Herring E-Book

Mike Smylie

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 399

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The story of herring is entwined in the history of commercial fishing. For over two millennia, herring has been commercially caught and its importance to the coastal peoples of Britain cannot be measured. At one point tens of thousands were involved in the catching, processing and sale of herring. They followed the shoals around the coast from Stornoway to Penzance and many towns on Britain's east coast grew rich on the backs of the 'silver darlings'. Fishing historian Mike Smylie looks at the effects of herring on the people who caught them, their unique ways of life, the superstitions of the fisher folk, their boats and the communities who lived for the silver darlings. With a wealth of illustrations, this fascinating book reveals the little-known history of the herring. And for those who've neglected the silver darlings for lesser fish such as cod and haddock, there are a number of mouth-watering recipes to try.

Leseprobe

To Petros for introducing me to Karya …and Moe for sharing it.

First published 2004

First published in paperback 2011

This paperback edition first published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Mike Smylie, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2024

The right of Mike Smylie to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 813 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

Contents

Acknowledgements

The Author

Introduction: ‘Herring for Health 6½d’

PART ONE: The Common Atlantic Pool

1. Henry Sutton’s Finest

2. A Hundred Herring Baked in a Pie

3. A Refreshing Change to Salmon

4. Our Goldmine in the North Sea

5. The Rudiments of the British Empire

6. The Influence of the Norwegians

7. Herring for Sardines: The New England Herring Fishery in the Nineteenth Century

PART TWO: Catchin’ Herrin’

8. The Fish Weirs

9. The Drift-Net

10. West-Coast Toilers

11. The Scottish East Coast Fishers and the Zulu Wars

12. The Fishermen and their Pipe Stalkies

13. Herring Fishery after the Depression

14. Fishing – A Deeply Bred Way of Life

PART THREE: Curin’ Herrin’

15. ‘Guarented Fine Westcoast Herrings’

16. The Fisher Lassies: An Unheard-of Phenomenon

17. Smoking the Herring (and fresh, canned and iced herring)

18. Herring and its Legislators and Administrators

19. The Legacy of Herring

Postscript 1: Irish Herring – A Family Perspective

Postscript 2: Carbon-Zero Herring?

Bibliography

Appendices

Acknowledgements

The first edition of this book was more than ten years in the waiting when it was published and now another seven years has shot by since then. Over all that time, each and every summer season, I have travelled widely about Britain, and much more narrowly around parts of northern Europe, with my Herring Exhibition, now called ‘Kipperland’, both exhibiting and collecting information on the ‘meagre herring’. It seems my wooden smokehouse, picturesque and atmospheric and now fifteen years old, is a magnet to draw in folk with a story to tell of their nostalgic days at the fishing. Thus to all those folk who spent some time, whether it be a few minutes or much longer, I say a big thank you. To those fishermen who allowed me on their boats, thank you for putting up with endless questions whilst you worked. A personal thank you, in no particular order, goes to: Angus Martin, Lachie Patterson, Neville Orton, Robert Prescott, Robert and Pearl Simper, Denise Owens, Alex West, Michael Craine, Roy Mildon, David Linkie, Alexis and Petros Kounouklas, Billy Stevenson, Charles Payton, Stephan Perham and Arthur Neiland; to Maria Strömsholm for proof-reading the first edition and Campbell McCutcheon at Tempus for taking on the first edition; to Amy Rigg and Emily Locke at The History Press for their help and guidance in this second edition. Also, a word of thanks to the Scottish Fisheries Museum at Anstruther for use of their library. The museum is the only one in Britain that fully portrays the herring fishery and is to be recommended. At the end of the book is a bibliography of books concerning the herring fishery and I thank those authors, whether dead or alive. Only because of the work they undertook many years ago is it now possible to recount images from the great era of the herring industry. And great it was. Wherever I go I hear stories of how the harbours were crowded with fishing boats. How many times I have heard that the harbour could be crossed on the boats, I don’t know! It is a common recollection and, although I doubt it occurred in some of the places I’ve visited, it must have been a reality in a very many others. This book can only be dedicated to the generations of people that made it happen – the fishers, apprentices, curers, herring lassies, coopers, labourers, fishery officers, merchants, boatbuilders, net-makers, sail-makers, rope-makers etc.

The passage from George Campbell Hay’s poem Seeker Reaper is published by kind permission from the Trustees of the Lorimer Trust, while Angus Martin’s poem Tonight the Fleets is published with the author’s kind permission.

