London. It is no exaggeration to say that unless its area
is doubled, and Thames Street is broadened from end to
end, all the necessary conditions of an adequate market
will not be fulfilled. Improvements of such a character,
however, will not cost merely thousands, or tens of thou-
sands, but hundreds of thousands of pounds ; and it is for
the Corporation to determine whether the game is worth
the candle, or whether it would not be better to build
at once a new market on another and new site at the
waterside.

People who think hastily, or who do not think at all,
usually suppose that the high price of fish in London is
consequent on the inconvenience of Billingsgate; and they
frequently use the oddest of arguments to support their
conclusions. Fish they say is cheap enough at Billings-
gate, it may be purchased for 2d. per lb. ; but it is dear in
the west end shops, and is not procurable for less than
8d@.alb. It may be doubted whether such statements as
these have any real basis. Those who have most ac-
quaintance with the case will hesitate to believe that the
average price of all the fish sold at Billingsgate ever falls
so low as 2d. per |b., or that the average price of all the
fish sold by retail in London ever rises so high as 8d.
Large as the profits of the retailers may be, they are not
so large as common rumour supposes. If, however, the
price of fish in west end shops is high, it is certain that
the crowded streets of Billingsgate is not solely responsible
for it. Ifthe inconveniences of the market enhanced the
price, it is obvious that they would raise the price in
Billingsgate itself. They can have no effect on the price
when the fish has once passed into the hands of the retailer.

The whole gist of the ordinary complaint, however, is that

56 LTE SB RALAS EL LS ele Age

fish is cheap at Billingsgate and dear when it reaches the
consumer’s hands; and it is plain, therefore, that if the
complaint is well founded the cause must be sought outside
of the market.

It may, under the circumstances, be worth while to
consider what are some of the causes which legitimately
raise the price of fish to the consumer. It has hitherto
been assumed in this paper that the fishermen on an
average receive £20 a ton, or rather less than 2d. a lb.
for the fish which they catch; but it must be recol-
lected that this average price is computed from a great
many items. The average price of salmon for instance
exceeds Is. per lb.; the average price of sprats on the
coast is represented by a fraction of 1d.a lb. It cannot,
under such circumstances, be possible to state the average
value of all fish with anything like precision ; but the esti-
mate of 2d. a lb. is perhaps sufficiently accurate. It
requires very little reflection to perceive that this sum must
be largely increased before the fish reach the hands of the
consumer. In the first place the fish are sold on the coasts
by a salesman; they are packed in the railway vans; in
hot weather they are packed in ice; the railway freight
from the ports to London has to be paid; the carriage
from the railway terminus to Thames Street has to be
charged ; the porterage from the van to the market has to
be added ; market dues at Billingsgate raise the price still
further; the salesman at Billingsgate necessarily expects
his own profit ; and, lastly, the retailer has to charge his
own expenses in driving to the market to buy his fish, the
rent of his shop, and the cost of distributing the fish to the
consumer. In addition to all these expenses, a certain loss
must be experienced in dealing with a perishable article
like fish in hot weather. The price which the consumer

LAE BRITHSH PLS TRADE, 57

must pay, therefore, must be sufficient to cover this loss,
and the retail price of fish must exceed and largely exceed
the price received for it by the fishermen on the coasts.

It may perhaps be possible to place approximately this
excess of cost in figures. The charges on the coast, for
selling and packing the fish and for ice, may probably be
placed at about 41a ton, the cost of conveyance to London
at £2 10s. to £3 ton, the carriage to the market, porterage
and market dues and the salesman’s commission at another
£1. The initial price, therefore, on the coast is raised from
an average of £20 to an average of £24 I0s., or £25 before
the fish leaves the wholesale market. If the retailer’s
profits and his labour in going to and in carrying the fish
from Billingsgate be placed at 25 per cent., the price
will further be raised to £31 5s., and if a further 15s. be
added to cover the cost of fish which either decays, or
which is sold at a nominal price to prevent its decay, the
average retail price will be raised from £20, the value of
the fish on the coast, to £32, its price to the consumer.

