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UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR

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| % 5H International Fisheries Fixhibttion
19¢2 LONDON, 1883

EtSH

UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR

aS
OA
JAMES a BERTRAM

AUTHOR OF ‘THE HARVEST OF THE SEA’

ed LIBRARIES eo

LONDON

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

1883

Ay

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

LIMITED,

CONTENTS:

——

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

THE SCOTTISH HERRING FISHERS, THEIR WORK
AND WAGES.

THE capture of the herring, the principal fishing industry of Scot-
land—Money value of the herring—Scotland’s share of the
herring wealth enormous—Number of persons connected with
the herring fishing—The curer the chief agent in the organisa-
tion of the fishery—Constitution of the herring fishery of Scot-
land — The fishing contracts — Bargaining — Extent of the
netting used in the capture of the herring—Work of the
fishery described—The gutters—The “hired hands ”—Inci-
dental phases of the fishing for the herring—The sprat fishery

THE FISHERS OF YARMOUTH.

Herring fishing on the English coasts—Herring catch at Yar-
mouth—Size of vessels and modes of work—Mode of paying
the crew—Yarmouth bloaters and kippers—Scottish boats at
Yarmouth—Curing processes

THE CORNWALL PILCHARD CATCHERS.

Importance of the pilchard—Catching pilchards by the seine net-—
Earnings of the pilchard-catchers—Cure of the fish— The
Pope and pilchards ”—The pilchard Harvest—Drift-net fishing
by Cornwall boats peatk ee

FISHERS OF THE NORTH SEA—TRAWLERS.

The North Sea Fishermen not hereditary fishers—Severe appren-
ticeship—Length of apprenticeship objected to, and should be
restricted—Bad behaviour of North Sea Fishermen—Extent of
the German ,Ocean—Value of the fish it yields—Trawling the
chief mode of Fishing—Fleets of Smacks—The work of
Trawling—The earnings of the trawl men

i fe)

32

39

viii CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE NORTH SEA FISHERS—THE COD-MEN.

Angling on a wholesale scale—A fishing line eight miles long—
The value of live Codfish—Small percentage of fish to hooks—
Cost of the cod smacks—Remuneration of line fishers—Bait :
its importance and scarcity—Mussels and Mussel culture—
Fishermen of all work—The shell-fish fisheries, their money
Value. . -. e Je 0 oc ciehs Eon) cata eOmne ere one oa eta LSE

THE IRISH FISHER FOLK.

Number of persons engaged in Irish Fisheries—Increase of Irish
boats engaged in fishing for Mackerel—Abundance of Pilchards
—Cost of carriage of fish—Irish Salmon fisheries—Shell-fish
fisheries—The reproductive Loan Fund—Its success—Social
habits of the Irish Folk—The Claddagh. . . . . . . 55

THE FOREIGN FISHER FOLK.

Peculiarities of the Foreign Fisher-folk—Roman and Athenian
Fish Lives—Fétes of the ForeignFisher people—Italian Fishers
—French Fisher-folk—Madame Picard the poetical fish-wife—
The Dutch Fishwives— The Norwegian Fishers—Chinese
fishery atrancementss 0! a sie eo Se eee

SUMMARY. RAGONCEUSION (ays ehcp %e eke ae | Seioc Wee nce

THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR,

INTRODUCTORY “NOTE.

IT was expected of Sir Walter Scott, when the author of
‘Waverley’ was in his prime, and his novels and poems were
undoubtedly ¢4e books of the period, that he would some
day devote his attention to the toilers of the sea, and weave
the round of fisher life, with its perils and privations,
its brief joys and prolonged griefs, into one of those
romantic narratives of which he had become the master
spirit.

It is certain the great novelist meditated at one time
a work of that kind, and that he employed himself on
several occasions in gathering such information as would
give reality to its details, as also in making those
studies of character in which he so much delighted. The
friends of Sir Walter Scott have now mostly all gone
over to the majority; and there can be only very few
alive to-day who have held converse with the ‘ Lord
of Abbotsford.” Probably Doctor William Chambers
was about the last of the men who knew Sir Walter,
and could have spoken from personal knowledge of
that great man’s aspirations, but now the good doctor him-
self, after a life of much usefulness, is sleeping his last sleep.
It was the doctor’s brother, however, Robert Chambers,

B

2 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

who told the writer that Sir Walter had intended at one time
to write a story of fisher life and adventure, and that he had
even gone so far as to mention his project to Constable, his
publisher.

It is our loss that the author of the ‘ Waverley Novels’ did
not include in that grand series of books, a narrative of the
toils and troubles of those who try to find their daily bread
in the treacherous waters of the ravening deep—other than
The Antiquary. No pen can be thought of that would have
touched the subject with greater felicity. During the brief
residence of Sir Walter at the fishing village of Auchmithie,
on the Forfarshire coast, he had many opportunities of study-
ing the daily round of fisher life. Twenty years ago there
were persons in Auchmithie who remembered the illustrious
visitor, and who took note of his anxiety to make himself
acquainted with the eccentric people who formed the little
community, in which for a short time he had taken up his
abode, and some of whom were reproduced in the pages of
The Antiquary. In the rude fishing village of Auchmithie
in the time of Sir Walter, the fisher folk were unchanged
from the days of a far back period, and even at this day
they are still much as they were then—a peculiar people.
The superstitions and curious manners and customs that had
been handed down from generation to generation still pre-
vailed—the observances connected with the births, deaths,
and marriages of the people were insisted upon, and in all
respects the fisher life of Auchmithie was typical, and repre-
sented in a broad sense the daily life of the hereditary
fishermen and fisherwomen of Scotland. It is certainly in
Scotland (and in Cornwall as well) that the life and labour
of this hardy and industrious class of persons can be
studied to the greatest advantage, and in some places even
yet their daily round of existence rolls on much as it did a

ee ee

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 3

century ago. In Scotland, the patriarchal system of work
is still largely maintained; in many Scottish fishing
villages the family fishing boat is as much an institution as
a family walnut-tree is in France. In a number of the
English fishing ports the order of business is somewhat
different from what we see in Scotland; there is less of
sentiment and comparatively little of the superstitious ele-
ment, but at Holy Island, Cullercoats and some other places
the fisher class are much the same as we find them in Scot-
land or Cornwall. In Scotland, the fisher communities
seldom receive any accession of new blood, and fathers and
sons go on succeeding each other for many generations. The
fisher folk intermarry in their communities, and so preserve
those traditions of labour and the observance of those social
customs which have become stereotyped among the people
who go down to, the sea in fishing ships.

It is interesting to know, moreover, that in nearly all
fishing villages, whether they are in Scotland or in France,
in Spain or in Holland, the life of the fisher people, as of
course it can scarcely help being, is of the same complexion ;
a life mostly of hard work, much danger, and scanty remu-
neration. Yes, the fisher folk of France are the very brothers
and sisters of those of Scotland, their manners and customs,
their modes of life, and all that pertains to their dangerous
occupation on the waters, being nearly fdentical. The
various communities seem to have set themselves down in
convenient places for following their avocation. There are
villages and little towns upon the shores of the sea that
nature seems to have destined for the abodes of fishermen ;
there is usually a natural harbour—“a bieldy cove,” in
which the little fleet of fishing boats finds, during all seasons,
a happy refuge from fierce winds and battling waves.

It may not, perhaps, be generally known to those who

By 2

4 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

are not in possession of special sources of information, that
in all fishing communities, the woman is head of the house,
and nowhere, in all fisherland, at home or abroad, is this
more the case than on the Firth of Forth. The Newhaven
fishwife has become a celebrity, and she is indebted to King
George the Fourth for much of her fame. That monarch
during his memorable visit to Edinburgh, in the year 1822,
said to Sir Walter Scott, that some of the Newhaven
women were the handsomest he had ever seen; and her
present Gracious Majesty has been likewise pleased to
admire them. Indeed, since the Queen’s first visit to
Edinburgh, the Newhaven fishwife, with her picturesque
peculiarities and the dulcet notes with which she charms
the public ear, as she cries her oysters (Caller Ou) has
become quite a pictorial personage. She has been painted
in oil, modelled in card board, made up as a whisky bottle,
given to children as a doll, printed in numerous Cartes de
visite, and generally, has been made much more public
all over the world than any other honest woman. She
is a familiar figure in the Café Greco at Rome, as well
as in the print shops of Berlin and Venice; and although
the praises of the Newhaven fishwife with passing com-
pliments to her “shapely shanks,” and the sweet voice
that made the heart of the Ettrick shepherd “dirl” with
emotion, have been celebrated by Christopher North
in the Woctes Ambrosiane, it has not spoiled her, nor yet
interfered with her determined and ceaseless industry.
She is ruler over her household and chancellor of her
husband’s exchequer; it is a saying, indeed, of the
fishwives, that the woman who is not able and willing to
work for a man ought not to have one.

The labour of the females in the olden time was heavy,

but it is less so now that so much of the fish caught

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 5

by their husbands and sons is disposed of at the side of
the boat in wholesale fashion, to buyers from those
large seats of population, which are always demanding
supplies of fish, and are never able to obtain all they want.
Some of the fishwives make excellent auctioneers; they
possess a rude eloquence which is difficult to resist. The
fishwives of Newhaven and Fisherrow in the days of old
used to bear on their backs in baskets called “ creels ” large
burdens of fish daily to Edinburgh, with which they
wandered from door to door in search of customers—a
practice that still to some extent prevails, but which has
been largely rendered unnecessary by the increase of shops
for the sale of fish. Their achievements in fish carrying
have been often chronicled. When the boats were late in
arriving, two or three of the women would join in carrying a
heavy creel full of cod and haddocks, to Edinburgh. Each
woman carried the creel in turn, and by this means fish
have been heard calling in the streets of the modern Athens,
that had only been brought into Newhaven thirty-five
minutes before. Once upon a time, four women walked, or
rather “trotted,” with a creel full of fish, from Dunbar to
Edinburgh, a distance of twenty-six miles, in five hours!
And after all, each hundredweight of cod and turbot
carried so gallantly could only realise a few shillings. A
big cod-fish for tenpence in those days was an every-day
bargain, whilst “fine caller herrin’, three a penny,” was a
stereotyped call of the fish hawkers.

In addition to Newhaven there are numerous other
quaint fishing communities in Scotland where the manners
and customs of the people are worthy of study. Newhaven,
from its proximity to Edinburgh, and the fame of its fish
dinners is often referred to, and is frequently visited by
strangers from the most distant places. All fisher folk, no

6 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

matter where they are located, whether at “Fittie” in
Aberdeen, or at Portel, near Boulogne, or in the Rue de Pollet
of Dieppe, are largely imbued with a feeling of superstition ;
they can read the clouds at night or morning, and discern
signs and omens in nearly every passing circumstance.
They have their pet aversions, their likes and dislikes. In
some villages the mere advent of a stranger would detain
the men from going to sea for hours ; the impression of a
mysterious foot on the sand has before now caused conster-
nation in a fishing village; the flight of a few harmless
crows over their boats has struck terror to the souls of
stalwart men who have faced death many a time and oft on
the raging waters, and have courageously battled with the
storm-king in the cause of the dear ones at home. In
fisher villages it is the rule to wed within the community ;
no fisherman would think of bringing home a “stranger
woman,” to be jeered at by his friends and companions.
In some communities there is a wonderful scarcity of sur-
names, and identity is preserved by the use of what are
called “to-names” (added to), or “nicknames” as they
may be called ; thus a family of Fluckers, in which all the
common Christian names have been over and over again
exhausted, will be designated by some personal mark, as
“gley’d Johnnie,” or “ dumpie (short) Johnnie,” and so on
ad infinitum through a long range of names of persons,
places, and things; such appellations being necessarily
recognized in courts of law, and in all kinds of civil and
criminal deeds and documents. The following is a rather
curious example of the way of using a ¢eename. A fisher-
man of the name of Alexander Mair, who rejoiced in the
nickname of “Shavie,” being confined for a debt in the
prison of Banff, had occasion to write to his wife at Port-
knockie, and some wag thus addressed the letter :

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 7

“ Janet Euing, ‘ Shavie’s’ wife,
Pray pay the cash and save his life,
For poor auld ‘ Shavie’ is in jile,
An’ distant frae you sixteen mile.
Portnockie Cullen.”

Often enough these cognomens lead to little mistakes of
an irritating kind, but in all legal documents or communi-
cations of importance the nickname is always used as a
mode of identification.

It was a cause of surprise, when on a recent occasion
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales entertained the
fisher people who were visiting the International Exhibition,
that the majority of those who had come from Scotland
were teetotallers, who would neither drink beer nor Burgundy.
It is not, perhaps, too much to say that at the herring
fishery a large number of the vessels are now what are
called “teetotal boats,’ on board of which no spirits are
ever taken; and the men find they can fish quite as well
without supplies of whisky as when they took two or
three drams every night. It used to be a standing re-
proach to the Newhaven fishwives in the olden time that
they “drank,” and there was no doubt a little truth in the
accusation; after carrying about a load of fish weighing
from eighty to a hundred and twenty pounds they were
sometimes, as the saying goes, dead beat, and resorted on
occasion to “a dram” to restore their flagging energies.
When Sir Walter Scott witnessed the work performed by
the fisherwomen of Auchmithie—when he saw them rush
into the water to bring their husbands and sons ashore on
their shoulders—he was not surprised to learn that some
of them partook of stimulants. “You take a dram, I
perceive,” said the author of ‘Waverley.’ “Oh, deed we dee
that, an’ we hae muckle need o’ ’t tee!” was the prompt and

8 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

unaffected reply. Many of the Scottish fisher folk are
deeply religious ; in some communities the men and women
conduct a service of praise and thanksgiving, and the un-
lettered eloquence of a rude preacher of that class would
sometimes shame the cultured rhetoric of the pulpit.

The conditions of their shore life, till within these few
years back, was shameful ; the fishing villages of Scotland
were as a rule devoid of all amenity, their sanitary surround-
ings were of the rudest and scantiest description; dirt—
otherwise “matter in the wrong place’”—obtruded itself at
every corner. Some improvement in these matters has
now been happily effected, and the thin end of the wedge
having been inserted, more perfect sanitary arrangements
will doubtless follow in a short time. As we propose to
describe at some length the chief aspects of fishery labour
in connection with the more productive fisheries, we need
not here refer to the calumnies that have been directed
against the fisher folk, such as the accusations of laziness
and their want of thrift. It will be seen in the sequel that
such accusations are either entirely untrue or have been
grossly exaggerated. “It is no doubt considered by some
to be an easy way to wealth to prosecute the herring or
white fish fisheries, and secure a harvest grown on a farm
where there is no rent payable, the seed of which is sown
in plenty by nature, which requires no manure to force it
to maturity, and no wages for its cultivation. But it is not
all gold that glitters. There are risks of life and property
that are unknown to the industries which are followed on
the land.” *

The fisher folk, taking them all over, will compare most
favourably with other classes as regards the labours of the
men and the virtue of the women ; their humble homes, as a

* ‘Harvest of the Sea ’—third edition.

LHEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 9

rule, are clean and tidily arranged, and in some villages a
profane word is scarcely ever heard. The hospitality of
the fisher folk is proverbial, and their charity, at times
when a boat is wrecked, and the bread-winner ofa family is
drowned, is active and unbounded. In not a few of our
fishing villages there may be seen in the houses of different
families little boarders who have found a home with the
other children of the place, their fathers having gone down
in the waves on the occasion of a storm overtaking the
fishing fleet and wrecking some of the boats. There is
much that is heroic in these communities, and deeds of
charity have many a time been done, which had they been
blazoned by the press, would have excited the unbounded
admiration of the people.