The Author

Mike Smylie is a maritime historian concentrating on the fishing industry and fishing and other working vessels. He has written, and continues to write, widely on the subject for various magazines including Classic Boat and occasionally the European Maritime Heritage newsletter. He is a member of The Society for Nautical Research, The South West Maritime History Society, The Yachting Journalists’ Association and the Coble and Keelboat Society.

He is the author of many books, including The Herring Fishers and other Vignettes (a book of poetry in 1996), The Herring Fishers of Wales (Carreg Gwalch, 1998), Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain and Ireland (Waterline, 1999), Kipperman & the Red Herring (self, 1999), Anglesey and its Coastal Tradition (Carreg Gwalch, 2000), Herring – A History of the Silver Darlings (Tempus, 2004), Working the Welsh Coast (Tempus, 2005), The Slopemasts – The History of the Lochfyne Skiffs (The History Press, 2008), Fishing the European Coast (The History Press, 2009), Working the Irish Coast (Nonsuch Publishing, 2009), Fishing Boats of Cornwall (The History Press, 2009), Fishing Around Morecambe Bay (The History Press, 2010) and, with Simon Cooper, Fishing Around the Bristol Channel (The History Press, 2011).

He is co-founder of the 40+ Fishing Boat Association which was founded in 1995 against the background of the scrapping of decommissioned fishing vessels. He is editor of their thrice-yearly magazine entitled Fishing Boats.

Known as ‘Kipperman’ for his work in promoting the consumption of herring for its healthy benefits, for which he was awarded the BBC Radio 4 Food Campaigner/Educator Award in November 2004, Mike has also appeared on radio – both local and national – numerous times and occasionally on TV.

He has three children: two sons and a daughter. He lives between Bristol and a mountain village in Greece when not on the road. See more at www.kipperman.co.uk.

INTRODUCTION

‘Herring for Health 6½d’

‘Herring for Health 6½d’: A title that reflects two of the finest qualities of the meagre herring – its healthy aspect and its cheapness. The title actually came from a government information film from the late 1940s when herring was deemed sufficiently available to feed the war-weary population at a time when rationing was still in force. I have adopted it for this introduction, which makes no apologies for suggesting that re-introducing these wholesome plentiful fish into our national diet could make a real impact upon the country’s health. At the time of writing, one of the uppermost debates in Britain concerns the National Health Service and its ability – or inability – to cope with the demands and needs of a cutting-edge society. As life is prolonged due to advancement in medical technology, and with pressure in over-worked hospitals that struggle with a surge in drug- and alcohol-related problems, preventive medicine would seem the way forward. However, instead of extolling the virtues of a balanced diet, society seems to advocate an intake of burgers and other nutritionless foods whose taste comes more from a few droplets of manufactured liquid than from nature’s own larder. The beneficial aspects of food are often overlooked due to the mercenary multinational institutions’ intent on profit rather than human decency. This is also reflected in the increasing rise in obesity among the British population, half of whom, it has been suggested, are overweight.

Herring are rich in the omega-3 fatty acids that are found in all oily fish. Herring contain, on average, about ten per cent oil. These polyunsaturated fatty acids are much more beneficial than the harder fats found in meat. Herring are also full of Vitamins A and D. Omega-3 fatty acids have been proven to help reduce heart disease and arthritis and improve brain function and behaviour. One Orkney-based doctor’s surgery has even gone as far as giving out prescriptions for herring instead of conventional medicines. Now comes the news that herring and other oily fish help to reduce the risk of women having premature babies, or babies born underweight.

Its protein content is high when compared to many other foods, according to the Herring Industry Board of old. One pound in weight of meat has 685 calories, while the same amount of eggs has 635, potatoes 370 and milk 310. Herring, at the other end of the scale, has 755 calories per pound. It is also mineral rich, especially as a source of iodine. The only danger is mercury content, although many scientists point out that the average Briton does not eat enough fish for this to matter.

Herring is undoubtedly plentiful, although stocks were dangerously close to a total collapse in the 1970s before the North Sea Fishery was closed down for several years. It re-opened in 1981, as we shall see in Chapter Fourteen, and supplies have remained relatively buoyant since then. However, much of today’s herring is caught by industrial fishing vessels which send the entire catch to factories to be processed for fish meal, pig food and even for electricity generating. Much of this is taken as a by-catch – in other words it is taken by vessels fishing for other species – some even being found to have by-catches of up to ninety-seven per cent herring. Only a small percentage goes for human consumption which, to many people, is regarded as both wasteful and unnecessary.