This additional price, it must be recollected, would be
much more serious in the case of the cheap fish which the
trade, by a most unlucky name, calls “ offal,” * than with
respect to the dear fish which are technically known as
“prime.” The transit charges, the market dues, the sales-
men’s commissions, and the expenses and a portion of the
profits of the retailer would, in every case, have to be borne
before the fish reached the consumer. If these charges

reached on an average £10 or £11 a ton, they would repre-

* “ Trawled fish is divided for market purposes into two classes,
distinguished by the names of ‘prime’ and ‘offal’; the former con-
sisting of turbot, brill, soles, and dorys, and the latter of haddock,
plaice, and other kinds of inferior fish ”—Holdsworth’s “ Deep Sea
Fishery,” p. 15.

58 WIENS, SERN MN Sisal JEU Sah IAIN,

sent an addition of 1d. a lb. to the price; and the fish,
therefore, if they were given away on the shore, could not
be retailed in London for less than a 1d. a lb.

It is no doubt true that one half of these charges could be
avoided if the consumer went to Billingsgate and purchased
his own fish; and it is alleged that if Billingsgate were
made more convenient and more accessible many con-
sumers would take this course. But very little reflection
will show that this course could not be taken by the ma-
jority of householders. It must be a more inconvenient and
costly thing for a householder to travel to Billingsgate for
the sake of buying sixpennyworth of fish than to pay a
tradesman a shilling for bringing the fish to his own door.
Even then if the smaller householder could afford to pay
as much as a Is. for his fish, and the price of fish in the
retail market was twice as much as its cost at Billingsgate,
most people would find it cheaper and easier to employ a
retail tradesman. The retailer, in fact, is carrying out the
sreat principle of the subdivision of labour which is, in one
sense, the cause and in another sense the consequence of
modern progress ; and it would be absurd to suppose that
his services could be dispensed with by a civilised com-
munity.

Fish soid at Billingsgate are sold as a rule by auction.
Fish sold on the coast in smaller ports, where there are no
licensed auctioneers, are usually sold by what is called
Dutch auction. On the coast the fish ts generally bought
by a buyer who is in direct communication with some firm
at Billingsgate, which acts as the buyer's salesman. At
Billingsgate the fish is either bought by the retailer direct,
or by a middleman, who is known in the market as a
“bomaree.” The “bomaree ” fulfils the same functions in

the fish market which the “ regrater” used to discharge in the

UIFUS, SURI HN Sal SRSSel TRBUDY Ee 59

corn market. He buys fish for which there is no imme-
diate demand at the moment, and sells it again later on in
the day. A good many people think that the interposition
of the “bomaree ” has the effect of further raising the price of
fish and that it is therefore injurious. The clamour which
Englishmen of another generation used to raise against the
“regrater” is raised now against the “bomaree.” The
““bomaree,” however, is really fulfilling a useful purpose. But
for his intervention many small retail tradesmen would be
forced to attend the market at an hour when their attendance
would be inconvenient to them. The “bomaree” enables the
small costermonger to postpone his visit to Billingsgate
till he has disposed of his purchases of the previous day.
Middlemen are never popular characters, yet the middle-
man, if his functions are examined, will generally be found
to supply a public want, and to fulfil a useful purpose.

Such are some of the features in the trade of fish. An
army of 120,000 persons is employed in catching them ;
an army of 80,000 other persons probably find employ-
ment in curing them, or in other ways are dependent on
the fishermen ; and an army of 10,000 to 20,000 persons
is employed in selling them.

There is a singular distinction between the tastes of
different parts of the community in respect to fish.* Some
of the fish which the English eat are disliked by the Scotch,
while the Scotch in their turn eat some fish which are not
relished by the English. The Scotchman rarely eats a

mackerel, and never eats an eel. He carries his dislike of

* The distaste of some nations for fish is remarkable. In the 12th
Book of the Odyssey, Ulysses’ companions would not eat fish till they
were actually starving. Menelaus in the 4th Book says the same
thing of his own companions ; and Plutarch declares that “ among
the Syrians and Greeks to abstain from fish was esteemed a piece of
sanctity.”