10 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

THE SCOTTISH HERRING, FISHERS, THERE
WORK AND WAGES.

The capture of the herring, the principal fishing industry of Scotland
—Money value of the herring—Scotland’s share of the herring wealth
enormous—Number of persons connected with the herring fishing—
The curer the chief agent in the organisation of the fishery—Consti-
tution of the herring fishery of Scotland—The fishing contracts—
Bargaining—Extent of the netting used in the capture of the
herring—Work of the fishery described—The gutters—The
“hired hands”—Incidental phases of the fishing for the herring
—The sprat fishery.

THE capture of the herring may be set down as the
principal fishing industry of Scotland. The herring harvest
gives employment, at certain seasons, to the whole fishing
population, and the labour involved in the capture of that
abounding fish is very much greater than most persons
would think. Although the herring fishery is carried on
at some place or another all the year round, we shall not
visit the varied seats of that particular industry, but confine
ourselves to one of those great centres which has become a
rendezvous for the fishing boats of many smaller localities.
The wealth derived from the herring is enormous, the
total value of these fish which are captured by boats of
the United Kingdom has been set down at the handsome
figure of about three millions sterling. Scotland long ago
succeeded Holland as the seat of the “great fishery,” and
it has been calculated that more than 150,000 persons
derive some portion at least of their means of living

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. II

from “the herring,” the capture and cure of which in many
places of the United Kingdom, and also in Ireland, is a
long established feature of fishery economy.

The chief agent in the organisation of this very onerous
industry is known in Scottish fishing ports as “the curer,”
two-thirds of the herring which are caught by boats fishing
from Scottish ports, being ultimately sold as cured herrings,
the other third finding its way to market—by means of
industrious “buyers” who are now to be found at every
fishing port—as “fresh herrings.” Herring commerce is
still to a large extent centred in the curer, who finds the
materials necessary for the cure, and engages persons to
superintend the different processes which are incidental to
its progress. Some curers carry on a really gigantic
business, engaging to accept the fish which are caught
by several hundred boats, besides buying, as occasion
offers, from boats fishing on their own account. It is
necessary to state this in order to show such features
of the business as relate to the earnings of the fishermen
employed, many of whom receive but a scanty share of the
large sums, which at times are paid for the fish. It has to
be said generally of the herring fishery as regards the
remuneration of the larger number of those engaged in it,
that it partakes greatly of the nature of a lottery, in
which some few fortunate individuals secure most of the
prizes, leaving the blanks to the majority of those who
participate in the enterprise.

Before proceeding to give details of the really hard
labour involved in catching the fish, it will be as well to
describe in a few sentences the constitution of the fishery.
We will assume then that Mr. Peterkin, of Wick—there is
probably no such person, but we shall assume that there

is—has set up business as a curer, has become the tenant

12 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

of a space of ground, has erected upon it a cooperage, and
has imported any quantity of barrel wood, and purchased
salt with which to pickle the herrings, as well as numerous
miscellaneous stores likely to prove useful in the course of
the season, including dye-stuff for nets, nets, sails, oars and
whisky. The curer is of course a man of some means; if
not the possessor of ready money himself he is able, we
shall suppose, to obtain credit at one or other of the local
banks (“cash credits” on good security being a leading fea-
ture of the Scottish banking system). Every curer must have
money at command, as in numerous instances many of his
payments have to be made long before he can realise the
goods which he deals in. As a matter of fact, the curer
often bargains for his herrings months before he can obtain
them—long indeed before it can be known whether or not
there will be any herrings to capture ; and part of the bar-
gain made by the fishers is a stipulation for so much ready
money—known in fishing circles as “bounty ””—in addition
to the sum per barrel (or crav, which is a measure capable
of containing 36 gallons of fish) which he binds himself to
pay for the herring, and perquisites of various kinds which
he agrees to provide, such perhaps as cutch with which to
bark, or dye the nets, drying-ground for the nets, and a
quantity of tea, coffee or ardent spirits ; although whisky,
as has been already stated, is not nowadays so much in
demand as it used to be, in consequence of the more tem-
perate habits of the men. The curer usually contracts with
each boat-master to supply him with two hundred barrels of
herrings, if he can capture somany ; and acurer may have
twenty or a hundred boats fishing for him, according to
the amount of capital at his command, and the means he
may possess of disposing of the cured herrings. The
striking of a bargain between the boatmaster—or, as we had

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 13

better call him, the skipper—is often a rather tough affair ;
all parties, as we may say, are working in the dark ; neither
of the men who are engaged in the arrangement can tell
how next year’s markets will formulate—if herrings prove
to be scarce, then prices will be high ; if, on the contrary,
there occurs a glut of fish, prices will fall at once to a
probably unprofitable figure.

These are all features of the coming fishery which require
to be taken into account ; and, moreover, although the curer
arranges for the supplying of two hundred barrels of fish
by each of the boats fishing for him, he is not usually pro-
vided with a stock of salt sufficient to cure that quantity ;
he does not perhaps calculate that he will receive on the
average more from each of his boats than from eighty to one
hundred and twenty barrels—“ crans” are however what are
bargained for, but we prefer to use the word barrel, as the
sale of the cured fish takes place in barrels. Generally bar-
gains are struck on the figures of previous years, the curer
trying as well as he is able to forecast the features of the
season, and to picture in his mind’s eye the fortunes of
“the fishery.” If all the fish bargained for were to be
caught, the chances are that the curer would be “caught ”
as well; his stock of salt would rapidly run out, and his
supply of barrels prove utterly inadequate, as has not
infrequently proved to be the case during previous seasons
when a glut of fish has occurred. Besides these désagrémens,
his gutters would not in all probability be able to overtake
the necessary work, and so a large proportion of the fish
captured would ina sense be wasted, as to obtain the best
official brand, it is absolutely necessary that the herrings be
cured on the day they are caught.

Curers are often blamed for their desire to “force
business” in connection with the herring fishery ; and

14 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

probably in the case of speculative curers the blame is in
many instances deserved ; and whenever misfortune over-
takes a fishing community the curer is blamed as being in
some way the cause of it. Young men anxious to become
owners of a boat and to engage in the fishing on their own
account, instead of continuing as the hired servants of other
boatmasters, are often able to indulge their ambition by the
aid of a speculative curer, who will supply all that is re-
quired—boat and fishing-gear complete—on credit entirely,
or partly for cash, and partly on credit as may be agreed
upon, but not of course without some distinct advantage to
himself in connection with such a speculative transaction.
He will charge a higher price for the boat and its gear, and
he will make a harder bargain with the owners for the
produce ‘of their fishings. Such transactions occasionally
terminate favourably for all connected with them ; a series
of fortunate seasons enables the buyer of the boat to pay
off his debt and to become a free fisher, at liberty to dispose
of the proceeds of his industry to whomsoever he pleases.
This will not appear in the least improbable when it is
taken into consideration that by one evening’s work a boat’s
crew may draw from the water a hundred pounds’ worth of
herring. On the other hand, the owners of a vessel may
work hard for a whole season, and scarcely obtain a larger
sum than will pay the wages or shares of those hired to
assist them. It is not to be expected that the industry of
herring fishing will be barren of such incidents, so long as
young men are ambitious and curers are willing to specu-
late. The cost of a boat anda suite of nets, it may be added,
is much greater than it used to be; herring boats are of a
larger build now, most of them being decked or half-decked
vessels, in place of the open yawls that were in almost
universal use for the shore herring fishery twenty years ago.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 15

The herring boats of the period, with all their fittings, will
cost on the average about £270, whilst nets will cost about
563 each,

When the bargain has been made, the labour of fishing
begins at the proper season, the fishing on the Scottish
coasts being at its height in the month of August. The
fishing-boats engaged in the herring fishery are frequently
being improved, and will doubtless some day be much
better than even the best of them are at present, far
ahead as these are of the old “Clinker” Leith built boats
once so much in favour.* As has been hinted, many of the
boats are “family concerns,” and, that being so, come to
be worn out in time, the money earned being all required
for the use of those dependent on the vessel, and as
repairs are not always made when necessary, the boat in
due time becomes unfit for the work incidental to the
herring fishery, and in the end is laid up a sheer hulk
quite useless for any purpose whatever. A number of the

boats engaged in the herring fishery are still the open

* As to the superiority of large boats over small ones, we have
gleaned the following information from a report of the Scottish fishery
board, in which the fishery officer at Eyemouth states that those crews
who fished from large decked boats with some amount of perseverance,
made from £200 to £300 for the season, whilst the crews of adjacent
ports were not fortunate, not being so well prepared. In a few
instances, sums of from £500 to £700 were earned by the decked boats.
Open boats with inferior netting made only from £60 to £120. In
a few boats homing pigeons are carried: they are let off as soon
as the catch is determined, to let the curer know what number of
barrels he may calculate upon. One drawback in connection with the
use of the larger boats is that, should they be becalmed the herrings
with which they are laden will not be received in time for the cure.
Steam tugs should, in such cases, be kept in readiness to bring
in the boats, till the time comes when steam vessels are regularly
employed in the fishery. This, we believe, is now being done.

16 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK,

clinker-built boats that have been so long in use; they
are usually manned by four persons in addition to the
skipper, who may be either sole or part owner, and all
on board find plenty of work to do on each evening of
the fishery, for although the boat is provided with a large
shoulder-of-mutton sail, it often enough happens that the
oars have to be resorted to in order to reach the supposed
haunts of the fish, and always as a general practice when
the nets are being “shot ”—that is, paid overboard. Dur-
ing late years the labour of herring-fishing has been
greatly augmented by the increased quantity of netting
which is thought to be necessary as compared with the
net power employed twenty-five or thirty years ago. Some
very interesting details regarding the nets used by the
herring fleet were collected and published by the Com-
missioners who inquired into the condition of the Scottish
herring-fisheries six years ago. As giving some idea of
the labour which the nightly distribution of the netting
entails, we beg to lay before our readers the following
summary of figures, relating to the increase of net power,
and the revolution which has been caused by the substi-
tution of finely-woven cotton for hemp nets :—

Twenty years ago a boat carried 24 nets made of hemp,
each net forty yards long, with 28 or 29 meshes to the
yard, 10 to 12 score meshes deep, and weighing 25 lbs.
Each boat carries now 50 to 60 nets made of cotton,
each net 60 yards long, with 35 meshes to the yard,
18 score meshes deep, and weighing 12 to 14 lbs. A boat,
in other words, used to carry 960 yards of netting ; it now
carries 3,300 yards. The nets used to be about six or seven
yards, they are now over ten yards deep. They used to
present a catching surface of 3000 square yards ; they now
present a catching surface of 33,000 square yards.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 17

Such is the formidable instrument of fishing which the
crews of the herring boats have to handle on each night
they are at sea. The nets of the fleet of herring boats which
on some nights may be found fishing off the coast of Aber-
deenshire could reach six times across the North Sea, and in
instances the suite of netting which is cast overboard from
one boat will extend two miles in length. The herring-
boats usually commence to leave the harbours for their
fishing stations early in the afternoon ; if there should be
a favouring breeze they hoist their sail, and reap the
advantage of a speedy run to the spot selected, which
however is not always the place where they find the fish.
Often enough a boat proceeds to fish at a place that may
be from thirty to forty miles distant from the port of
rendezvous, and it is all a matter of luck whether or not
the men hit upon the shoal. The work of shooting the
nets usually begins at sunset: the mast is struck, and, two
men taking the oars, the boat is moved slowly across
the tide; the skipper of course keeps possession of the
helm, having first of all selected his theatre of opera-
tions; the remaining two men of the crew have the duty
of throwing over the nets into the sea. As the writer is
well able to testify, having more than once personally
taken part in the work, it is a laborious process, and
requires some care, occupying a considerable time,
so that, when’ itis concluded the men are” ready
for a little refreshment and a few hours’ rest. They
partake of a frugal supper, and in some boats the skipper
will ask the men to join him in singing a hymn, and he
may perhaps offer up a simple prayer, asking the blessing
of God on his enterprise. Ordinarily the men who have
been working at the oars, as well as their fellow-labourers

&

18 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

at the paying-over of the nets, speedily fall asleep, and
enjoy an hour or two of “blessed rest.”

But the skipper, who may himself be either the owner of
the boat or hold a share in it, seldom sleeps ; he is all too
anxious about the venture, and sits throughout the silent
watches of the night speculating on the number of “crans”
of herring that he may see brought into the boat when the
hour of hauling in the nets arrives. Before that time
however his curiosity as to the good or bad fortune of the
night may have culminated in a desire to see whether his
nets have been so fortunate as to hit the shoal, and so he
pulls in a few yards of the floating fabric, to see if there be
fish ; or mayhap he may be tempted to examine the nets
attached to a neighbouring boat, to find out what degree of
fortune has attended it. Sometimes it happens that after
the nets have been shot, and the boat has been drifting
with the tide for an hour or two, there are no signs of the
shoal having been hit upon, so that a new departure
becomes necessary, and the whole of the labour has to be
incurred a second time; the nets have to be hauled on
board, the boat rowed to another pitch, where the huge
fabric of capture is again cast into the waters in search of
prey : again the men lay themselves down to their rest ;
again the boat, with the watchful skipper at the helm, floats
about for an hour of two, when comes the final test of the
night’s fortunes. Let us assume that success has at length
been achieved, and that the fifty or sixty barrels of fish
which have been enmeshed adds to the labour of the en-
terprise. Two miles length of netting,’often enough heavily
laden with newly-caught herrings, have to be hauled on
board, the fish have to be shaken or picked from the
meshes, and the boat, wind or no wind, has to make its

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR 19

way home to port in order that the curer may obtain
possession of the cargo. Many a time and oft the poor
men have, on their way back to their harbour, to row a
good part of the way; and when the sea is lumpy and
the boat laden with fish—a delightful burden in the eyes
of its owners—the toil is severe. Nor is the labour over
when the port is reached, for then begins a new duty—
the fish have to be landed, and it is the work of the crew
to carry them to the curing stances, which may be at a
considerable distance from the place in the harbour where
the boat has found a berth. After the fish have been
duly consigned to the charge of the coopers, the nets
have then to be hoisted ashore and sent off in a cart to the
drying ground ; and not till all these duties have been duly
accomplished may captain and crew seek repose.

And thus the toilsome work of the herring-fishers goes
on day after day; on some happy occasions they may
be so fortunate as to fall in with the shoal a few miles from
the shore, and fill their nets with such speed as to enable
them to return before breakfast-time, and so obtain a few
hours of welcome rest; or, on the contrary, they may not
find their finny prey till they are far, far at sea; and not
infrequently, before their labour can be brought to a close,
a fierce storm may break on the waters, causing the men to
hurry to a place of refuge, if they can find one, in order
to save their lives and property, a feat which cannot
always be accomplished. Many a fishing boat on such
occasions is swamped by the angry waters, and many a
gallant husband and good father perishes whilst at the
post of duty. The public are not unfamiliar with stories
of the dread disasters which occasionally overtake the
hardy fishermen of our coasts, although in Scotland it
is happily the case that the death rate from such causes

C2

20 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

is considerably less than it is elsewhere, the hereditary
Scottish fishers being an anxious and careful body of men.

