A Perilous Catch

by Mike Smylie

  Daniel Defoe noted these craft in the early part of the eighteenth century:

  One thing I cannot omit to mention of these Barking fisher-smacks, viz. That one of those Fishermen, a very substantial and experienced Man, convinced me, that all the Pretences to bringing Fish alive to London Market from the North Seas, and other remote Places on the Coast of Great Britain, by the New-built Sloops called Fish-Pools, have not been able to do any thing, but what their Fishing-Smacks are able on the same Occasion to perform. These Fishing-Smacks are very useful Vessels to the Publick upon many Occasions; as particularly, in the time of War they are used as Pres-Smacks, running to all Northern and Western Coasts to pick up Seaman to Mann the Navy, when any Expedition is at hand that requires a sudden equipment: At other Times, being excellent Sailors, they are Tenders to particular Men of War; and on an Expedition they have been made use of a Machines, for blowing up Fortified Ports and Havens; as at Calais, St. Maloes, and other Places.6

  The men of Barking, a hamlet aside a tiny creek off the Thames, had been catching herring since at least AD 670 and the hamlet was well placed to supply the London markets. Well-smacks were introduced here in 1798 and thirty-five years on there were 120 such craft based there. Twenty years later trawling was well underway as there were 134 smacks trawling and another forty-six long-lining off the Norfolk coast.

  Long-lining is, of course, an ancient way of fishing and has been practised all around the coast for centuries. They consist of lines with thinner strops called snoods spaced out along their length with hooks attached to the snoods. The length of line and number of hooks differs greatly and varied from twenty to 6,000. They may be worked from boats, set on the seabed, near the surface or simply by placing them on the sands at low water and checking them on the next ebb. Great lines were common in northeast Scotland and down the east coast of England and were traditionally baited ashore by the women, old men or boys. Baits varied but it was once the norm for the fishermen to gather mussels to use as bait though in other areas sometimes the hooks were baited with herring as they were shot. Long-lining was prolific until the advent of, especially, steam trawling. A typical cod smack carried sixteen dozen lines, each 30 fathoms long. Each had a snood at some 7ft intervals which was 30 inches long. A train of these lines of about 6 miles in total length carried about 5,000 hooks with an anchor at either end and buoys at every mile.7 The amount of boats needed to supply these lines was immense and some forty vessels were busy exclusively collecting bait from the Wash for them.

  Two Lowestoft trawlers sailing out of the harbour. These were hugely powerful craft capable of towing heavy trawls.

  As the power of sail increased, so did the ability to tow trawls across the bed of the North Sea and English Channel. It is said in many circles that the small Devon village of Beer had much to do with the growth of trawling. ‘Beer made Brixham, Brixham made the North Sea’, the saying goes. For, even before the Barking folk were trawling the North Sea, the Brixham boats were annually joining in with the Yarmouth Herring Fair back in at least 1200. Devon boats were travelling far and wide in their search for fish and were the protagonists in sailing across to Newfoundland for the cod fishery in the sixteenth century where they went to search for fortunes. By 1785, there were seventy-six sailing trawlers working from Brixham although it is said that the first men working trawling out of Brixham were Beer men in their small three-masted luggers.8 Some say that it was the Dutch again who taught the Brixham men to trawl.9 These trawlers were working the North Sea, some basing themselves for the season in Scarborough and by the end of that century were up to almost 80ft in length. Indeed, many Brixham skippers took their wives and families to Scarborough where they resided at temporary homes during the fishing season while their husbands supplied the town with fish for the growing tourist trade. At the same time the smaller smacks were working over the Dogger Bank.10

  The story goes that it was the Brixham boats that discovered the Silver Pits in 1837. John Dyson tells us how William Sudds, a Brixham fisherman who settled in Ramsgate, was master of one of several boats dispersed in a winter storm in the early winter that year. When he limped home his boat was said to have been staggering under the weight of fish – 2,000 pairs of soles for which the Silver Pits became renowned.11 Robb Robinson puts Sudds aboard a Margate-built smack Betsy which he first registered at Hull and then re-registered in Ramsgate in 1838.12 A further suggestion was made that the Silver Pits were in fact discovered in 1838 and then ‘rediscovered’ in 1844.13 Perhaps Sudds kept quiet about his discovery, took it back to Margate and then returned to the area as he was master of the 18-ton smack Ranger in 1844, a boat owned by J. Todd, a Hull fishmonger.