60 IleV2, JI RIINS al ITS a0 SSRAIONB..

eels to such an extent that he does not even catch for the
English market the eels with which many Scotch rivers
abound. The herring, the haddock, and the salmon are the
fish ordinarily found on Scotch tables; and the haddock
in Scotland almost fills the position which is occupied in
England by the sole. On the other hand, Englishmen
neglect many excellent kinds of fish. The pilchard, perhaps
from the difficulty of carrying so oily a fish, rarely finds
a market in England outside Cornwall. So excellent a fish
as the halibut is not commonly eaten in London. The
skate and the ling are comparatively seldom seen in the
west end shops; while the poorer classes, who eat cockles
in Lancashire, and mussels in the Midland Counties, buy
whelks and periwinkles in the London streets.

Perhaps, however, the most curious distinction between
Scotch and English may be found in their respective pre-
ferences for the female and the male crab. In England
the female crab is hardly saleable ; and probably the roe,
which she carries inside her shell till it is ripe for extrusion,
is chiefly used as dressing for turbot. In Scotland, on the
contrary, the male crab is hardly ever eaten, and people
will not buy a whole crab which is not a female. In the
shops in Aberdeen the claws of the male crab are sold
separately ; the bodies are frequently unsold. It would
probably be difficult to find another instance, so marked, of
the different habits or tastes of two people who are united
in one nation by the tie of a common language and common
interests:

It has been the object of the preceding pages to describe

* In the same way the French send their lobsters to England ;
while the cray fish of Cornwall find a rare market in London, and are
sold in Paris. The “trout” of the Tweed (salmo eriox) would be

rejected by any London epicure ; they command in the Paris market
as high a price as salmon.

THE BIRIDLSED PISS TRADE. 61

briefly the salient features of the fish trade of the United
Kingdom. With this purpose an attempt has been made
to show how fish are caught, to estimate the amount of
capital embarked in the fisheries, the extent of the employ-
ment which they afford, and the value of the food which
they produce. The fish have subsequently been followed
from the markets to the consumer; and the manner in
which their distribution is effected has been described.
This account, however, would be hardly complete if it were
to stop at this point. Most people who pay any attention
to the subject of fisheries, are occupied rather with the
future than with the present condition of the industry. It is
hardly possible to take up a paper, or to hear a conver-
sation which relates to fishery matters, without listening to
or reading gloomy anticipations of the approaching ex-
haustion of the fish of the sea ; and it is therefore necessary
before concluding these pages to make a few remarks on this
part of the subject.

And, in the first place, people do not seem to be
aware that the predictions which are freely hazarded
of the approaching exhaustion of the sea are not new.
They are almost as old as English literature. Three
hundred and thirty years ago a Bishop of St. David's
declared that the scarcity of herrings was due to the
covetousness of fishers, who in times of plenty took so
many that they destroyed the breeders. The good
Bishop who pronounced this positive opinion was burnt
shortly afterwards at Carmarthen for heresy. But his
opinions on fishery questions survived his martyrdom ; and
a few years afterwards Parliament complained that “in
divers places they fed swine and dogs with the fry and
spawn of fish ; and otherwise, lamentable and horrible to be
reported, destroy the same, to the great hindrance and
decay of the Commonwealth.” ‘ Lamentable and horrible

62 IMEI, SETRITIOES Tal IMIS IGRAUIDIE.

to be reported” the destruction continued, notwithstanding
the action of the Legislature ; and it occurred to another
Bishop that, as Parliamentary action had failed, recourse
might be had toa Higher Power. Bishop Wilson, probably
convinced like all around him of the decay of the fishery,
added a paragraph to the Litany, and desired his clergy to
pray every Sunday to God to restore the blessings of the
sea. Butthough the prayer was offered up and abundantly
answered, the same complaints continued. A few years
afterwards, according to Mr. Lecky, the Irish fisheries
decayed in consequence of the introduction of trawling on
the Irish coast; while, to come down to our own time, in
the year in which the Queen ascended the throne, a petition
presented to Parliament declared that the fishermen of
Scotland, Ireland, and Holland had found out the
breeding places of the herrings, and had resorted there to
catch them, and that since the discovery was made the fish
generally, throughout the west and north of Scotland, had
annually decreased. What would the good Bishop of
St. David’s have said, 330 years ago, if some seer had told
him that the time was coming when British fishermen would
draw 2,000,000,000 herrings annually from the British seas,
and that the fisheries would still go on increasing? What
would Parliament have said in 1558 if it had known that
- the “lamentable and horrible” practices which it denounced
would be continued for upwards of three centuries, and that
at the end of that time the British fisheries would yield a
produce twenty times as valuable as the revenue which
Elizabeth had at her disposal? What would -Parliament
have said in 1837 if some statesman had used such language
as this: This fishery which you declare is being destroyed,
has never yet produced 500,000 barrels of cured herrings a
year; a little more than forty years hence it will regularly
produce 1,000,000 barrels? Yet such a prediction would