The trouble with herring is that it doesn’t have a good public image. It was regarded once as the food of the poor, who hated it, although they often had nothing else to eat. Fresh herring is considered to be bony and therefore unpalatable. Kippers are smelly and also full of bones, although both of these descriptions are unfair. Kippers gained a bad reputation when dyes were first added in the Second World War to quicken the smoking process, but most today are free of these colourings. The bones are easy to remove and modern cooking techniques reduce the smell about the kitchen. Canning techniques now enable all sorts of sauces to add taste to the fish, and sales of these are perhaps minutely on the increase now that they often appear on the supermarket shelves, especially those German stores whose numbers have recently exploded. I have just eaten a tin of herring fillets in mango and pepper sauce as I write this. A quick snack with a huge punch!

Cured herring can usually be found in the large shops and fish stalls, as can kippers under the label ‘Manx’ or ‘Loch Fyne’, both of which are widely respected. However, most of the herring itself comes from the North Sea these days and is smoked locally, although small amounts are being landed in the Isle of Man after many years of dearth.

Landings by long-shore fishermen are on the increase as well, as are the North Sea and Northern Atlantic catches. Fraserburgh has the largest fleet of pelagic trawlers in Britain, but much of this herring is landed outside the country. Here history is repeating itself, for the Scottish herring industry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries relied more upon the export market than home consumption for its growth. However, if the British public could be persuaded to eat two herring a week, and a ban was imposed on the industrial fishing of herring, then we would most certainly see an improvement in the nation’s health. Both actions, though, would mean government involvement, an action on their part that, at the present, seems unlikely. On the one hand, clearing away vast tracts of the rainforest to breed cattle for burgers is acceptable in some quarters, not least those multinationals who are increasing their number of outlets across the world, selling food that is exactly the same wherever it is bought; and on the other, industrial fishing is profitable and unlikely to be outlawed, especially in European politics. The wranglings over the National Health Service look set to continue, I suppose, until the accepted view is a form of privatisation. The past failings of the Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union are ignored while cod stocks plummet further. Those voices of concern are all too often smothered by the avarice of big business and the intransigence of government.

Herring, though, remains relatively cheap, even within its small market. Scientists are beginning to realise that healthy stocks of the fish are building up. The price would presumably decrease through a higher uptake in the retail sector. If half of the population of Britain ate two a week, the yearly landing to supply this market would be less than half a million tons, the sustainable level it was at before the advent of the purse-seine net in the mid-twentieth century. This is, then, realistic. The only stumbling block is the lack of impetus. Thus, if this book has any purpose, it is to document the historical importance of the herring, and to highlight its versatility. May the herring be recommended in its rightful place in the daily diet of the people.

PART ONE

The Common Atlantic Pool

The herring – who finds in the shining waves

Board, lodging and washing free –

Though small is, of all kind Neptune’s gifts,

The sweetest by far to me.

He wanders about, through the roaring main,

With his sisters, and cousins, and aunts,

In shoals so tremendous, to count ‘em were vain,

And what’s more – nobody wants.

He won’t make you squeamish when recently caught,

And is not to be sneezed at when high-cured and ‘saut’;

On the table of Dives he’s lavishly spread,

And sweetens for Hodge his poor crust of bread.

For this bounteous gift dear old Ocean we thank,

And draughts e’en miraculous draw on his bank.

From De laudibus divinae sapientiae by Friar Neckham (died 1227)

Kipper Soup

Ingredients:

1lb of fresh kipper fillets, skinned

2 cans of chopped tomatoes

2 cloves of crushed garlic

2 tablespoonfuls of tomato purée

¼ pint of milk

Pepper

Natural yogurt, to serve

Method:

Jug the kippers for 5 minutes. Drain and reserve the liquid. Flake the fish into a food processor. Add the tomatoes, garlic and puree. Blend until smooth. Pour the mixture into a large saucepan and add a pint of the reserved liquid together with the milk. Bring to simmering point and simmer for 5 minutes and season. Serve hot with a whirl of natural yogurt.

CHAPTER ONE

Henry Sutton’s Finest

The midday sun is tepid, yet across the dusty square my neighbours sit under the shade of their vine, aghast as we continue working, clearing fertiliser-bagfuls of rubbish from the house during this, the siesta hour. Downstairs, the cellar is dark and dank, having no window large enough to let in more than a smidgen of the spring sun’s rays. The house, last inhabited in 1963, needs company to let it hum once again.