  Life in the smacks in the North Sea was not fun. In a smack there were normally five crew. Bottom of the rung aboard was the boy, that doer of everything no one else wanted to do. He was, of course, learning the ropes, later to climb up the crew, and later still to literally climb up into the wheelhouse to take command. He was cook, cabin cleaner, washer upper, tea maker, water drawer, clearer of the decks of fish scales and all, and getter rid of the ‘brash’ or rubbish in the net. He learnt to box the compass, steer, mend and brail nets, coil the ropes and generally keep everything in its rightful place.

  Next came the fourth deckhand who wasn’t much further up the ladder than the poor boy. He was expected to be able to do everything the boy did which isn’t surprising as it is quite likely that he had been the boy prior to the arrival of the new boy after, probably, a higher member of crew had left. Most of the crew had worked their way up from the boy’s position, learning everything there was to know about sailing a smack and towing a big trawl in all sorts of North Sea weather, just as their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had before them. He was also meant to be able to handle the vessel, to set the sails and watch how they react to the wind. He’d watch the trawl too, for a snagging could have dire consequences. He’d be able to splice and whip ropes, mend sails, braid a cod end and repair nets and take the soundings. And when he wasn’t doing any of that he’d be attending the fishing and gutting the catch.

  The boy had all the unpleasant and tedious jobs to do, here seen peeling spuds. Redding the tarred headrope down into the hold was one of the most unpleasant of all!

  It used to be said that it wasn’t uncommon for a crew member to drop off the stern of a smack, tripping up or missing his foothold while working. On dark nights, with the wind whipping across the faces and hands of the crew, to secure the trawl and then turn the smack around quickly was impossible and that crew member unlucky enough to fall in wouldn’t have a chance anyway. The vast majority of fishermen couldn’t swim. If they could the cold would have had them before the smack was able to have even the slightest chance of finding him. It was easier to succumb to the water as quickly as possible. Most times they didn’t even bother to attempt a turnaround as they were acutely aware of the situation and it was merely an acceptance within the job. There’s no truer statement than ‘it’s not fish, it’s men’s lives’.

  The job of the third deckhand was slightly more taxing as he’d stand watch for eight hours at a time, manage to prepare the vessel to shoot or haul in the net and splice the warps. He would have to be skilled at net mending, checking the rigging and chafes, as well as fishing and the subsequent gutting and icing down.

  The mate had to be able to run the vessel, to navigate, to watch for signs of fish, to attend to everything on the ship that needed attention. He was under the master but understood the master’s job for if the master was absent, then he was in charge. He had to know the fishing grounds, when and where to shoot the net, the finer points of trawling.

  The master was, of course, that. His word was final and he was responsible for the good running of the vessel, and its fishing efficiency. A poor catch meant there was no money to share out among the crew. With the share system, the boat took a portion of the money from the sale of the fish while the crew shared the rest out. The master had a do
uble share, the mate one and a half, the third and fourth one share and the boy half a share. Sometimes the proportions were slightly different but the idea was the same. Once the smacks became larger in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was often another hand aboard as cook who was employed to look after the crew and take part in the fishing at times. The boy was the deckhand, still the person to do all the menial jobs and learn the ropes. Some of these vessels preferred to pay wages and, in 1887, the average was a penny an hour, asleep or working, which amounted to fourteen shillings a week. He would also get a shilling for each pound of the smack’s earnings which could bump his earnings up considerably. The mate got eighteen shillings a week in total, the third deckhand sixteen shillings, the fourth fourteen shillings, the cook ten shillings and the deckhand twelve.

  Conditions aboard the smacks were pretty grim. Some boats were squalid, ‘with verminous cabins, uncouth men and sordid life’.14 However, that wasn’t the case of all craft and, although conditions were by no means homely, there was a certain pride among the crew in keeping the vessel clean. Generally they ate well aboard as any skipper worth his mettle knows that a well fed crew works well: roast beef, dumplings, lots of potatoes, suet puddings, and fish for breakfast, the prime of the catch.