Mela SiS vel SalSel sites Woy Se 63

have been literally fulfilled. The statements which thus
have been made for 330 years of the approaching ex-
haustion of the herring fishery have, one after another, been
falsified by the result. Of course the wolf may come at
last. But the shepherd, who has been told for 330
years that the wolf was always coming, and has never yet
known him come, may venture to hope for the security of
his flock for a little time longer.

But some people are not satisfied with such an argument
as this. Their ancestors, they think, may have been wrong
in supposing that the limited machinery at their disposal
was capable of exhausting the sea. But modern energy
has developed the fishery to such an extent that existing
appliances for the capture of fish bear no comparison with
the old engines which they have superseded. All fish, so
they argue, must in one stage of their existence be young
and small; if they are killed when they are young, it is
impossible that they can grow till they are old; and, by
destroying a fish when it is young, we are really killing a
creature of no value, which, if we only wait patiently, will
become of great value. But, in the first place, people do
not act in this way in other matters. They do not hesitate
to eat an egg worth a penny, because it might, if it were
put into an incubator, be gradually developed into a chicken
worth three and sixpence ; and in the next place there is
no certainty, there is even no reasonable probability that
the little fish which a man declined to kill would develop
into a mature fish fit for food. On the contrary the chances
against it doing so are extraordinarily great. ‘The mortality
among fish in the earlier stages of their existence is so large
that the destruction of small fish by man, wasteful as it
may seem, can have no appreciable effect on the stock of

fish in the sea.

64 DEE B RIALS, PLS Mais Ane

To make the foregoing assertion good, it may perhaps be
legitimate to use an illustration, which the present writer
has used twice before, and which has never been answered.
It may be assumed as a matter beyond dispute that
European fishermen are drawing more than 3,000,000,000
of mature herrings annually from the North Sea. It has
been proved that predaceous birds and predaceous fish
catch annually at least as many herrings as are caught by
the fishermen. Yet at the end of the fishing season there
is no perceptible diminution in the size of the shoals. It is
unlikely that one herring out of every thousand has been
killed: it is improbable that one herring out of every
hundred has been killed: it is certain that one herring out
of every ten has not been killed ; but, to put the matter
beyond all doubt, it shall be assumed that one herring out
of every two is killed. In that case 6,000,000,000 herrings
are killed, and 6,000,000,000 herrings are left alive. In
order to maintain the existing stock of herrings in the sea,
these 6,000,000,000 herrings cught, in the course of the
succeeding year, to produce another 6,000,000,000 adult
herrings, or, if half the surviving herrings are females,
each female herring must produce two adult herrings.
But each female herring deposits from 20,000 to 50,000
eggs. Take the lowest of these numbers. Out of every
20,000 eggs which the female herring extrudes, 19,998
herrings must either fail to be hatched, or must perish in
some of the earlier stages of existence. Suppose that man
by his so-called wasteful operations succeeds in destroying
8 out of the 19,998 eggs or fish, or in other words
24,000,000,000 whitebait, nature will still have to account
for the destruction of the remaining 19,990 eggs or young
fish. If she did not do so, the North Sea in the course of
a few years would become a solid mass of herrings.

THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 65

It is obvious, therefore, that the destruction of fish by
man, large as it seems at first sight, is like a drop of water
in the bucket when it is compared with the prodigious
natural waste which is simultaneously going on. It is
absurd, therefore, to suppose that any necessity can exist
for restricting the operations of the fishermen. It may
perhaps be added that it is almost impossible to devise
any regulations which will effectively prevent the cap-
ture of immature fish, and which will not simultaneously
interfere with the legitimate operations of the fishermen
Most, if not all, the modes of fishing involve some waste
The most efficient engines of capture are precisely those
which are the most destructive; and any legislative pre-
cautions, calculated to preserve the fry of fish, will un-
doubtedly diminish the supply, and consequently increase
the price, of fish as food. People, therefore, who are
interested in cheap fish should cease to demand restrictive
legislation. ‘The fisheries of the British Islands languished
under the patronage of the great, and made no real
progress under the patronage of the Legislature. They
have attained their present prosperity under a system of
freedom. “When the subject enjoys the fruit of his
industry,’ wrote Pope in a note on a well-known passage
of the Odyssey, “the earth will always be well cultivated
and bring forth abundance; the sea will furnish the land
with plenty of fishes, and men will plant when they are
sure to gather the fruit.” It was the misfortune of
England that her statesmen for one hundred years did not
realise the full moral of this passage, or see that the true

way to promote every industry was to leave it alone.*

* The passage in Homer is a very remarkable one. “ Under a good
government,” says Ulysses to Penelope, “the land brings forth its
fruit, and the sea yields its fish.”

¥

Gort THE BRITISH FISH TRADE.

These truths require perhaps to be impressed on the
public at a moment when one section of the people is —
endeavouring to impose restrictive regulations on fishermen,
and another section is trying, by an unnecessary and there-
fore unwise patronage, to develop an industry which is
already prosperous. But it must not be supposed that,
because free trade in fishing is better than protection, and
the independence of an honest man is worth more than all
the patronage of all the aristocracy, nothing can be done
either by legislation or in other ways to promote the deve-
lopment of British fisheries. The few pages to which this
essay may still extend, cannot perhaps be more usefully
occupied than by considering this portion of the subject.

In the first place, the State can do what no private
individual can possibly do. It can collect and publish
periodical and authoritative statements of the condition of
the fisheries. This information can easily be collected by
officers who already exist, and no appreciable expense will
therefore be incurred in obtaining it. Its publication will
be of great advantage. In State affairs, as in other matters,
the possession of knowledge is essential to the administrator ;
and many of the wild proposals which are constantly made
for the regulation of the fisheries, would probably be
dropped if the steady and satisfactory progress of the
industry were established by figures. Those who desire
to resist the introduction of restrictive laws as well as those
who clamour for their passage, are, or ought to be, equally
interested in procuring the statistics, by which the sound-.
ness of their own opinions must ultimately be tested.

In the next place, the State can provide, or can ask other
nations to aid it in providing for what—for want of a better
word—may be termed the Police of the Seas. The con-
tinuous development of thé fishery is constantly making

INGde Sell HIel Saal Tiwaliosar 67

regulations for preserving order and preventing collision
more and more necessary. A central authority alone can
devise means for regulating the traffic of the ocean, or can
determine what lights or other marks shall be borne by
distinctive classes of vessels. The State has, from the first,
recognized its obligation to discharge this function. But it
has still much to do before it can rest from its labours. The
whole question of lights at sea—the most important of all
the subjects arranged by the State which affects the
fisheries—is in a confused and unsatisfactory position.
The decision of the Hague Convention is still unratified.
These and other questions await solution ; and the State,
and the State alone, is capable of solving them.

In the third place, though in this respect greater caution
is necessary, the State may probably do something to pro-
mote the construction of harbours in which the fishing-fleets
may find shelter in bad weather, or in which facilities may
be afforded for landing fish. The State, indeed, could pro-
bably undertake no more pernicious function than the
construction of fishing-harbours. If it be once known that
the Treasury is willing to build harbours for localities, local
bodies and individuals will cease to build them for them-
selves. The Imperial Exchequer, however liberal it may
be, can never hope to do so much as the localities them-
selves, and its readiness to build harbours will actually lead
to fewer harbours being built. The true course, apparently,
for the Government, is to encourage local efforts by offering
to advance money for the purpose on easy terms. It will
thus avoid the embarrassing duty of selecting the precise
spots which are most worthy of attention, and it will escape
the invidious distinction of preferring one place to another.
Much may, indeed, be urged for the policy of constructing
one or two harbours of refuge at exposed points of the

68 IETS, SEPSIS EL SA Sel Iikcaloyg,.

coast. But such harbours are not required, and ought not
to be made for fishing reasons alone; and their provision
must be defended on broader grounds than it is possible
properly to bring forward in an essay on the fish-trade of
the United Kingdom.