But although the men who caught the fish are in bed
asleep the industrial drama of the herring cure still goes
on; as the boats reach the harbour a new phase of work
begins. As has been stated, the greater portion of the
herring taken are cured, which involves their being gutted
and salted as well as being packed in barrels. These
processes are all organised by the curer and his confidential
assistant, the head cooper ; the women who are entrusted
with the disagreeable work of eviscerating the fish per-
form their part with great celerity, and will go on working
for several hours in the most active way. They are paid
according to the tale of work they do, which is a great
incitement to industry. A woman has been timed to gut
two dozen herrings in a minute, so that she can fill a
barrel in the course of about thirty-five minutes. When
it is considered that over a million barrels of herrings are
cured in Scotland every year, and that each barrel contains
over seven hundred and fifty fish, it will be apparent that the
females engaged in the work of evisceration have plenty of
work cut out for them, seeing that the season on the north-
east coast of Scotland, where most of the herrings are cured,
only lasts for about eight weeks. We do not know any
other kind of labour for women that could be classed with
the curing of herrings, and we dare say it would be rather
difficult to find females in inland places who would consent
to work at the herring troughs. The rate of payment for
this kind of work used to be at the rate of fourpence for
each barrel of herring filled with the gutted fish; and
hundreds of persons fishermen’s widows and others were
very glad of the work, so that they might earn a few pounds
during the course of the fishery. At such times as there is

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 21

a large fishing—“a glut of herrings ’’—active gutters are at
a premium, whilst the wages paid for the work are increased ;
an expert party of six women will make up over one
hundred and thirty barrels in a long day.

It may be as well, before going farther, to state more
definitely than has been done the figures pertaining to the
herring fishery, so far as wages and allowances are con-
cerned. Premising that the terms agreed upon may not
be alike in any two places, it may here be chronicled, that
agreements at the rate of a pound per cran for the tale of
two hundred crans with a bounty of perhaps thirty or forty
pounds, and in some instances fifty pounds, have this season
(1883) been entered into ; various perquisites of the kind
already indicated being also included in the bargain. Many
of the hired men now prefer to share in the luck of the
fishery and take their chance of payment at a certain rate
per cran rather than accept fixed wages : say one shilling,
or two shillings per cran, as the case may be, as also a
fixed sum by way of bounty, as well as other advantages of
various kinds. The terms made by the hired men depend,
of course, a good. deal on the state of the labour market ;
when a new centre of herring fishing industry arises, or an
old one develops itself, as is the case in Shetland, both
men and women flock to it in the hope of obtaining better
terms than would be offered them at older established
fisheries. These men are now much better-paid than they
used to be some thirty years ago, when, for the whole period
of “the fishing,” a five-pound note would perhaps be their
utmost reward. These “hired men,” it should be stated,
are many of them mere labourers, and not expert fishers—
they are a mixture of the small farmer, the village
mechanic, and the sailor, glad enough to turn out in the
herring season, the best that can be said of most of them

22 FHE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

is that they are hardy and willing labourers, anxious to
earn a few pounds when “siller is a-going.”

As to the women, the Fraserburgh correspondent of the
Scotsman newspaper recently stated that, “Women, to
work as gutters, are in great demand, and the wages offered
them are quite unprecedented. The rates of arles for the
eight weeks’ work run from £1 10s. to £5 each, besides 8d.
per barrel gutted and packed by the crew. It is only a few
years since a woman considered herself highly paid if she
got 5s. of arles. A number of women belonging to the
town have gone to Shetland this season, and the present
competition is, no doubt, due to that.”

Mr. James Wilson’s description (Voyage Round the Coast
of Scotland, 1842) of the work of gutting is graphic:
“though the gutters are not a few of them good-looking
creatures, yet the appearance of the general mass after they
have worked an hour or two, beggars all description. Their
hands, their necks, their busts, their

‘ Dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms’
every bit about them fore and aft, are spotted and be-
sprinkled with little scarlet clots of gills and guts, or as
Southey says of the war horse of Don Roderick, after the
last and fatal fight—

‘Their flanks incarnadined,
Their poitral smeared with blood.’

Bloody and all begrimed with slime the gutter stands up
with knife in hand, or stoops her horrid head ‘with scaly
armour bright, and plunging her bare and brawny arms
again into the trough, scatters her gills and guts, as if no
bowels of compassion existed any more on this terraqueous
globe... . Towards evening they carefully wash their
faces, arms and legs, and slip on again their better gar-
ments. Thus they never appear except around the gutting

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 23

<

board in otherwise than trim array. Indeed, many of the
most magnificently fine females, whom we saw standing at
respectable doors, or looking out of decent windows, or
going sedately about their evening occupations from shop
to shop, had been assiduously engaged in gutting all day
long.”

On some one or two days during every season’s fishing,
at Wick and other important herring ports—Fraserburgh
and Peterhead are now rather before Wick as centres of
the fishery—the delivery of fish from, perhaps, five in the
morning till four o’clock in the afternoon will be so
incessant and in such large quantities that the whole
industrial resources and activity of the place will be called
into requisition, as it is of the utmost importance that the
herrings landed should be cured by set of sun, so as to
secure the best brand. The close of a successful herring
fishing season is always marked in Scotland by the great
number of marriages which take place; in many of the
smaller fishing ports the weddings of the young people
depend on the fishery. If it should prove a failure, marriages
are postponed in consequence, and men and women agree
to wait for more prosperous times. We have not the means
of determining exactly how many persons are employed
throughout Scotland in the capture of the herring only,
but, taking men and boys together, there will probably be
not less than fifty thousand persons, whilst the amount of
capital sunk in boats, fishing-gear, and the materials of the
cure will probably not be less than a million sterling.
According to an official document which we have examined
there were over 14,000 fishing vessels of all kinds in
Scotland in the year 1881, the larger number of them being
employed in the shore fishery for herrings. Some fisher-
men make it their business to fish for the herring all the

24 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

year round, and these, as the saying is, “follow the fish”
from the far-away seas of Scotland to Yarmouth, and
scarcely ever know an idle day. Wherever the herrings
make their appearance the Scottish boats, with their hardy
and industrious crews, are sure to be participating in the
work of capture, whether at Cullercoats, Holy Island, the
Isle of Man, or Yarmouth.

We have, so far, only endeavoured to show the round of
labour incidental to the chief herring fishery of the year—
there are winter herring fisheries in Scotland as well, some
of which are very successful, but the great outlet for all
persons interested in “the herring ” is, of course, the fisheries
of the autumn season. Then a large number of persons
who do not fish all the year round, try to earn “an orra
pound or may be twa” by assisting, at what is at that season
an almost universal industry; cobblers lay down their
lapstones, gardeners put aside their spades, and turn out
with some one or other of the boats, in the hope of sharing
in the bounty of the waters. At the chief herring ports a
large number of persons other than the usual population
find employment ; an influx of men and women from the
Highlands and Islands is one of the features of the fish-
ing season. The hawking of fresh herrings from such
places as Montrose, Peterhead, and Berwick or Eyemouth,
also affords employment to a considerable number of
persons, so that the bustle incidental to a herring port in
the brief time devoted to the capture of the fish produces an
exciting change in some usually quiet enough fishing com-
munities. It is evident, too, that a sum of two anda half
millions sterling, which it has been calculated should in
recent years be about the value of the herrings caught in
Scotland will cover a large series of distributions. The
capture of the sprat in its season (a toothsome fish), for

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 25

which there is always a great demand, would prove a
remunerative winter fishery, were it not for the high rates of
freight charged for its conveyance to the seats of population
where it is consumed. As a profit cannot be made on
the consignments, sprat-fishing is for a time somewhat in
abeyance.

We have dwelt at some length on the industrial phases of
the Scottish herring fishery, because it is of great moment
as a food resource, likewise as an outlet for the employ-
ment of capital, in the catching and curing of the fish—
as well as in the building of boats, the making of barrels,
the weaving of sails and the making of nets. In the course
of the year, at one place or another, the herring fishery of
Scotland yields employment more or less remunerative
to the whole of the fishing population of that country—
hence its importance as compared with places where the
capture of the herring only forms a portion of the general

round of fishery work.

26 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

THE FISHERS SOR SA RVOU TE:

Herring fishing on the English coasts—Herring catch at Yarmouth
—Size of vessels and modes of work—Mode of paying the crew
—Yarmouth bloaters and kippers—Scottish boats at Yarmouth—
Curing processes.

WE do not propose to follow the herring-fishers to every
place where there is a rendezvous for their boats—in other
words, a seat of the fishery. The labour attendant on the
Scottish system of drift-net fishing has been detailed in the
preceding pages; but in Scotland, especially in Lochfyne,
another mode of capturing the herring has been long in use.
We allude to “seining,” or, as it is called locally, trawling.
It is not so laborious as the drift-net mode of fishing, and
seems a suitable mode of taking the herring in such waters
as Lochfyne. In some years seining has proved very
remunerative to the men, in consequence of the fish being
plentiful ; but there, as elsewhere, the fishing is irregular, and
no one can say how he has fared till the end of the season,
a few lucky hauls on one or two days of the fishing may
make all the difference between good and bad fortune.
No other modes of fishing for herrings have been adopted
in Scotland other than seining and drift-net fishing ; and, as
has been stated, the herring-fishery in Scotland is chiefly a
shore-fishery, which of course adds greatly to the toil of the
fisher folk. The practice of “yair-fishing” is now, we
think, very uncommon, but we have seen yairs, or en-
closures, in Lochbroom, into which the herrings enter and
are left high and dry by the tide. There are a few decked

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 27

boats in connection with the Scottish herring-fishery which
have accommodation on board for carrying on the cure,
but the leisurely labour on these vessels is less onerous
than that of the shore-fisheries, where the work goes on
at a ding-dong rate from sunrise to sunset, for the sake
of securing the best brand to the greatest possible number
of barrels.

There is herring-fishing in abundance on the coast of
Northumberland, and the Isle of Man herring-fishing in
some seasons is very productive; but we shall now take
up our station for a brief period at Yarmouth, which is
an important seat of fishing industry, and has acquired
a great name for the extent of its commerce in cured
herrings. The fish of that kind brought into the port
of Yarmouth are not, however, cured as in Scotland, the
herrings being mostly manipulated as bloaters and reds.
According to some statistics published by Mr. De Caux,
“during the last thirteen years the grand total of herrings
delivered at Great Yarmouth has been at least 210,000
lasts, or the marvellous quantity of 2,772,000,000 of her-
rings.” But a still better idea is conveyed of the magnitude
of the fishery work whichis brought to a focus at Yarmouth
by a knowledge of the fact that during every season, on an
average, the mere operation of counting the herrings landed
at the fish-wharf costs upwards of £2,200, while for simply
helping to lift the herrings from the ground on to the carts
which convey them from the wharf to the various curing-
houses, or to the railway-stations, no less a sum than £370
is paid. The number of fishers from all places congregated
at Yarmouth during the herring-season will not, we think, be
less than 12,500. Atleast a thousand boats went out day by
day from Yarmouth in search of the herring in 1882. The

crews are paid according to the number of herrings which

28 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

they capture. The vessels engaged in the fishery are larger
and better furnished than the usual run of Scottish herring-
boats. This is necessary, because they carry a crew of from
ten to thirteen persons, and remain out fishing a night or two.
The boats are full-decked, have two, and sometimes three,
masts, and are strongly built, so as to stand the stress of
weather. These vessels carry each a suite of 100 nets, each
net being 48 feet long by 30 feet deep.

The labour involved on board of these boats is consider-
able. The men shoot the nets and haul them in oftener than
once in the course of the night—the fishing commencing at
sunset. The mode of work is well-planned throughout,
every man having his allotted duty to perform ; one person
looks after the corks and floats, another, with an assistant,
pays out the netting, whilst another has charge of the
Warp-rope to which the nets are fixed. After being ex-
amined about every two hours, when it is thought a suff-
cient number of fish have struck, the nets are hauled on
board by means of the steam-driven capstan, now gene-
rally used by North Sea boats, and being passed over a
horizontal pole, the herrings are “shook out,” falling
into the hold: each net as it is emptied being carefully
stowed away in its appointed place, to be ready for use
when the time arrives to make another shot; in fact, the
discipline in these herring vessels is about as exacting as
on board a man-of-war. When the herrings are got on
board there is still more work to accomplish: they have
to be “roused” with salt, and, after that operation has been
carefully performed, have to be packed carefully away in
the hold; and, as on some occasions the nets are full of
fish, there is plenty of work for all hands.

It is quite certain that the hardy fishers of Yarmouth
do not eat the bread of idleness in the times of herring-

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 29

fishing, which lasts, for winter fish, from the beginning of
October to the end of November. It is perhaps almost
unnecessary to say that the boats require to proceed
cautiously while engaged in the operation of fishing ;
there is a large fleet employed in the work, and if the
men were careless there might occur a series of en-
tanglements of the nets that could not fail to be irrita-
ting, and probably result in the partial loss of the fish
taken. On this head, Mitchell tells us in his work on ‘ The
Herring,’ that the greatest precaution is taken to prevent
the nets from mixing. “No fishing vessel,” he says,
“anchors except during the day, when the nets are not out,
or unless the weather is so calm at night as to prevent the
possibility of shooting the nets; and during the night each
vessel has a lantern at the bow, upon a pole sufficiently
elevated to be seen at the distance of five miles.” Should,
for instance, a decided change of wind occur after the nets
are shot, the whole business must be gone over again—
the nets have to be hauled in and re-shot, to prevent the
terrible confusion and loss that might result. Much fatigu-
ing work is involved on such occasions, and the crews are
sometimes very tired. As has been already stated, the
fishermen of Yarmouth are paid by results; the curers
arrange at the beginning of the season with their own
crews to pay them a fixed price for every boat-load they
bring in. This is instead of paying a regular sum of
money monthly as wages; and it induces the men to do
their best, as a considerable catch of fish is necessary to
enable the curers to pay the expenses of their vessels and
establishments before they can make any profit.*

As is well known, a considerable portion of the herrings

which are brought ashore’ at Yarmouth are cured in a
* ‘Deep Sea Fishing and Fishing Boats,’ by Holdsworth.

30 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

peculiar fashion, which industry employs many hands at fair
wages. The “Yarmouth bloater” is known all over the
world. The story of the “invention,” or rather discovery,
of this mode of cure has been told by Mr. De Caux, in his
little work on ‘The Herring and the Herring Fishery.’
We venture to abridge it for the information of our readers,
without, however, entering into any details of the pro-
cess of the cure; suffice it to say that a bloater is a fresh
herring slightly salted and smoked, but not gutted ; it will
not keep beyond three or four days, and should there-
fore be eaten promptly. The mode of making bloaters
was discovered by Mr. Bishop, a herring-curer of Yarmouth,
about the year 1835, but the precise date at which it took
place is unknown. The following account of the dis-
covery is, we believe, correct: “One night, after his
fish-house hands had left the place, Mr. Bishop found
a small quantity of a prime parcel of fresh herrings which
he thought had by some mischance been overlooked.
To prevent the fish from being spoiled, he sprinkled
them with salt, spitted them, and then hung them up in
a ‘smoke house,’ in which oak billet was then being
burned; and the next morning he was both astonished and
delighted at their appearance, as well as with their aroma
and flavour. Henceforth he made the cure of bloaters a
special pursuit, and, as other curers speedily followed his
example, in a very short time the ‘Yarmouth bloater’
became known far and wide.” “Newcastle kippers ” denote
another mode of curing the herring, which affords employ-
ment to a large number of the women folk of Yarmouth.
This branch of the fishery business we are told was intro-
duced by Mr. John Woodger, formerly of Newcastle ; and the
late Mr. Buckland learned that as many as 1500 lasts of
herrings were prepared in this manner (13,200 fish to the

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. on

last). The first samples of these kippers were prepared
for public sale in 1846, and now herrings cured in that style
have a firm hold of the market.