  The large sailing trawlers were some boats, for sure. Built mainly in Brixham, Galmpton, Rye, Lowestoft, Hull and Grimsby, they were immensely strong vessels capable of towing a 55ft beam trawl. Some older smacks were lengthened to cope with the increase in the size of the gear. Scarborough was said to have several being worked upon on the open beach there. As boats became larger, so their cost increased. A first-class trawler by the 1880s was a big investment at £1,500 but with steam trawlers beginning to make inroads on the fisheries, some second-hand vessels came up on the market for those skippers who could not afford a new vessel.15 The 1870s proved to be the peak of their trade. Fleets sailed from Hull, Grimsby, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Ramsgate and Brixham and they worked throughout most of the year. In winter fishing was mostly confined to the Dogger Bank and the banks to the southward and in summer they would venture further out towards the Danish and German coasts, and off Helgoland (Heligoland) which was British territory between 1807 and 1890. Brixham boats continued to sail far and wide though in winter they worked their local grounds until moving away in March, some to Penzance, the French coast and southern Ireland while others moved to the North Sea, landing into Yarmouth or Lowestoft.16

  One of the most important developments in the trawl fishery was the introduction of the otter trawl in 1895. Instead of a beam trawl that dragged the net over the seabed on the iron shoes, two boards were so fixed to the tow ropes that the pressure of water on them forced them apart, thus keeping the mouth of the net open. Although it was able to run along the seabed, for the first time the trawl could be operated above the seabed. Wood’s description is still relevant:

  Experience proved that the beam was unwieldy and unnecessary, and there came into being the ingenious contrivance which is known as the otter gear. It was not until 1894 that the new method superseded the old plan of fishing. Like all other improvements, the Otter was at first ridiculed and condemned; but the opposition died very quickly, for even the most conservative smacksman saw in it a welcome change from needless labour, a vast improvement in fishing, and a means of greater profit. In place of the beam, two boards, about 4.5 feet square, were attached to the mouth of the net, where the trawl heads had been, and so arranged that on being dragged through the water they kept the mouth open in the same manner as the rigid beam and irons. An enormous advantage, too, was the lightness of the contrivance compared with the weight of the old apparatus, and the possibility of shooting and hauling in weather which would make the employment of the beam impossible. With a lessening of weight and the further use of steam, the labour of handling the net has been very much reduced. Powerful steam winches have succeeded the hand and donkey capstans; yet even today the final work of getting the net on board is hard enough to satisfy even the most robust of toilers.

  At the outset a modified form of the Otter apparatus was used, and I remember photographing one of the earliest types of ‘gallows’ – a square invention which was unpleasantly suggestive of the real thing which is stealthily concealed in unassuming sheds in gaols. Today the ‘gallows’ consist of arched girders fitted to the trawler’s side, and they form a prominent feature of her equipment.

  At the outset many patents were secured for the Otter apparatus, and it was necessary to pay a fee of £25 yearly before it could be used; but, as improvements were put on the market and the demand for the modern appliance grew, the charge was abolished, and today the principle is employed, free, in all modern steamboats engaged in trawling.17

  Two other factors contributed to the growth in the fisheries. First, there was the increased availability of ice to keep the fish fresh while at sea, which enabled the boats to venture further from home. Ice had been imported from Norway and kept in ice houses for many centuries and, indeed, the remains of various ice houses can still be seen today especially in parts of Scotland, where it was widely used to pack with salmon brought down from the east coast to London. The one in Barking was said to have had a capacity of 10,000 tons and in winter 3,000 men cut ice during the winter, the ice lasting the fleet until November. 1874 was the first appearance of artificially made ice though it wasn’t until the end of the century that this became the chief source.18

  Second, the railways were a major source of this growth as fish was suddenly able to move about the country to markets that were previously unreachable. With a growing population, especially in the developing cities where industry was making a mark in the mid-eighteenth century, fish was becoming available at prices that could be afforded by many working people. Boats could land anywhere within reason and get their fish to any market around the country if they so wished. The pace of fishing simply grew and grew, without much thought to the nature of the stocks. With the introduction of the steam trawler, conditions might have improved slightly for the crew, though not for the fish. The old smacks slowly disappeared and motorisation took its toll on the oceans.