These three things—the preparation of adequate statis-
tics ; the provision of proper police regulations for ensuring
order at sea: and the facilitating the construction of adequate
fishing-harbours—are the three points on which the action
of the State may properly be employed in promoting the
fishing industry. There are one or two minor points in
which it is possible that interference may be beneficial, but
speaking broadly, on all other matters, State intervention is
probably injurious ; and the best service that the Govern-
ment can render to fishermen, is to leave them alone.
Mr. Huxley once stated that fishermen should be left to
pursue their calling “how they like, when they like, and
where they like.” As a general proposition, to which Mr.
Huxley would probably himself admit a few minor ex-
ceptions may be made, the present writer is convinced of
the truth of Mr. Huxley’s dictum.

Though, however, the action of the State should thus be
limited, other persons may do something to promote the
fishing-trade. The Corporation of London might assist in
this way by improving Billingsgate and its approaches, or by
substituting for it some more convenient water-side market. —
The various railway companies might do something in the
same direction by reconsidering the terms on which they
now carry fish; while private enterprise might also be
of use in devising some adequate scheme for the in-
surance of fishermen’s lives, their boats and their gear.
These are means by which both the State and the public
may usefully promote the fisherman’s industry. Except

TLE BRIDISE USE AERA DE, 69

by such expedients as these, the truest method of assisting
fishermen is to leave them alone. The fisherman of the
British Islands has attained his present position by his own
unaided efforts ; his best friends desire that he should be
neither hampered by the restrictions of law nor spoilt by the
smiles of patronage. To both dangers he is exposed at
the present time. His importance has won for him friends ;
and his new friends are always suggesting new legislative
regulations for his protection, or for the protection of the
fish which he takes. Hitherto these suggestions have been
disregarded by Parliament. It may be hoped that the time
will never come when they may receive more attention. In
fishing, as in other industries, freedom is the first condition
of-success, and the man who is fettered by restrictive laws
is little better than a slave. Perhaps some readers may
recollect what was said of the slave:

“¢ Jove fixed it certain that whatever day
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away.”

G

LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

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THE BRITISH

FISH TRADE

BY

HIS EXCELLENCY

SPENCER WALPOLE

LIEUT.-GOVERNOR OF THE ISLE OF MAN;

OND

Bhs =

Ty WILLIAM CLOWES- AND=SON i

INTERNATIONAL HISHERIES EXHIBITION
AND 15 CHARING CROSS: SW:

ONE SHILLING

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION LIBRARIES

ESTABLISHED 184.

SYDNEY BARBER AND 60.
Fish Factors and Salesmen,
OYSTER IMPORTERS, MERCHANTS & PLANTERS,

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Fish received on Consignment from all
Parts of the Coast.

OYSTERS SENT TO ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD
ANY QUANTITY,

ANGLO-FRENCH 6s. and 8s. per 100, Two Sizes.
Equal to three-fourths of alb the Natives sold.

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ANGLO-AMERICAN ..... . 6s. per 100.
Well Fished and Good Size.

All the Year Round,

ANGLO-PORTUGUESE .. . 4s. 6d. per 100.

The richest of all Oysters. Very Fine Condition, and recommended
all Physicians for their Nutritive Qualities. Some Doctors even
ae e them a Specific for Consumption.

Special Quotations for Large Quantities.
STEEL OYSTER KNIVES, 6d. each.
Remittance required from Unknown Customers.
BANKERS:

LONDON AND SOUTH WESTERN BANK, Fenchurch
Street, London, E.C.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS,

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3908800 7277460