In the year 1881 the take of herrings by the Yar-
mouth boats amounted, we are told, to 16,725 lasts, or
220,770,000 individual herrings. As to the curing pro-
cesses in vogue at Yarmouth, it may be stated here that
they vary according to the future of the fish. Bloaters
are not “gypped” (i.e. gutted), but other kinds of cured
fish are, just as in Scotland. The “curing works” at
Yarmouth are well worthy of being visited when the
herrings are on hand. They are perfect hives of industry.
There are registered at the port of Great Yarmouth 621
vessels of all kinds, of 15 tons and upwards, and these
boats employ 5160 hands on board; there are besides a
large number of boats under 15 tons that rendez-
vous at the same port—there are, for instance, 300
boats from various ports of Scotland, that come south
to the herring fishery; there are, including shrimpers,
150 other vessels, as well as 120 smacks, from Gorleston.

The Scottish boats which fish at Yarmouth, it may be
stated, are smaller than the local vessels, and carry suites
of finer netting. They fish for the fresh herring trade, and
run into port with their catch for immediate sale. It is
interesting to note that, if the number of herrings recorded
above were to bring one halfpenny each to their captors,
the sum would amount to £459,937. The herring fishery
only occupies a small portion of the time of the Yarmouth
fishermen ; how the remainder of their time is occupied
will be seen by consulting another division of this work
—THE FISHERS OF THE GREAT NORTH SEA.

32 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

THE CORNWALL. PILGHARD CATCHERS

Importance of the pilchard—Catching pilchards by the seine net—
Earnings of the pilchard-catchers—Cure of the fish—‘“ The Pope
and pilchards”—The pilchard Harvest—Drift-net fishing by
Cornwall boats.

THE pilchard is an important member of the herring
family, the capture of which may be said to form the staple
fishing industry of the coast of Cornwall; and it may be
said of the Cornish fisher folk that they greatly resemble
the fisher people of Scotland, inasmuch as they are here-
ditary fishers, and conduct their business much in the same
way as many of the Scottish fishermen conduct theirs.
The boats in many instances are family concerns, and the
profits made are divided in equitable proportions among
the crew. These fish are in some seasons more abundant
than others, and are anxiously watched for and industriously
fished when found. It is not our cue in the present work
to deal with the natural history of the pilchard, but we may
perhaps be allowed to say that the circumstance of the fish
frequently coming in shore in large bodies—“schulls ” these
bodies are called in Cornwall—affords an opportunity to
the most stay-at-home fisherman to participate in the work
of capture. This coming in of the fish to the bays has
given rise to one of the modes of capture, namely, that
mode which is carried on by means of the seine net, and
which has been so successfully imitated by the herring
fishermen of Lochfyne in Scotland. It may be explained,
however, that the seine or sean net, either as used in Corn-

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 33

wall or in some modified form, is also used in various
other fisheries than those for members of the herring
family ; in fact it is used occasionally for the taking of all
sorts of fish, and not for one fish in particular. When con-
ducted in that way seining is denominated “blind fishing.”
We may briefly describe here the labours undergone by the
fishermen of Cornwall in connection with the working of a
seine net, the use of which is so to enclose the fish of a
shoal as to prevent their escape, and keep them alive till
the men and women can carry them ashore to the curing
houses.

The industry of pilchard catching by means of the seine
net is pretty well organised, as may be seen in the bay of
St. Ives in the months of September, October and
November ; with its many picturesque developments this
mode of pilchard capture is well worth watching ; when
a shoal has been successfully surrounded by the nets, a
period of great activity at once ensues, the work accom-
plished during which speedily makes up for many days of
enforced idleness. About the period when the fish may be
expected to come inland, patrols are appointed to parade
the high places of the coast, and give notice, by means of
preconcerted signals, of the approach of the pilchards.
These persons are designated “huers,” and are chosen for
their qualities of quick-sightedness and general activity.
These sentinels of the Cornwall pilchard fisheries take each
a spell of duty of three hours’ duration, there being two
men to each look-out station. They used to signal to the
fishermen by means of a branch held in their hand; but cn
the St. Ives stations there is a staff on which is fixed a
movable ball of a white colour, by means of which directions
are telegraphed to the boats to indicate the locality of the
shoal. These men who raise the hue and cry on the ap-

D-

34 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

proach of the fish have fixed wages for the period they are
at work, of £3 per month, and a perquisite besides of
every hundredth hogshead of the fish captured by the
boats which they serve. The wages or remuneration of the
fishermen employed in the same boats is at the rate of 455.
per month, one-ninth part of the fish caught being also
their property. There are also men called “blowsers,”
whose duty it is to land the fish and carry them to the
curing cellars—their pay is arranged in proportion to the
catch of fish. The wages in “kind” are at once paid, the
ninth part of the fish being promptly taken possession of and
divided among those entitled to them. According to Mr.
Thomas Couch: “The crew of a sean consists of eighteen
men, and commonly a boy. The wages of the ordinary
seaner have varied from eight to twelve shillings a week ;
the men who actually shoot the sean have a shilling a week
extra, while the master-seaner’s pay is a guinea, with a
gratuity on each hundred hogsheads which he is so fortunate
as to catch; besides which the crew are in common entitled
to a third part of the fish sold fresh, and a fourth of that
which is exported ; in some places not even paying for the
casks in which they are packed.”

As there are 250 “concerns” (seines) in working order
at St. Ives, it is obvious that they cannot all be at work at
the same time, and it has therefore been wisely arranged
among the proprietors that each shall take his turn at the
fish, according to a scheme laid down to which all have
agreed. The seines can only be worked from half-a-dozen
positions, and, so that there may be fair play, all the seines
are registered, individual owners agreeing among them-
selves to work on the co-operative system ; and therefore at
the beginning of each season a uniform plan of operations
is agreed upon at a meeting of the seine owners, whereby

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 35

each attains a turn or two turns, according to capacity,
some concerns being much larger than others.

The pilchards are cured in a particular manner, and the
cure affords plenty of work while it is in progress, those
engaged in it being chiefly the women of the place, who
also cure at home their husbands’ share of the fish for
family use ; and these, with the accompaniment of potatoes,
form a large portion of their daily food. The pilchards are
exported for the behoof of foreign countries, where they are
much esteemed. “The Pope and Pilchards” used to be a
favourite toast in some parts of Cornwall.

As showing the continued work which results from ‘a
successful catch, it may be mentioned that as many as
thirteen million pilchards have been enclosed in one seine.
The advantage of using such nets is, that the fish, being
securely tucked within the seine by means of an additional
net, may be kept alive till the cure of the whole lot can be
undertaken and completed, which is accomplished at leisure,
so to put the case, although the people are certainly busy
enough whilst any of the work remains to be accomplished.
The oil which exudes from the pilchards while they are
being cured is valuable, and is used chiefly by curriers
in the preparation of some kinds of leather ; the yield of oil
is about two gallons per hogshead. As we have already
said, the pilchard harvest fluctuates very much ; the number
of fish mentioned above is the largest ever taken at one
operation. Inthe year 1881 the quantity of cured pilchards
exported was close upon 14,000 hogsheads, and the price
per hogshead to the curers averaged about 58s.—in one
year as many as 45,000 hogsheads have been cured. But,
as in the Scottish herring fishery, there is also a large
consumption in Cornwall and other counties during the

D2

36 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER POLE

season of “fresh” pilchards, whilst there is likewise a local
sale of cured fish.

Having said so much about the seine nets, we may now
refer to the drift-net fishing, which forms a prominert
feature of Cornwall industry. We do not know the exact
number of the fishing population that find employment in
Cornwall in connection with the pilchard, mackerel, and
general fisheries, but there are 624 boats of all sizes, valued
at £368,000. Some account of the drift-net fishing of
Cornwall, so far as its industrial aspects are concerned, is
contained in a recent official report of an inquiry, and from
that blue book we are indebted for the materials of the follow-
ing summary. On the drift-net fishery boats are employed
varying in size from half-decked luggers of 15 tons and 26-
foot keel, engaged in the pilchard fishery, to full-decked
luggers of 30 tons and 46-foot keel or more, employed in
the mackerel fishery. The pilchard drivers rarely go far
from shore, and always return to their port within 24 hours.
Mackerel drivers follow their fish into the deep sea, and
sometimes fish more than 30 leagues from the nearest land ;
and as these are the boats principally affected by the in-
quiry referred to above, the remainder of this memorandum
must be read as referring to them. Each of their voyages
is usually completed within 24 hours when on the home
fishery ; but sometimes, when several boats are in concert,
many remain out for a week at a time, one of the fleet
running for port each morning with the night’s catch of the
whole lot.

These boats are owned by individuals, and never by a
company. They are manned by crews of about seven men
and a boy, raised from the fishing villages from which they
hail, all well known to each other, and very frequently related ;

LEE ROUND, OF LIKE AND LABOUR. 37,

and the owner not unusually acts as master—if he does not
a brother or a son, or some other relative, usually does.
The “boy” is almost always related to some one on board
the boat.

These boats, in the seasons, go to Plymouth, the York-
shire coasts, and the Bay of Dublin. They never go far
enough from shore to make it necessary that their masters
should know the science of navigation. Nothing is required
in a master but a knowledge of reading (so that he may
learn up the lights and work a chart) and good practical
seamanship ; and of boats on these voyages it may also be
remarked that no one has ever been lost through want’ of
these qualifications. The crews of these boats are never
shipped at wages ; they work on share. Each man has the
privilege of bringing on board a certain number of nets
{a “net” is a length of net varying in the different fishing
villages), and the earnings of the boat after paying her
going expenses are divided. A certain share goes for the
boat, another share for the nets, and another for the crew.
The division of these earnings takes place at entirely
uncertain periods, according to the catches of fish, but it
occurs at intervals during the fishing seasons, with a wind-
up at the end of each.

Mr. Thomas Couch in a history of Polperro, gives some
interesting particulars of the Cornwall pilchard catchers,
and describes them as a hardy race of men, often leading a
life of toil and privation, and as a body not deserving of
the hard things which have been said about them. Their
gains, despite occasional spells of hard work, never reach
any considerable sum, whilst they are at all times precarious ;
and were it not for the produce of their gardens, and their
store of salted pilchards, their fate in severe and stormy
winters would be one almost of starvation. The fishers

38 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

of the Cornwall coast, according to Mr. Couch, are remark-
ably shrewd and sagacious in all matters pertaining to their
daily industry, but, like others of their class, they are imbued
with a strong vein of superstition, and are wedded to old
customs. No one can doubt the courage of the Cornish
fishermen on occasions of shipwreck, or of other disasters.
They have braved the dangers of the deep without the
slightest prospect of being rewarded for their often suc-
cessful daring, and their hospitality to those who have been
shipwrecked on their iron-bound coasts is proverbial.

As regards domestic usages the fisher-folk of Cornwall lead
a rather simple life, never interrupted by the celebration of
the many fétes one finds occasionally brightening the life of
the same class of people in foreigncountries. In his history of
Polperro, the quaint and picturesque “little fischar toune with
a peere,” Mr. Couch tells us that “it was once the custom for
women to take the corn to mill, see it ground, and bring home
their grist, for, rightly or wrongly, millers have ever been a
suspected race. Honest ones’ are popularly known, being
distinguished by some mark or tuft of hair in the palm of
the hand. Accordingly the Polperro housewives, like the
two clerks of Canterbury, were accustomed for a little
while—

‘To go to mill and see their corn ground,’

and, as the quantity was small, to carry it home. Hence
several women would be waiting for their turn at the mill,
which, like the bakehouse, became a noted centre of scandal.
A bit of doubtful gossip was proverbially termed ‘a mill-
house story.’ The sale of bread, except as penny loaves,
Easter and hot-cross buns, was unknown in these times.”

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 39

FISHERS OF THE NORTH SEA—TRAWLERS.

The North Sea Fishermen nothereditary fishers—Severe apprenticeship
—Length of apprenticeship objected to, and should be restricted—
Rad behaviour of North Sea Fishermen—Extent of the German
Ocean—Value of the fish it yields—Trawling the chief mode of
Fishing—Fleets of Smacks—The work of Trawling—The earnings
of the trawl men.

THE fishermen of the North Sea, so far at any rate as they
hail from the chief English ports, cannot be called heredi-
tary fishers. The fishing smacks belonging to Hull, Great
Grimsby, Yarmouth, and other ports, take apprentices from
whatever place they can obtain them, and such has been
the practice for many years, the consequence being that
these vessels are now manned by a body of fishermen who,
although they have been bred to the business, were not, as
the saying goes, “born to it.” Many of the lads who are
taken as apprentices belong to families of the local labouring
classes, but a larger number are received from workhouses
and charitable institutions, and in some instances, we
believe, from reformatories. The masters of fishing vessels
have usually come through the whole round of labour inci-
dental to all the grades of service before being appointed
_to the command of their smack—the office of cook at an
early stage being one of the appointments.

It has been ascertained by inquiry that the apprenticeship
to be served on board the big fishing-boats is a severe one ;
and by several of the captains, and by the older hands on

40 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

board, the boys have been, and doubtless sometimes still
are, cruelly used. At whatever age a lad is bound, he
continues to serve as an apprentice till he attains the age
of twenty-one years ; and, as boys are frequently apprenticed
who are only eleven or twelve years old, they in mary
instances become heartily tired of their occupation before
the expiry of their indentures. It has been suggested in
consequence that indentures should not be signed for a longer
period than five years. Grave complaints have been made
against the trawl fishers—men and boys—many of whom
apparently do not conduct themselves in a_ reputable
manner. An _ official inquiry has been held, and volu-
minous evidence taken as to the behaviour of the fisher-
men who proceed to the North Sea in trawling vessels,
and many interesting facts have been elicited as to their
modes of life and round of daily labour. One important
feature of the industry has been elicited, and that is, that
through the trawling service an outlet exists for the employ-
ment of a section of the population at all times rather ill
to manage, and for whom it might prove somewhat difficult
to obtain suitable work. The fisherman’s calling on the
stormy German Ocean is a healthy one, but the work is
rough, and much discomfort has to be endured, occasionally
spiced with incidents of supreme danger.

Although comparatively speaking a small sea, the
German Ocean is a gigantic fish-pond, having a surface
of more than eighty-nine millions of acres, yielding, it has
been calculated, to those nations which have the privilege
of dipping their nets in its waters, fish to the annual value
of about twenty-five millions sterling. One hundred thou-
sand tons of wholesome fish-food, it has been estimated, are
contributed by the North Sea every year to the commissariat
of London alone ; and, as may well be supposed, a large fleet

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 4!

of vessels and a vast number of men and boys are employed
in the work of capture and distribution.

We propose to give a brief sketch of the chief modes of
fishing in the German Ocean, whcre, as a recent writer
states, “no class of men work harder, live harder, or en-
dure greater peril of their lives.” What we have to de-
scribe, however, must be taken in a general sense, as we
have not sufficient space at our disposal to enter into
minute details.

“Trawling,” as is generally known, is about the cheapest
way of procuring plentiful supplies of our larger table-fishes ;
no bait is required, and miraculous draughts are sometimes
obtained. Great efforts are constantly being made to improve
the vessels ; at all events, they are now built on a much larger
scale than they used to be, while the introduction of a
steam-worked capstan helps to save the men from some of
the harder work which is incidental to that mode of fishing ;
and in the course of few years it is highly probable that
the North Sea fleet will also be propelled by steam. We
have steam trawlers working on various parts of the coast,
with all the appearance of success ; and the general intro-
duction of such vessels in the North Sea is only a question
of time. That the fish should reach the market as soon
as caught, in order to be sold when thoroughly fresh and
bring the highest possible price, is a necessity of the trade ;
some of the single fishing-smacks have to run to port
with their capture as soon as it is made, in order to catch
the buyers who are waiting. If they were screws instead of
sailing vessels it is obvious enough they would. be able
to make speedier voyages than they can make with every
stitch of the canvas they can carry set to catch the favour-
ing breeze. The fishing-places, it may be stated, lie far out

42 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

in the North Sea, so that the distance to be traversed is
considerable before the Great and Little Silver Pits, the
Well Banks or Rodney Gut can be reached.