  The Silver Pits have become synonymous with North Sea fishing but in fact were only a huge source of sole, not white fish in general. Today they are still there, abandoned through a dearth of fish, like much of the North Sea where stocks are at an all-time low, if some are to be believed. Others, fishermen among them, say they have turned the corner and are rebuilding. Indeed, the evidence points more and more towards the words of these experienced fishermen.

  Nevertheless, the North Sea remains full of names that conjure up images of the past, some in today’s Shipping Forecast: Smith’s Knoll, the Sole Pit, the Coal Pit, the Skate Hole, the Great Fisher Bank, the Outer Silver Pit, the Cockle Lightship, the Haisboro’ Light, even the German Bight. Find a chart of the southern part of this sea and the names are all there, seemingly, however you look at it, a silent monument to the great days of North Sea fishing.

  Notes

  1 Robb Robinson, The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fisheries, Exeter, 1996.

  2 Michael Graham, The Fish Gate, London, 1943.

  3 Walter Wood, North Sea Fishers and Fighters, London, 1911.

  4 Hervey Benham, The Codbangers, Colchester, 1979.

  5 John Dyson, Business in Great Waters, London, 1977.

  6 Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain, London, 1927.

  7 Dyson, op. cit., 1977.

  8 Mike Smylie, Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain & Ireland, Shrewsbury, 1999.

  9 Graham, op. cit., 1943.

  10 Dyson, op. cit., 1977.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Robinson, op. cit., 1996.

  13 J.M. Bellany, ‘Pioneers of the Hull Trawl Fishing Industry’, The Mariner’s Mirror, no. 51, 1965.

  14 Edgar March, Sailing Trawlers, London, 1953.

  15 Robinson, op. cit., 1996.

  16 Ibid.

  17 W
ood, op. cit., 1911.

  18 Robinson, op. cit., 1996.

  8

  FISHING BEYOND THE

  CONTINENTAL SHELF

  In 1997 the replica ship Matthew, with modern-day technology and intrepid crew, set out from Bristol to Ireland and thence on to North America, mirroring the journey of John Cabot 500 years before. When they arrived to a fanfare of celebration, the once-great cod fishery off Newfoundland was quiet, fishing all but banned after Europeans and locals had hammered it so much, the fish were gone. However, when Cabot had returned from his exploration the following year, he told stories of the sea swarming with cod as big as a man and ‘so many that this kingdom would have no further need of Iceland’. This then was the firing gun for the beginning of an Atlantic rush from England to fish these bountiful waters though, surprisingly, the boats were not a commercial success at first. Cabot’s comments do back up the theory that boats were already sailing to Iceland to fish the waters around that coast and that England was being supplied by a flourishing Icelandic cod fishery as well as its own inshore fisheries.1

  Whether the sudden rush to the New World fishery did affect the Icelandic fishery is open for debate. According to Evan Jones, the Newfoundland cod fishery was developing in what he describes as a time of expansion in the Icelandic cod fishery. It had been earlier in the fifteenth century that vessels from Bristol, Hull and Lynn had visited Iceland after acquiring special licences, and half a dozen ships sailed there each year until a decline in fortunes towards the middle of the sixteenth century, although vessels from East Anglia continued. Prior to 1490, half the problem had been that there were heavy restrictions on Englishmen visiting Iceland though these were eased by the Anglo-Danish treaty of that year. The licences lasted seven years and they had to pay a heavy fee to leave the country.2 What Jones maintains is that, even if the Icelandic fishery declined somewhat after 1530, some English ships still continued to follow the fishery. He notes eighty-five in 1533 and only forty-three by the 1550s. Nevertheless, although much of the blame for the decrease in number he places upon the Danes for increasing the duties payable by the visiting vessels, and to the English Parliament for passing a law that restricted the selling of the fish, vessels did continue to fish there. It was not a matter of stock level of fish. Added to the decline was the rise of Protestantism in England, at the expense of Catholicism, which meant less emphasis on the eating of fish on Fridays and other fish days, which had vastly inflated the amount of fish consumed. When Elizabeth I attempted to bring back these compulsory ‘fish days’ for 152 days a year – Fridays, Saturdays, ember days and throughout Lent, and later on Wednesdays – the law proved unpalatable to the people because it reminded them of papism, and it was found unenforceable and soon lapsed.3