Most of the trawlers work in fleets, each under the com-
mand of an admiral, who by means of signals directs the
routine of the fishery.

The nightly round of trawl work throughout the fleet is
pretty much as follows: at sunset, as a rule, as soon as the
signal is given, the work of trawling begins by the net being
let overboard. It is a gigantic chamber of horrors: for the
fish, when once engulfed within its capacious maw, cannot
easily escape, while allthat are captured are kept—great and
small, prime and offal, a circumstance which, we may be
allowed to state in passing, is- much to be regretted, as the
smaller fishes ought to be allowed to escape. The heaving of
this gigantic net overboard is of course a comparatively easy
matter ; not so the getting of it on board. When the trawl
has been placed the men partake of supper; and the crew,
except one man, go to sleep for a few hours, till the signal
is given to begin work. It is usually about eleven o’clock
when the admiral sends up a rocket to announce that the
nets of the fleet must be once more got on board. This is
labour of an exhausting kind. The writer has known three
hours elapse before the ponderous machine has been got on
board all right, the men working away with all their power
of will and strength of muscle. The trawl, as soon as it is
hoisted on deck, is emptied of its piscine riches, which on
some occasions, when fortune has been more than usually
favourable, make a formidable display of fine fish ; but the
fishermen have no time to expend in admiration. Many
a naturalist however would really enjoy the scene, and be
delighted with the crowd of curious creatures of quaint

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 43

forms that are struggling for their lives. The first opera-
tion that the men perform is to assort or classify the fish
into “prime” and “offal,” which are the two classes
known in the markets, although why haddocks and some
other really good fish should be classified as offal is
not easy to tell. Anything that is absolutely worthless is
at once thrown overboard ; but all the cruel dog-fish, which in
some seasons are wondrously plentiful, are carefully killed,
they “die game” as the fishermen tell us, unless when
“settled at once,’ by a strong blow on the head, which is
seemingly the most vulnerable part of all fish. Such fish
as turbot and brill live a long time out of water, but soles
die quickly; it is astonishing however what a strength
of vitality is exhibited by the smaller flat fish—which
flop about for hours after they have been captured.

After a brief time elapses, the trawl is once more placed
in the water for another shot, and is hauled in about break
of day ; and while it has been at work the previous haul of
fish have been more carefully gone over, and packed in
trunks or boxes, to await the arrival of the steam clipper,
which comes to the fleet to carry the produce to market.
A rather dangerous part of the fishermen’s work is the
ferrying of these boxes from the smack to the steamer
in a small boat—too small certainly for such work; but
as the fish must be got to market, the men must risk their
lives, no matter how wild the water may be during the time
that kind of labour is going on. The placing of the fish on
board the steam carrier involves a great amount of work, as
will be obvious enough when the reader is told that as
many as 2800 trunks of fish will occasionally be brought
to market by one of these steam clippers.

The preceding narrative presents only the merest outline of

44 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

the labours undergone by the trawl fishermen during their
spells of work, which vary in length in different districts, the
number of voyages not being the same for every smack, nor
are the rewards of labour always the same. As a rule the
captain and perhaps his second hand share in the venture,
and are remunerated according to the catch, but different
smack-owners have different modes of dealing with their
hands. In order however to give our readers some idea
of the earnings of those engaged in trawling, we may refer
to the terms of the Messrs. Hewitt, who own a large fleet of
smacks. The writer obtained much valuable information
about shares and modes of payment at Great Grimsby ; but
“it will be better to take the latest authoritative information
on the subject, and therefore we shall summarise what was
said about the fishing fleet of Messrs. Hewitt by their
manager, Mr. H. Harvey-George, when he was examined
during October last year (1882), by the Sea Fishing Trade
Committee. As was stated by that gentleman, the men
employed by the Messrs. Hewitt (570), are all paid on the
share system, the rates of pay for the different classes being
as follows :—There is first the skipper; his standing wages
and poundage is as follows: if the catch fetches under
100/, Is. in the 14; if under 150/, Is.in the 17, on the 100/,
and a fifth on the 50/.; if over 150/ one-fifth on the total.
The mate gets 145.a week and his poundage is : under 100/,
5d. in the 14; under 150/, 5d. on the 100/. and 7d. on the
50/.; if over 1507, 7d. on the total. The third hand has
14s. a week and 4d. in the 1/7; and the fourth hand Ios. a
week and 3d. in the 1/.; the fifth hand 9s., and 2d. in the 12 ;
the sixth hand 8s., and 2d. in the 14; and the cabin boy 7s.a
week, and Id. in the 14 These per-centages are paid on

the total earnings of the vessel ; and the smacks of the firm

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 45

are all excellent boats, costing when new from a thousand
to twelve hundred pounds, whilst the value of the steam
carriers will not be less than £6000 each.

The amount of capital invested by the Messrs. Hewitt is
about £ 100,000, and their steam clippers take the fish direct
to London. The time of a trawler at the fishing varies from
five to eight weeks, during which of course the carrier collects
the fish day by day. We have not the means of knowing
the earnings of individuals for all the hard and dangerous
work they undergo, but we question if, in numerous
instances, it will amount to much over a guinea a week—
no great sum, when it is taken into account that the men
have to sail the ship and work in the rigging as well as
attend to the trawl-net, which, as has been indicated, is a
most formidable instrument of fish-capture. It can be
gathered from the evidence taken by the Sea-Fishing Trade
Committee, that many of the Grimsby men feel irritated at
not receiving prompt payment of their shares, and, above all,
at not being presented with proper details of the sales. In
one case, where a man asked to see the settling bill, “the
skipper threatened to put him out of the window.” As to
the food given to the fisher lads aboard the trawling smacks,
it is very plain and roughly served, but it is good, and
consists of fish in the morning, with biscuits and butter, beef
and pies and duff for dinner, and fish again at night. There
are other trawling fleets than those of the Messrs. Hewitt
engaged in the North Sea—the Hull Steam Fishing Com-
pany and Great Northern Steam Fishing Company for
instance have 250 smacks at work, the London Fishing
Company works 125 vessels and four steam carriers, these
in addition to the numerous vessels of the Messrs. Hewitt

make up a fishing navy of large figures, and when the single

46 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

boats fishing on “ their own hook,” that is boats unconnected
with any of the fleets, are added, together with numerous
Dutch and other foreign fishing ships, it will be obvious
that the German Ocean is a wonderful arena of fishery
work.

Having gone over the round of labour incidental to
trawling, we shall now proceed on board a cod-man, in
order to see how it fares with the line-fishers, who contri-
bute a large proportion of the prime fish which are so much
prized for table use.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 47

THE NORTH SEA FISHERS—TfH: CObD=MEN:

Angling on a wholesale scale—A fishing line eight miles long—The
value of live Codfish—Small percentage of fish to hooks—Cost of
the cod smacks—Remuneration of line fishers—Bait : its importance
and scarcity—Mussels and Mussel culture—Fishermen of all work
—The shell-fish fisheries, their money value.

ANOTHER branch of industry which yields employment to
a large number of fishermen, and incidentally, in Scotland
at least, to their wives and families, is line-fishing for cod
and other fishes. This is a comparatively simple although
probably a very ancient mode of fishing—it is angling on a
wholesale scale. On board of the codmen we usually find a
larger crew than we do on board of the trawlers, and while
out on a voyage, the men, ten or eleven, find plenty of
work ; in long line fishing, for instance, it is a serious labour
of itself to bait the hooks. A suite of lines is 7200 fathoms
in length, or about eight miles long, and it carries the
amazing number of 4680 hooks, which have to be carefully
baited with whelks, or, as in Scotland, mussels, of which
mollusk one Scottish fishing port alone requires over five
millions annually. As the hooks are baited, which is a
work of time, giving employment to the whole of the crew
when not otherwise accomplished, they are very carefully
laid aside on trays ready for use, each tray containing so
many pieces. A large number of separate lines are used,
each being fastened together as a string. At about half-

tide the line is shot by being carefully paid overboard so

48 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

that none of the snoods to which the hooks are attached
may become fouled. After the hooks have been got into
the water, the smack heaves to till the tide has about
ceased, when the work of hauling in the lines begins, the
vessel making short tacks along the course during the
process, the fish are taken off the hooks as they come in;
this is work that has to be very carefully gone about, as
one living cod is worth a good many dead ones. To keep
these fish alive is therefore the chief aim and end of cod
fishing. As soon as a cod is safely secured, its air blad-
der requires to be punctured in order to admit of its
keeping its equilibrium when, as is immediately done, it is
placed in the well of the vessel in the hope of keeping it
alive till the port is reached, where, along with all the others
which have been captured, it is transferred to a wooden
box or cage in the dock. We are speaking at present of
the cod fishery as prosecuted from Great Grimsby, in one
of the harbours or docks of which thousands of these fish
are kept alive to await the orders of the dealers—they can
be taken out and killed as required. These fish command
an excellent price, and can of course be sold at times when,
in consequence of squally weather preventing fishing, there
might be none to meet the demand. With favourable
weather and an industrious crew good hauls of codfish are
obtained, as well as ling, haddock and halibut. A Great
Grimsby master of a cod smack told the writer that he has
come into port on two or three turns right off the reel with
as many as twenty-two score of live codfish in prime
condition. The skipper alluded to says a very small per-
centage of fish to the hundred hooks is now taken,
“the dogs” are so voracious that they kill and damage
a lot of the cod, whilst other animals seem to have a
pretty taste for the bait and to be endowed with sufficient

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 49

cunning to get it off the hooks without being themselves
captured.

The long lines are used in the winter season in various
parts of the North Sea, some of them very far apart,
whilst there are vessels that venture to great distances
in pursuit of codfish, not, however, with any view of bring-
ing the fish home alive, as that would be impossible under
the circumstances, and therefore they are salted or cured in
some particular way, so that they may be marketable, and
bring a profit to those who capture them. The vessels
alluded to make a voyage to Iceland or the Faroe Islands,
on these occasions the fishing is carried on by means of
handlines. At home, what we may call the coast fishing
for cod is carried on during the summer months, when the
smacks (the same vessels as are used in winter) keep from
about ten to twenty five miles off the shore, using the hand-
lines. The number of men employed at this season is the
same as in the winter fishery, and it is found that the best
fishing is obtained about sunset, at which time all hands
will be found industriously at work. We have not entered
into any of the technicalities of line fishing, as the business
we have now in hand is to give an account of the work
achieved by the fishermen and of the remuneration which
they receive for performing it. The cod smacks in
England—we are speaking of those of Great Grimsby—of
which we have personal knowledge, are all of them boats of
considerable value, costing, with their appliances, as much
probably as £1600, and it is only because of the high
money value which codfish commands that men go to
such expense to carry on what is at its best a very specu-
lative business and of the small profits of which they
complain very much. It is only the captain of a liner who
is paid by a share of the profits, his proportion, we were

E

50 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

told by one of the Great Grimsby smack-owners, is not
quite ten per cent.—in fact, his share is an eleventh—of the
proceeds of each trip; the hands are all paid fixed wages,
the mate twenty-two shillings, and the men each 1/.
per week. In addition to these wages they are provided
with food.

Scottish fishermen industriously pursue the white-fish
fishing at all times when cod and other round-fish are in
season: in almost every little bay and firth there are boats
that fish for the fresh-fish markets, and sell their produce
on landing to the buyers for the English salesmen ; some of
these boats make pretty long voyages, and remain out for
two or three days, but the necessity of selling their fish while
they are newly caught, urges them to run to port as often as
possible. The life led by such fishermen is laborious and
hazardous, from the occasional sudden storms which prevail
in the northern seas, where they ply their occupation. There
are also persons on the coasts of Scotland who fish for cod
and ling, but these fishers being far from the market have no
alternative but to curve their catch, and this is one of the
branches of fishing industry which is taken cognisance of
by the Scottish Fishery Board, and of which statistics are
collected every year.

One of the chief factors in the cod and ling fishery is
“bait.” Without bait the cod-men are unable to pursue
their vocation, and throughout Scotland the gathering of
bait used to be an “industry” of great pith and moment,
and to-day the delay in procuring bait often keeps the men
at home when they would willingly be at sea. In former
times the women and children of every fishing commu-
nity might be seen daily on the coast left bare by the sea,
engaged in gathering mussels for the lines; the Scotch
people have long been wedded to the mussel, as they

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 51

consider it the very best bait for the purposes of fish
capture. The labour endured was all the harder, as the
women and children often required to trudge a distance of
four or five miles, and then having filled their creels with
the coveted mollusk they had to walk home again with
their heavy loads, after which each family would have to
bait perhaps a thousand hooks to be ready against the time
of the men’s departure to the fishery. Now, when all the
accessible mussel supplies have been used up, the men
have to procure their bait from private mussel-beds, going
as far for it as the Clyde, or the Humber, and, what is of
importance to them, they have to pay for what they require,
which being taken into account with the time required to
make a run to the Humber or the Clyde from the Firth of
Forth, considerably diminishes their earnings. It is sur-
prising the fishermen of Scotland do not manage to make a
“new departure” in the matter of bait ; there are other baits
that would attract the fish as much as the mussel, such as
acut of herring or some other fish.* The Dutch, for instance,
who are industrious fishers, use the valuable Lampern very
largely, for the purpose of baiting their hooks, importing it
even from the coast of England, whilst the Americans
find excellent bait in the Menhaden. It is surely a curious
incident of fishing economy that our men should export bait
lamperns to Holland and import mussels from Hamburg!
But if the Scottish fishermen who are slow to change will
insist upon having mussels at all times for bait, they should

* They are now, we are glad to learn, finding out that the White
fish when hungry, which is always, are not particular as to their food.
The codfish is said to subsist mostly on herrings. Why then do not
our fisher folk use the herring more liberally than they do as bait? It
would surely pay them well, on the principle of throwing a sprat to catch
a whale to buy two pennyworth of herring to capture two shillings’
worth of cod or ling.

BZ

52 THE UNAPPRECIATED PISHER FOLK.

project a mussel-farm, and grow these mollusks in quantities,
sufficient not only to bait their hooks but to sell to the
public as well. In this they can follow the fashion of the
French, who have a fine mussel-farm in the Bay of Aiguillon,
near La Rochelle, where large quantities of mussels are
annually grown ona simple plan, which might very easily
be copied by the Scottish fishermen, and so save them a
world of labour, anxiety, and expense. In a “ Report on the
Fisheries of Norfolk,” the late Mr. Buckland, in 1875, gave
us some particulars of the value of a mussel-bed in the
statistics which he published of the Mussel Fisheries of
Lynn, these yield from three to four thousand tons in good
years, the average price per ton being a pound. There isa
very productive natural mussel-bed at Montrose in Scotland
which yields a large supply of bait.

The Messrs. Johnston, a local and enterprising firm, the
late Mr. Buckland told us in one of his reports, have wisely
instituted Mussel culture there, and there is a great demand
from Peterhead to Fraserburgh for Montrose Mussels, the
fishermen of these places taking from 100 to 200 baskets,
which they lay down on the rocks as store bait. The mode
of measuring these mollusks is by heaping them in a con-
ical form in a herring basket, twenty full baskets making a
ton. The fishery officer at Eyemouth (Scotland) reported,
in 18709, “the supply of mussels for bait is falling off greatly,
and on several occasions lately our fishermen have been
laid ashore for want of bait, and the want is becoming
greater every day.” It will afford an excellent idea of the
labour involved in baiting, when it is stated that, in the course
of one week, the Eyemouth and Burnmouth boats used for
baiting their long lines 61 tons of mussels. That quantity
of bait, it may be chronicled here, yielded these fishermen
cod and whiting to the value of £2,500, which shows

THETR ROOND OF EIFE-AND LABOUR. 53

the importance of the bait supply. The labour to all
concerned in using such a vast number of mussels must
have been enormous.

The collecting of whelks, to serve as bait for the cod-
fishers and other uses, is a regular trade on some parts of
the English coast, in which a considerable number of small
vessels are constantly employed. Each of the cod-smacks
takes in a large supply as they start on their fishing tour ;
during the season of long-line fishing about forty wash of
these buckies is required ; a wash, it should be explained,
is a measure which contains twenty-one quarts of whelks.
These shell-fish are preserved alive in the well of the cod-
smack, being kept in bags made of netting till required ; they
make capital bait, as when once properly affixed on the
hooks they are ill to remove. The whelks are caught in
various ways, and give employment to a large number of
industrious persons, whose business it is to procure them ;
indeed, so actively is the taking of these animals engaged
in, that the supplies of a district soon begin to fall off, so
that new fishing grounds have to be sought for every now
and then; in the sea lochs of the west of Scotland there
are immense numbers of shell-fish, which might either be
brought to the food market or be collected for bait.

The foregoing facts and figures, it is hoped by the writer,
will enable all who peruse them to form an idea of the in-
cessant work which is involved in the capture of fish. Besides
the fishing industries which have been already referred to,
as affording fields of labour more or less remunerative to
the working fishermen, there are others, such as the mack-
erel fishery, which might also be placed in evidence, but
drifting and seining, no matter what the fish sought for may
be, is ever the same, and it would only be treading a beaten
path to do more than say that. Happily enough the

54 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

seasons for fish taking are so varied that industrious fisher-
men may at all times find abundant work, when wind and
water prove suitable. Thousands of resident fishermen are
men of all work taking the different fishes in their. seasons,
going to sea day by day with an anxious mind, and well
pleased many of them are, if they can obtain a moderate
catch of fish. It would surprise those persons unacquainted
with the round of fishing labour, to know the extent of the
shrimp fishery, and the money value of the shrimps which
are caught on our coasts, then there are the annually recur-
ring industries of Oyster dredging, and Lobster and Crab
catching, which occupy the time of many persons who
prefer that sort of work to the more laborious occupation
of herring fishing, or trawling in the prolific North Sea. |

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 55

PELE TRISH, FISHER) FOLK.

Number of persons engaged in Irish Fisheries—Increase of Irish boats
engaged in fishing for Mackerel—Abundance of Pilchards—Cost
of carriage of fish—Irish Salmon fisheries—Shell-fish fisheries—
The reproductive Loan Fund—Its success—Social habits of the
Irish Fisher Folk—The Claddagh.

THE number of persons employed in the Irish fisheries in
the year 1846 was 113,073, who were in possession of a
fleet of 19,883 boats and vessels of various kinds. These
were the persons supposed to be actively engaged in prose-
cuting the various fisheries of Ireland; were we to take into
account their families and dependents we would be able, we
daresay, to make up the total number to a figure beyond
half a million.

The number of persons fishing and the number of boats
have greatly decreased since 1846. According to the
last published report of the Inspectors of Irish fisheries, it
appears that during 1882, the number of registered vessels
in Ireland fishing for sale was 6089, with crews numbering
21,597 men, and 794 boys. Of these 1978 vessels, 7310
men and 401 boys are returned as having been exclusively
employed in fishing, and 4111 vessels, 14,287 men, and 393
boys as partially engaged.

These figures must not be accepted for more than they
are worth; the Inspectors do all they can to ensure their
being correct, but various difficulties lie in the way of obtain-

ing accurate statistics. They explain in one of their

56 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

reports that great irregularities had occurred in carrying
out the registration of boats and vessels since 1842, so much
so indeed as to render the returns of no practical value. “It
was the practice some years ago,” says the Inspectors in
their report for 1876, “to register and return, as boats and
vessels engaged in the fisheries, every boat in the different
divisions, whether used for cutting seaweed, carrying
passengers, turf, sand, or other commodities, fishing or
pleasure, and a crew was assigned to each without ascer-
taining if such actually existed, no proper comparison can
therefore be made between the numbers actually engaged
in sea fishing during the past and former years.” Since
1846 the number of boats, and, of course, the number of
persons employed in their management as well, have steadily
declined ; in 1856 the fleet of boats numbered 51,069,
manned by 48,774 men and boys; in 1866 the numbers
respectively were 9444 (boats) and 40,663 (crews). By the
year 1876 the reduction was still more marked, the num-
bers being as follows: Craft of all descriptions engaged in
fishing for sale 5965, with crews numbering 22,773 men, and
920 boys.

In looking into the details of Irish fishing as conducted to-
day, we find some reliable statistics of the number of boats
taking part in the herring and mackerel fisheries, the latter
in particular being a growing industry in the Irish seas, the
importance of which has been largely divined by the local
fishermen. At the various herring fishing stations, we find
a total of 734 Irish boats engaged between May and
December, the number of the crew in each boat not being
given, but there would probably not be less than 4000 in all,
men and boys together. The number of Irish vessels taking
part in the capture of mackerel in 1882 was 263 ; as against
327 English and Manx and 25 Scottish boats. In 1876, the

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND-LABOOR. 57

number of Irish boats fishing for mackerel was only 133,
showing an increase in the fleet in seven years equal to about
a hundred per cent., which is very gratifying, and proves
that the Irish fishermen are prompt to seize upon an obvious
advantage. The mackerel fishery gives employment to
many other persons besides those who capture the fish. At
the chief ports, Kinsale and Baltimore, vessels are employed
in bringing ice: then there are the carrying steamers, each |
with a fair crew on board, whilst considerable employment
is given to residents in the respective localities both in
packing the fish and in other ways.

It is expected that the Irish fishermen will in time grow
a pilchard fishery. Large shoals of these fish are known
to be in the Irish seas, and a beginning of fishery enter-
prise in that line has already taken place, fifty-four hogs-
heads of Pilchards having been cured in the’Cornish fashion
(1882), at Baltimore, which were sold in Genoa, and realised
at the rate of £4 14s. per hogshead. As the inspectors of
the Irish fisheries say, there is abundance of room for
this enterprise being largely developed off the county of
Cork, and the foregoing should be an encouragement to
others to embark in it ; if judiciously managed by persons
who understand the best methods of capturing and curing,
it ought to prove most remunerative.

No statistics of a reliable kind are published as to the
number of boats and men engaged in the round and flat
fish fisheries of Ireland, but testimony has been frequently
borne as to the abundance of many kinds of valuable food
fishes in the waters surrounding the Emerald Isle, and of
the field of industry thus presented tothe Irish fisher folk.
But although the finest turbot and holibut are to be had
for the mere exertion of capture, the Irish fisher folk are

not possessed, in most instances, of the necessary fishing

58 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

gear with which to catch them ; at some places the boats
and machinery of capture are of the most fragile description,
and if improved vessels were to be provided there are no
fitting harbours in which they could be received, whilst the
distance of many of the seats of fishing from a profitable
market is another serious drawback to the advancement of
fishing enterprise inIreland. Thus the fisher folks of Ireland
are heavily handicapped in every way they desire to turn
themselves. As an instance of how the men are held down
we may state, on the authority of the inspectors, that in June
1881, two consignments, consisting of 19 and 30 boxes of
mackerel respectively, each containing 120 fish, were sent
up from the county of Cork to Dublin at a charge of 52 2s.
1d. and 7/. 14s. respectively, and the balances remitted to
the senders were IIs. I1d.in one case and 1/ 6s. in the
other, making a total of 14 17s. 11d. for 5,880 fish, or about
three of these fine fish for a farthing. The value of the
cod fish caught by the Irish fishermen, and exported to
England during the year 1882, amounted, in round figures,
to 389,240/. 10s.

The Irish Salmon Fisheries afford employment to many
persons, the total yield of these fine fish being considerable,
far in advance even of Scotland. The estimated money
value of the salmon captured in Irish waters has been set
down of late years (1882 excepted) as being considerably
above half a million sterling, a fact which, we think, is not
generally known. There is one branch of fishing which
might, we think, afford remunerative employment to a
large number of persons, namely, that for crabs, which
might be carried on in such a way as to be independent
of early markets, as these crustaceans might be stored in
rudely constructed ponds to be kept till called for. Could
the crabs of Ireland be brought to English ports they

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 59

would undoubtedly command a ready sale at remunerative
rates. Lobsters, too, abound amid the rocks of the Irish
seas, they are well known to commerce, but still larger
quantities of these delicious crustaceans might we think be
brought to market; traps for their capture are easy to
construct, and any kind of garbage will do for bait.

An interesting feature of fishery economy in Ireland is
centred in what is called the “Irish reproductive loan
fund,” by which sums of money are advanced to the
fishermen to be repaid at a given time, the amounts re-
ceived being again advanced to other fishermen. Much
good has been by this means achieved. We have not space
in which to trace the history of the fund, or to describe
the machinery of distribution, but we may, abridging the
information given by the inspectors in some of their annual
reports, state that in particular instances the poor fisher-
men who have been obliged with loans have been able to
turn the money to excellent account in providing the
necessary fishing gear of which they were utterly deficient.
“Tn vast numbers of cases,” says Mr. Inspector Brady, “but
for the loans, I believe the people on the west coast would
have been obliged to abandon fishing altogether, and if so had
no other resources.” The Irish fisher folk have also had
the advantage of obtaining substantial assistance from
another fund, namely, the money voted by the Dominion of
Canada for the relief of distress in Ireland. This fund
amounted to 420,500 and was placed in the hands of a
Committee who devoted nearly £10,000 to the promotion
of piers and the improvement of harbours, and £11,000 to
the purchase of fishing gear and new boats and the repair-
ing of old ones. This loan has been the means of effecting
a great amount of good: in one locality, to which £200
worth of nets were sent and distributed among fifty men,

60 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

over £1,200 worth of Mackerel were taken in one month. In
another locality a very poor man to whom a boat and net
were given, costing only £12, realised in three nights
by herring fishing, nearly £60. The inspector, after great
experience of their working, says, “every year’s experience
still further convinces me of the great importance of these
loans to poor fishermen. In my opinion their fishing pursuits
are far more valuable than their farming, and both can be
carried on together with great advantage, not only to the
people themselves who follow this pursuit as a part of
their means of living, but to the country at large by the
production of a large quantity of valuable food.” It is to
be hoped, from what is known of the really beneficial results
flowing from such aid, that still more will be forthcoming ;
there is undoubtedly a great field of enterprise open to
the Irish fisher-folk, even taking into account the poor
harbour accommodation, and the distances at which pro-
fitable markets have to be sought.

The Irish fisher folk, as a class, are singularly honest
and virtuous, not so much given to dissipation or riotous
behaviour as has been asserted, and whenever a prospect
of fair reward is held out for labour expended, they will
embark in any fishing enterprise. As was recently said
of the Irish fisherman, the man who voluntarily seeks his
living on the sea, cannot be wanting in aptitude for work,
courage, or perseverance against adverse circumstances.
The Irish fisher folk are much the same to-day in their social
habits as they were centuries ago. Their sanitary surround-
ings are not of the best, and their superstitions and prejudices
are much the same, more intensified, perhaps, if that
be possible, than those of their Scottish and Cornish
brethren. A well-known member of the Society of Friends

(Mr. Allen, Black Rock, near Dublin) it is interesting to

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 61

know, has borne important testimony to the good behaviour
of the Irish fisher folk ; being asked if he had ever known
any cases of Irish fishermen being implicated in Agrarian
outrages, his answer was to the effect that during a period
of fifty years he had not known a solitary case of an Irish
fisherman being charged as an accomplice in any of these
crimes.

At the Claddagh—in a portion of Galway situated on
the right of the harbour, we find all that pertains to the
social habits of the Irish fisher folk brought to a focus; the
colony of fishermen which is there established still retain
among them the customs of their remote ancestors. The
town is a peculiar looking place, an extraordinary collection
of cottages thatched with straw, and the people who inhabit
these abodes are totally distinct in dress, habits, and
customs, from those of the town (Galway). The peculiar
dress of the women imparts a singularly foreign aspect to
the streets and quays, and the person elected by the fisher
people as their Mayor, is implicitly obeyed, he is of course
one of themselves, and is able to regulate the community,
and settle disputes according to their own peculiar laws
and customs. On occasions of difference, his decision is so
much valued, that law is seldom resorted to. Like the
fisher folk of the Scottish and Northumbrian coasts, the
people of Claddagh are great believers in luck, and in
signs and omens, and in all matters of dispute, they stand
firmly by each other, even when one of them is wrong.
Strangers are not made welcome as residents in the fisher
quarter of Galway, in fact, they are not allowed to reside
within the bounds of the Claddagh. The people inter-
marry, and no marriage, we believe, is considered to be
properly brought about unless preceded by an elopement ;
the bride is presented by way of dowry, with a boat or share

62 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

of a boat, according to the means of her parents, and the
wedding ring is an heir-loom of the family ; it is transferred
from mother to daughter, the first married, and so on
to their descendants. The Claddagh people, after the
fashion of their foreign brethren, hold occasional fétes and
make merry on the occasion of electing their Mayor or
King and sheriffs. The Mayor is completely one of them-
selves, but when at sea he acts as admiral, and, as we have
said, his word in most thingsis law. When out fishing, the
Claddagh men carry in their boats no strong drink of any
kind—no spirits or malt liquors.

With these few details of this curious place, we take our
leave of the Irish fisher folk, heartily wishing them a great
increase of prosperity.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 63

THE FOREIGN FISHER FOLK.

Peculiarities of the Foreign Fisher-folk—Roman and Athenian
Fishwives—Feétes of the Foreign Fisher people—Italian Fishers—
French Fisher-folk—Madame Picard the poetical fish-wife—The
Dutch Fishwives—The Norwegian Fishers—Chinese fishery ar-
rangements.

HAVING sketched at considerable length the round of
labour from day to day of our own fishermen, we may now
refer to the foreign fisher folk, who are quite as peculiar
in their habits and modes of life as the persons we have
just been describing—they are people, in fact, no matter in
what country we find them, who live for themselves among
themselves, steadily transmitting from one generation to
another their stereotyped manners and customs ; their vices
and their virtues, their belief in signs and omens, and the
varied traditions of their ancient calling. From the earliest
days of Greek and Roman civilisation, those who gather the
harvest of the sea have formed in every country where they
dwell a caste by themselves, and to-day they are much the
same as we fead of their being centuries ago—for fishing
is a vocation of the remotest antiquity.

In all matters pertaining to their modes of life and com-
mercial dealings the ancient fishwives were very much alike
—no matter to what country they belonged the family
likeness was marked and unmistakable. .Thus the Roman
fishwives were a counterpart of those of ancient Athens,
and those of the “Modern Athens” of to-day may be taken

64 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

as tolerably exact copies, if not in costume, at least in
manners, customs and language, of their classic prototypes.
Juvenal of course satirises the fish dealers of ancient Rome,
taking for illustration a tender point of their character—
namely the freshness of their wares. He depicts a dealer in
fish as praying that he may be fed :—
“On the loved features of his infant’s head

Soused in Egyptian vinegar, if aught

Against his fishes’ freshness can be brought.”

A fondness for fétes and demonstrations has ever been a
marked characteristic of foreign fishers. When Pope Leo
the Tenth was summoned to the Papal throne in 1513 the
Roman fisherwives held a féte ; going in a body in order
to offer his Holiness their congratulations, and flatter him
by a declaration of their loyalty. In a graceful speech the
Pope returned his best compliments and thanks, telling
them that, as the successor of an ancient fisherman of the
sea of Galilee, he took a particular interest in their calling,
which, had for its object the providing of many chief
necessaries of daily life as well as a large portion of the
luxuries of the table. The Venetian fishwives used also
to hold grand Carnival every year during the season of
Lent. Their merrymaking lasted for three days, and, whilst
it continued the women dressed themselves in their richest
apparel, displaying at the same time as great an array of
costly jewellery as they possibly could. The Venetian fish-
wives were likewise noted for their uncivil tongues and
their tendency to get into “rows” of all kinds, as well as
for their constant and exceedingly voluble vituperation of
the authorities.

Scattered allusions to the Italian fisheries may be found
occasionally in the pages of the classic writers of the fif-
teenth century ; they are all of the same tenor, and harp on

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 65

the bad manners and worse morals of the fishwives of the
period, dwelling more especially on their unruly habits and
powers of extortion. Another fisher-féte of the olden time
(and one indeed which is worthy of mention, and is still per-
petuated with many of the old ceremonies) was that held by
the men and women who dwelt amid the great series of
lagoons at Commachio at the mouth of the river Po, just
where that river falls into the Adriatic. The great eel farm of
Commachio is one of those “specialties” of fishing industry
which were common a few centuries ago. It is still in
‘existence, and the manners and customs of its inhabitants
are said to be almost unchanged, being nearly the same to-
day as they were four or five centuries ago. On the day
following the nights during which they obtain a great catch
of their particular fish—the eel—the population of the lagoon
usually hold high festival, and indulge in a féte, with church-
going processions and other rejoicings. The fisher people
of Commachio are much like those of other fishing commu-
nities, “they have,” to quote a graphic but vulgar phrase,
“a spice of the devil in their constitution.”

The fisher folk of the Italian coast are still very much
like what they were five or six centuries ago ; they deal, as
a matter of course, in the same goods as their ancestors
dealt in, their business being of an hereditary nature; and
to-day they trade in exactly the same fashion as their fore-
fathers traded five hundred years ago. One has only to visit
the fish-markets of the coast towns to be convinced of the
fact. The fishermen of the period pat the tunny in the same
way as their predecessors did. They do this while the fish
is in the net, just in the same way as one would pat a
favourite dog or horse; they say it makes the giant fish
more docile than it would otherwise be. It is said that the

66 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

old fishermen used to ride on the back of the fish within
the circumference of the net !

The scenes to be witnessed in many of the Italian
fish-markets are exceedingly grotesque, and the noise of
quarrelling and the general loquacity that seems to be
incident to the sale of the frutti della mare in the fish-
market of Venice in the nineteenth century is of the very
choicest order of “Billingsgate,’ and certainly cannot even
be surpassed by the notorious fish-hawkers of Dublin of
whom Dean Swift wrote—

“ All mad to speak, with none to hearken—
They set the very dogs a-barking ;
No chattering makes so loud a din
As fishwives o’er a cup of gin.”

A large portion of the Italian population earn a livelihood
by fishing, some of the men using the frailest of boats, craft
which can only be used in the finest of weather. The number
of men engaged in sea fisheries on December 31, 1869,
with the exclusion of the then Papal States, was 60,000,
employing 18,000 boats, and giving a mean annual produce
of forty million lire. In addition to the sea fisheries, there
are lagoon and estuary fishing industries, which employ
many persons; whilst some of the fishing products, as the
Sponge, Pinna and Coral, bear of course no relation to the
food supplies. Asa matter of act Italy imports fish from
Great Britain and other countries, to the extent of more
than twenty-one million lire.

Taking leave of Italy, we come to France, where a few
hundred years ago many different laws were enacted for
the regulation of /es potssardes; and they undoubtedly
required to be legislated for, as they too were in the habit
of exercising the same vehemence of rhetoric which is the

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 67

common inheritance of the piscatorial sisterhood. The
potssonieres of Paris have often figured in the history of that
turbulent city. Certain parts of Lutetia had, in the olden
time, a most pronounced “ fish-like smell,” and remains have
at various times been found which indicate the antiquity of
the fishmongers’ craft in the capital of France. At a very
early period the fishwives of Paris were divided into two
classes, the one being called harengeres or sellers of salted
herrings, the other class, known as pozssonzeres, being dealers
in various kinds of fresh fish. The two classes, as may
be readily supposed, were always quarrelling ; and at times,
their rancour was so fierce that their quarrels often ended in
bloodshed and murder. Some curious laws were enacted
by St. Louis for regulating the sales of fish. First of all,
the right to sell had to be purchased from or be granted by
the king. Wise men (prudhommes) were appointed by
his Majesty’s chef de cuisine to look after the fish dealers,
and to amerce in a fine such as sold without permission of
the king. The grand cook of his Majesty likewise forced
all the pradhommes who were chosen, to take an oath that
they would see to the price of the fish supplied to the royal
tables, being fixed upon “soul and conscience.’ The
French fish-dealers of those days were so far happy, inas-
much as they were officially blessed by the Cardinal of
Paris, his bishops and clergy, once every year ; the occasion
of course being chosen for the celebration of a grand féte by
the fish-sellers, the boatmen of the river, the fisher-folks of
Havre, and those of other ports near the mouth of the Seine.
Such ceremonies are still, we believe, observed at Marseilles
and other portions of the continental seaboard. Similar
fétes and processions used long ago to be of frequent
occurrence in various Scottish fishing towns, but although
the fisher people of some particular fishing ports may
1

e

68 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK,

march once a year ina procession, the custom of genera}
holidays is falling into abeyance.

It is interesting to learn that one hundred and seventy
three years since there was a commanding fish-selling popu-
lation in the French capital. Of oyster-women there were
at that time no less than four thousand, and if so the sale
of the toothsome bivalve must have been so enormous as to
warrant speculation as to where-they all came from. It
is not surprising with such a corps of vendors that the
natural oyster scalps of the French coast came in time to
be exhausted! It is almost superfluous to say that the
Parisian fisher-wives, like their sisters all over the world,
“enjoyed” a rather bad character, and were stigmatised as
adepts at cheating their customers. They could, by the
exercise of a little fizesse, deprive the ready-eating buyer
of two or three of the best oysters out of every dozen he
might purchase, by pretending they were bad, and kindly
eating them for him. They used also to introduce into
their commercial system a few empty shells, the oysters of
which had just been sold to another customer, and, counting
them, pretend their patron had eaten the full tale of his
bargain. It would be unjust to omit mention in this
chronicle of Madame Picard, a Parisian fishwife, famed for
her wit and poetic talents, who flourished in the middle of
the last century, and who, being frequently in their society,
was personally known to Voltaire and other great authors
of the day. Her poetry, if we may believe the critics of
the period, was not devoid of genius; it was chiefly of an
amatory and sentimental description. Her poetical works
were published in the year 1768. Madame ultimately left
her fish-stall to become the wife of a silk and lace mer-
chant, in which position she was much respected.

There is to-day a large fishing population in France, all

THEI ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 69

of whom as a rule are good at their business, and many of
them fish so near us that we are able to judge. The fisher-
folk of France are much like their brethren of Scotland
and Northumberland, superstitious and peculiar. The
French have an extensive fishing fleet, over twenty-two
thousand vessels, which require more than 80,000 fishermen
to work them. As in Scotland, the French fishers are
always aided in their business by their women folk, and in
all fishing communities on the French coasts, the round of
fisher life and labour is much the same as we know it at
home, there are times of consuming anxiety for the women,
when the men are at sea, and have been delayed in bringing
home their catch by a sudden storm. The short and simple
annals of fisher life in France, and other foreign lands, are
as much tinged with melancholy, as the lives of the toilers of
the sea on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. Each
little village has experienced its terrible tragedies arising
out of the fateful work of those who draw their daily bread
from out the waters.

Holland, the cradle of fishery enterprize, can of course
boast of its fishwives ; the fishing villages on the sea board
of the German Ocean, as well as those on the coast of the
Zuyder Zee, are well worth a visit from the curious. The
fisher quarter of Schevening is exceedingly quaint and
peculiar, and the fishwives of Holland, and Belgium as
well, are just as peculiar as those of the French or Scottish
coasts, having their own specialties of living, and being
largely imbued with the familiar superstitions of their
eraft. We cannot say if a Dutch fishwife can find
“tongues in trees” or “books in the running brooks,” but
we do know that she can read the clouds and interpret the
mists that veil the heavens: and the wailing of the water-

fowl or the plaintive cry of the curlew will raise a vein of

70 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

superstition that cannot be allayed except by cessation
from work. The Dutch fisherman has ever the recollection
of a crowd of death-dealing disasters upon his memory as
he lazily whistles for a wind or murmurs a prayer to hush
the rising breeze. The fisherwives of Holland are exceed-
ingly industrious: they carry the fish caught by their
husbands, brothers or sons to market, and negotiate the
sales. The work of the husband is finished as soon as
he comes on shore, the work of the women then com-
mences. The wives undergo great labour, and take much
pains to render it remunerative; but the fisherwomen
of South Holland do not look so happy or prosperous as
their sisters located on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, who,
as a rule, are in a far more flourishing condition. At
Moniekendam, and on the opposite island of Marken, the
fisher people afford ample scope for study and portraiture.
They are quaint in their dress, peculiar in their manners, and
exceedingly simple and pious. The men of Marken are
very temperate, are the finest sailors in the world, and live to
a good age. The colony of fisher folk established there is
similar to some of those in Scotland: it is a kind of family
community, like that of Newhaven near Edinburgh. The
people intermarry each with the other, and thus beget
habits as stereotyped in many respects as those of the
Chinese, or the nest-building birds of the air. Their wants
being few and simple, and the temptations to expend money
rare, the people of the very remarkable island of Marken
happily find themselves passing rich.

The Dutch fishers are always at work when wind and
tide are suitable, and that they fish for other markets than
their own is well-known; they send us a liberal share of
their catch in the shape of Turbot, Eels, &c. Even so far
back as half a century ago, we paid them nearly £100,000 per

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 71

annum for the “ Aldermanic fish,” and the lobsters of which
the sauce was made. The Dutch cure their herrings on
board of their fishing luggers, which industry keeps the
fishermen very busy, the Dutch cured herring are very fine,
they are pickled with the crown, gut left in them, and are
much relished. The “busses” remain at the fishing all
the season, the fish being collected from the fleet by small
steamers or “ Yagers” as they are called, which bear them
rapidly to port, and the herrings which first come to hand
of the year’s fishing, are highly esteemed and command a
high price, a barrel specially prepared being sent for the use
of the royal family. In former times a substantial reward
was always bestowed on the fishers who were earliest in the
market with their herrings.

We have not space in which to describe even in the briefest
possible manner all the foreign fisheries, but by way of
giving variety to these memoranda, we may here indicate
the labour which is incidental to one phase of the cod
fishery of the Lofoten Islands, namely, “the gill net fishery,”
and we hope that mode of taking cod-fish will be introduced
by our own fishermen who are so often put to straits for that
expensive property of their work—daz¢. Gill-net fishing for
cod is a Norwegian industry of considerable antiquity, it is
reputed, at any rate, to have been introduced as far back as
1485, and is now practised extensively along the coasts of
Norway, but especially at the islands we have named, where
cod at certain seasons resort, it is said, in literal millions, the
inward “rush” of the fish being hailed by those interested
with great delight ; it isalmost needless to say that the time
of capture is the spawning season of the fish. Gill-net fish-
ing is carried on from open boats, each with a crew of six or
eight men, and carrying from sixty to a hundred nets, which,
however, are not all used at once, the greater part of them

72 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

being held in reserve to fill up the place of those which are
lost from accident, or which are being dried after use.
About twenty-five of the nets, however, are fastened together,
to be set by each boat. These are joined by being
riveted at top and bottom, and are kept taut in the water
by means of iron sinkers, and floats made of hollow glass,
and are so arranged as to be either close to the bottom, or
a few feet from it. The men at a signal all start in the
afternoon to set their nets in the way described, placing
them across the current, the fishermen usually returning to
the shore after that work has been satisfactorily accomplished.
Then after a few hours’ rest, and in the darkness of a night
that may be both stormy and bitterly cold, the men start
again for the fishing ground, to gather in the fish that may
have been caught. This is both exciting and hard work,
but it is work which must be accomplished, no matter how
the winds may roar, or the waves may leap. The heavily
weighted nets are ill to haul on board, especially when well
laden with fish, which happily they sometimes are. The
catch, however, is exceedingly variable, ranging from a few
dozens in a day to a few hundreds for each boat—five
hundred fish is thought a good take, and the fish captured in
this manner are the very primest of the prime, 200 of which
will be equal to 350 of cod taken by the hooks, whilst the
livers of the gill-captured fish yield more liberally of oil than
those which are taken by means of the trawl.

These fishermen earn more money at the Lofoten cod-
fishery than their brethren who handle the lines, or manipu-
late the trawl, and in consequence there is a growing desire
to prosecute that branch of cod fishing. It is stated that
in 1879 there were 2532 boats engaged in that style of
fishing, with crews numbering in all 14,322 men; in the pre-
ceding year the total catch of cod at the Lofoten fishery

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 73

numbered 24,660,000 fish, and of that quantity upwards of
14,000,000 were taken in the nets. The Norwegians are
mighty fishers, industrious and careful, possessing all the
virtues of their fellows in other countries ; the fisher folk of
Norway number eleven per cent. of the population, about
80,000 persons being employed in getting in the harvest of
the sea.

Much curious information about the social condition of
the Chinese fishermen, and the economy of the fisheries, so
far as the use of gear is concerned is contained in “the
Yellow Book,” or catalogue of the Chinese collection in
the Fishery Exhibition. We shall not, however, spoil the
interest of what is told by any attempt at abridgment —it
would require indeed a book as large as this to contain all
that might be said descriptive of the Chinese and Oriental
fisheries, such as the pearl-diving industry of Ceylon, and the

sponge and coral fisheries of tropical seas.

74 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

SUMMARY. CONCLUSION.

FRoM the details which have been given in the preceding
pages, the reader will have learned that no fisherman is
able to rule his ways of life, or govern his daily work after
the fashions of our land industries. Those who work in
factories, members of the building trades, and persons who
follow similar occupations, can regulate their hours of
labour, so as to begin and leave off work at fixed periods,
and to eat their food at fixed hours. Not so the poor
fisherman, who is a slave to the winds and the waves: he
must wait till the passing storm has exhausted its fury, and
the waters have become comparatively calm, before he
dare venture in his boat from the harbour, in order to
enrich the national commissariat with the “bounty of the
waters,” and earn the daily bread required by his wife and
little ones. And even when he reaches the seat of his
labour he may in vain cast his lines into the water. He
cannot compel the fish to swallow his lure, they may not in-
deed be in that part of the waters into which for the time he
has dipped his nets, so the disappointed fishers frequently
return from a toilsome journey no richer than when
they spread their sail to the favouring winds two or three
days previously. It is curious that men who have been all
their lives at the business will time and again fail to hit

upon the fish, There are no certain rules, however, by

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 75

which they can be found, and he would be a shrewd fisher-
man who always obtained miraculous draughts. As we
have shown, herring fishing is very much of a lottery; of
two boats which may side by side be plying their trade,
one may find a hundred barrels of fish in its train of netting,
while the other may not capture a hundred herrings! So
in line fishing and in trawling, the fortunes of the catch are
upon occasions singularly varied, huge piles of the fruit of
the sea may fall into the nets of Tom, whilst Dick may also
obtain a share of the finny spoil, but poor Harry in vain woos
fortune on the deep—never a fish—round or flat, comes
near his machinery of capture, no gigantic member of the
Gadidz family, no aldermanic turbot rewards his zealous
labours.

“Why,” it is being asked in various quarters, “should
we accord our sympathies to fishermen in a greater degree
than to other men, who gain their bread by the sweat of
their brow?” That is a question which it is not, we think,
difficult to answer. Fishing is an industry by itself, and those
who woo fortune on the waters but seldom find it; fishing
being a perilous occupation, which yields but an unsteady
reward. It has been said by economists of the Gradgrind
school, that “no man is compelled to fish,’ which is a
truism, but if the advice implied in the sneer were to be
taken, it would bode no good to the country. Happily, it
is advice that never will be taken, there have been fishers
on the sea since the miraculous draughts were taken from
the waters of Galilee, and there will be fishers probably for
centuries to come, fishing, we hope, under improved condi-
tions. At the present time the fishing population is still
largely leavened by men who are descendants of hereditary
fishermen, and who, as well as their fathers before them, have

known no other occupation—it is an occupation with which

76 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

their lives have been mingled, and which they could not
change if they were willing. A frequent charge made
against fishermen is that they are lazy and extravagant,
living when they have the chance a riotous life. The charge
is a strained one. As has been indicated, they cannot
regulate their hours of work by the sounding of a factory
bell, they can only go to sea when the condition of the
water is favourable, and when men have had a continuous
spell of work, lasting from sixteen to sixty or seventy hours,
they require corresponding rest. No fisherman has the
privilege of an eight hours’ day, like the well-timed
mechanic or factory worker ; nor has any fisherman a share
of those amenities which fall to the working-class popula-
tion of towns ; no institutes or cheerful clubs ; no well-filled
libraries. The dwelling places of many of the fisher people
are often remote from the haunts of civilisation, in hamlets
that are utterly destitute of any means of spreading know-
ledge, and when the fishermen congregate at the larger
fishing-ports their work is a work of emergency, which has
to be prosecuted with great rapidity, and admits of no time
of recreation.

The heroism of such a life as is led by our fishermen
from day to day all the year round has never, we think,
been so much appreciated as it should be. The dangers
of the deep are proverbial, and of these, the toilers of the
sea, who bring to land such a magnificent contribution to
the national commissariat have a full share, the danger
being not a little aggravated by the want of good harbours.
The value of the food which is annually brought to us from
the waters has been estimated at various large sums—
ranging from five to fourteen millions sterling, and taking
even the smaller figure, it betokens an amount of enterprise
and work which is not a little remarkable—it is so much

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 77

wealth to the nation got at first hand—for which we are in-
debted to the fishermen. At the very least there are on
the coasts of the United Kingdoms half a million persons
dependent on the fisheries for the necessaries of life which
they obtain, and it is their hard fate that only by unceasing
work can the fishers keep up their homes, and feed and clothe
their children, who, along with their mothers, are called upon
to share the daily round of labour, to take part in the toil-
some work of net shooting and hauling, or of baiting the
hooks, and who in the end, by means of this combined in-
dustry, often do not earn the wages of a single well-employed
mechanic, who pursues his vocation on the dry land, in a
comfortable workshop, with abundance of light and heat
at his own command.

It is not every labouring man who could be a fisher-
man even if he were to try, fishing is a business which
requires experience, and can only be acquired by training,
so that our best men in this department of industry are
those who are hereditary fishermen. These only have in
the largest measure the properties of endurance and skill
which must ever be incidental to their peculiar occupation.
The fisherman must not only have physical strength, he
must have moral courage as well, for at every hour of the
day he knows he is fighting for his life. Whilst his hand
must be. occupied on sail or line, his mind, too, must be
actively at work gathering those scraps of knowledge which
are constantly required for the prosecution of his business,
and by means of which he is endowed with that cunning
and skill which he finds so necessary.

It is not alone the contribution made by our fishermen
to the national commissariat, that falls to be considered in
connection with our fishing fleet. Other benefits accrue to
the nation which cannot be ignored in a work like this,

78 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

sketchy and unfilled up, as it may appear ; the building of
new boats, and the repair of those now in use, the weaving
of nets and the manufacture of sails afford remunerative
labour to hundreds of persons. The bringing of salt and
barrel-wood to the curing stations, and the exporting of the
fish to foreign places, also affords employment to those en-
gaged in that line of business. Nor is the money earned by
our fisherman hid away in a napkin; it is at once put in
circulation, and all manner of tradespeople feel the benefit
thereof, the owners of their cottages and houses,—many of
these, and we regret to have to state the fact, being ina
most unsanitary condition—derive their rent, whilst the
baker, the butcher, and the clothier, find their tills swelled
by the money of the fisher-folks. There are few, indeed,
who do not directly, or indirectly, derive some benefit from
the “ Harvest of the Sea.”

In penning these remarks we have no idea of going
against the usual dictates of political economy. We know
that men are not “forced to fish” against their wills. But,
as has been shown, many of these men know no better,
having been born to the business—never in fact having had
an opportunity of trying their fortunes at another trade.
It has been asserted by public writers and economists that,
fish being so dear, fishermen must earn a great deal of
money ; but that reasoning does not avail with those who
are behind the scenes. It is too often but a very scanty
share of the price which the public pay for the produce of
the sea that actually falls to the share of the fishermen,
who incur all the dangers incidental to its capture. Still
the public are the gainers; they derive a large amount of
wholesome food from the unfathomed caves of ocean, the
sale of which helps in some degree to keep down the price
of butchers’ meat. And to some extent the fishing interest

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 79

is of use to the State, as it provides a hardy population of
sailors from which the mercantile navy is occasionally
récruited, and from which our ships of war, were they not
nowadays chiefly manned by mechanics, in the persons of
their engineers and stokers, might obtain a supply of sailors.
It may be said of our fishing craft generally that they
afford a fine training in habits of industry and discipline
to thousands of persons who in after years season the
population with that independence of character and that
love of personal liberty which is so desirable for a free
people; and it is a pitiful circumstance that in so many
instances a lifetime of arduous labour should only end in
abject poverty ; it is sad to find, as not infrequently happens,
that many a man, whose everyday heroisms would in some
other calling have made him famous, has landed in the days
of his old age in the workhouse.

We cannot prophesy with any certainty as to the future
of our fisheries, but it may be predicted that steam-fishing
craft of all kinds will come more into use than has hitherto
been the case; and if that should happen, it will in some
degree better the position of the fishermen. With steam
power they will be able to accomplish their work with a
greater degree of speed, and will also be better able to
battle against the elements with which they have to con-
tend. Occasional dread catastrophes occur every now and
then to our fishing fleets ; they are of kin, in their suddenness
and terrible fatalities, to the explosions which take place
in our coal mines ; and at such periods the aid of the chari-
table is demanded for widows and orphans. It is not our
purpose to say one word that would freeze the fountains of
benevolence, but is it not time that the fisher folk should ac-
cumulate a fund, to be in readiness for such times of need ?
In some fishing communities there are, we know, “ friendly

80 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

societies” that offer aid to the distressed, that give a sum for
funeral expenses and an allowance in periods of sickness ; a
small payment implies the right to such help as has been ar-
ranged for. But, grateful as such aid may be in a time of need,
it is not enough ; and for such a body of men as the British
fishermen to be appealing on every occasion of calamity for
eleemosynary aid is anything but seemly. If they could
but learn to appreciate the power of the pence, they would
find that, with a small weekly contribution from the
hundred thousand persons who are regular fishers such a
sum would in the course of three or four years be accumu-
lated as would set up anew their wrecked boats, provide
for the widow, and educate the fatherless. We would
say to the fisher folk, Do this yourselves; have your own
accumulated funds managed by your own people. One
penny per week from each one of a hundred thousand
persons would produce, roughly speaking, a sum of over
twenty-one thousand pounds per annum which would be
more than ample for all that will ever be required of it.

It is not the business of the writer to do more than
indicate that such a scheme is quite practicable; the
details may be worked out at leisure, but the sooner the
better. It might even be taken in hand in conjunction,
perhaps, with the issuing ofa licence to all fishermen, by some
of our government departments. We have a government
which sends our telegrams, forwards our letters, carries our
parcels, takes care of our savings, and sells us annuities ;
why should it not arrange to assure the lives of our fisher-
men and to replace their boats when they are destroyed
by the storm? A small sum charged annually for a
“licence to fish” would provide all the funds which are
necessary. Fiveshillings a year from forty thousand fisher-
men would amount to ten thousand pounds per annum—

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 81

all that might be necessary. With such a sum and its accu-
mulations to fall back upon, fishermen would be indepen-
dent of the bestowal of public charity. We know that
associations of different kinds have of late years been or-
ganized for the insurance of fishing gear, chiefly the boats,
and smack owners have joined their forces in this direction.
We should be glad to see the fishermen acting in combina-
tion to obtain both a provision for accidents of all kinds,
but for the time of old age as well.

We offered recently in the pages of a popular peri-
odical, the following suggestion for the benefit of the
Scottish fishermen. “There is another way of solving
the question of how the fisher-folk might provide for a
rainy-day. Taking the herring-fishery as the typical fishery
of Scotland, an industry at which, during some portion of
the year, every unit of the fishery population assists, we
may state that the value to the fishermen of the herrings
which they capture can scarcely be less than two millions
of pounds sterling per annum. A million barrels at least
are cured, and large quantities of herring are caught in ad-
dition, and sold fresh. Accepting the value of the fish to
their captors as being two millions sterling—a barrel, it may
be stated, contains about seven hundred and fifty fish, and
these, at the price of a half-penny each, come to a sum of
thirty-one shillings and threepence ; so that the figure we
have given is by no means an exaggeration—is it too much
to ask of the fishermen that they should devote a sixpence
of the price obtained for each barrel to insurance of boats
and lives? How much do a million sixpences come to?
A million sixpences amount to the very handsome total of
twenty-five thousand pounds; a far larger sum than would,
one year with another, be required; so that to all appear-
ance, an assessment of threepence, or at the most fourpence,

G

§2 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK.

per barrel on the cured fish alone would yield all that is
necessary to replace boats and fishing-gear in times of
adversity. The Scottish Fishery board—the usefulness of
which is sometimes called in question both in parliament
and elsewhere—might be intrusted with the collection of
the money. The Board has already in active work an
organisation for collecting the fees on every barrel of
herrings that is branded ; it would not be difficult, there-
fore, for the officers of the Board to collect whatever sum
may be agreed upon from the fishetmen.”*

In making such suggestions we will probably be met by
the answer, that fishery boards, with whom would rest
the business of collection, have not the power to inter-
fere in these matters; but the power, we fancy, will not
be ill to procure. In Ireland, as has been shown, the
fishery inspectors carry on similar work, they administer
a fishermen’s loan fund, which has been productive of
good by enabling persons to obtain boats and fishing gear
who could not otherwise have obtained it. There are
other means by which fishermen may provide a fund for
the proverbial rainy day ; other devices might easily be
fallen upon, but we daresay it will be found, in this as in
other matters, that the simplest means are best.

Some unkind remarks have recently been made regarding
the want of intelligence shown by fishermen in following
their calling. They are accused of knowing nothing, or at
least very little, about the natural history and habits of the
animals they capture ; the accusation is most gratuitous,
seeing that it is by means of their knowledge—be it much
or litthe—that we obtain all the fish which are brought to
market. The writer in his time has passed many days with
the fisher folk, and has found them with regard to their

“ Chambers’s Journal,” Feby. 18, 1882.

THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 33

occupation just about as intelligent as others of the working
class with whom he has been brought into contact, and with
far more natural shrewdness, and no men are more ready
in a time of peril to do all they know to save a life.
Now that the means of education have reached even the
remotest fishing villages, we shall soon find the rising
generations of fishermen upsides with their more learned
brethren of those inland towns which have provided literary
institutes and free libraries for behoof of the artisans
and labourers who inhabit them, and many of whom a
few years ago were as ignorant as our fishermen are
accused of being to-day.

With improved harbour accommodation and more steam
power to aid them in their business, and both of these
“wants” we are pleased to know are in course of being
eradually supplied, the fisher folk of all grades will find
their condition ameliorated and their future looking brighter.
We heartily wish them more of the sunshine of life and less
of its storms: they have been at all times a gallant, al-
though a peculiar people, and now that attention has been
roused to their condition, we trust their earnings will be
increased and their sanitary surroundings improved, and
that the dangers attending their calling will be fewer in the
future than they have been in the past: in that hope we
close this imperfect record of “the round of fisher life and
labour.”

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

‘srmed BY

sorvation

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FISH

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Lssued tn connection with
The oe. AN TERNATIONAL
) py PSHEREES [AHI BITION
) UNAPPRECIATED
} FISHER FOLK

EY

JAMES G. BERTRAM

AUTHOR OF ‘THE HARVEST OF THE SEA’

INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES EXHIBITION
AND 13 CHARING CROSS: SW:

ONE SHILLING

PAPERS oF THE CONFERENCES

Held in connection with the GREAT INTERNATIONAL
FISHERIES EXHIBITION.

nm

De 3 9088 00723
INAUGURAL Tuas. macnn. By PROFESSOR
Hux ey, F.R.S. H.R.H. the PRINCE oF WALES (President of the Com-
mission) in the Chair.

NOTES ON THE SEA FISHERIES AND FISHING
POPULATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. By H.R.H. the DuKE
OF EDINBURGH, K.G.

THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. By

PROFESSOR BROWN GOODE,
HERRING FISHERIES. By Mr. R. W. Durr, M.P.
PILCHARD AND MACKEREL FISHERIES. By Mk. T.
CORNISH,

FRESHWATER FISHERIES (including Trout). By Mr.

FRANCIS FRANCIS,

SEAL FISHERIES. By Captain TEMPLE. :
OYSTER CULTURE AND FISHERIES. By PROFESSOR
HUBRECHT.

MOLLUSCS, MUSSELS, WHELKS, Xc., used for Food or
Bait. By Mr. CuHas. HARDING.

LINE FISHING. By Mr. C. M. Munpaut.

PRINCIPLES OF FISHERY LEGISLATION. By Rr.
Hon. G. SHAW-LEFEVRE, M.P.

ON THE CULTURE OF SALMONIDAE AND THE
ACCLIMATISATION OF FISH. By Sir JAMEs MAITLAND.

FISH AS FOOD. By Sir Henry THompson.
FISH TRANSPORT AND FISH MARKETS. By His

EXCELLENCY SPENCER WALPOLE.
FOOD OF FISHES. By Dr. F. Day.
STORM WARNINGS. By Mr. R. H. Scort.
FISH DISEASES. By Proressor HuXLEy.
ECONOMIC CONDITION OF FISHERMEN. By Pro-

FESSOR LEONE LEVI.

SCIENTIFIC RESULTS OF THE EXHIBITION. By

PROFESSOR Ray LANKESTER.

LONDON :
WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS, LIMITED,
INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES EXHIBITION, & 13, CHARING CROSS.

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

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