It is a new acquisition, this house. This is the first sortie after weeks of negotiation and paperwork to secure the sale. Two weeks to prepare for major works to transform the place from unlived in, near dereliction to paradisiacal home. Clearing out the old, breathing in some new; keeping, of course, the tangible elements of the house’s past and the atmosphere of originality.

So out go the old bags of fermenting wheat from below ancient wooden store bins, as does firewood infested with huge wormholes, and lime plaster that has fallen away from high walls. We sort through boxes containing relics of a past life – rusting tins, battered aluminium pans, nails, hinges. There’s a wooden loom in various pieces and a hollowed-out tree trunk that was once a grain hopper. A box full of sheets of paper appears from beneath this. I lift it, and another similar but empty, box and take them to the light to investigate. They seem to be ledger accounts, sums of money owed by individual names. There are pages of them, I notice as I flick through. One has ‘1924’ written at the top, another ‘1931’.

The boxes themselves are wooden, with red and blue stencilling on their outer sides. I shriek because I cannot believe what I am reading. For this house, as you may have guessed, is not in Britain. No, it is high up in a mountain village in central Greece.

‘Hey, look at what I’ve found,’ I cry out to a friend working above, ‘You won’t believe this!’ In red there’s a huge ‘HS’ surrounded by ‘HENRY SUTTON, GT. YARMOUTH’ and below, in bold letters, ‘FINEST SELECTED CURED HERRING’. In smaller writing, ‘CURED & PACKED UNDER THE MOST MODERN HYGIENIC CONDITIONS’. Inside there’s a triangular stamp with a crown and the word ‘SOMMEN’ with ‘SWEDEN’ below. Obviously the boxes are of Swedish origin, being filled in England and exported to Greece. Later I learnt that Suttons exported almost exclusively to Mediterranean countries. Fate had surely delivered me to these boxes.

John Mowson began working for Suttons in the 1950s. Henry Sutton himself had started the business by pushing a loaded narrow troll-cart (sometimes called a row-cart after the ‘rows’ within which the fishermen lived) selling herring at ½d each. That was way back in the 1870s. His son, also Henry, later took over and developed the business, smoking herring and exporting it, especially to Egypt, Cyprus and Greece. He built himself a house on the front at Yarmouth, where the Prince of Wales was a regular visitor. Percy, his son, in turn took over, further expanding markets in West Africa, South Africa, America, Australia, the Middle East and Italy, where silver herring – those smoked for only twenty-four to forty-eight hours – were eaten in the fields. John travelled extensively attending to these markets during his time with the company and remembers over 500 people being employed by them. ‘Yarmouth was alive with smokehouses in those days,’ he told me.

By chance I met Aleko the evening following the find of the boxes. A group of us were in a bar and he came over, recognising my Greek friends. It was Aleko from whom I’d bought the house, but I’d not met him as the whole transaction had been dealt with through Petros, my Greek friend, and his father, Alekis. It was Aleko’s parents who had died in 1963, thus leaving the house empty for almost forty years. After the first ten years of tending it, the family had begun to forget. But not enough for him to be unable to fill me in on the history.

Alongside the main house was a former taverna, its roof now totally collapsed, walls in a sorry state. This was the original structure, inside of which his father had opened a small store in 1923, selling produce and, of course, herring. He bought his boxes from a merchant in Athens, some 100 miles to the south. How he had got there he wasn’t sure, for the village was only accessible by using a steep mountain path that wound its way up from the coast some 2,500ft below, although the mountain base was only half a mile from the sea. Donkeys were the only mode of transport then. Today, tractors and 4x4s wind their way up the six miles of road from the town below – a town that only grew up after the 1960s.

The Place to make Red Herrings, by S.V. Meulen (1792).

Herring in Greek are ‘regga’ (ρ´εγγα), perhaps a reflection of their regal status! Or perhaps this produces ‘to regale’ – to entertain lavishly; to feast. Maybe this denotes food fit for kings, or the fact that herring really are the kings of the sea. However, the point is that once I’d come across these boxes – and let’s face it, there cannot be many people who would get excited about such a discovery – I began to ask specific questions about this source of food.

Given the diverse food available in Greece (although the critics say the food is boring, it is so only for the tourists and not for the natives) – it is perhaps natural to wonder why herring were imported all the way across Europe into these remote tiny villages. The reason, though, is the same as it was in British villages and towns, it was cheap and nutritious. Herring was regarded as winter food, so that supplies packed in Great Yarmouth during the autumnal fishery could arrive in Greece by the beginning of the winter period. Thus they were caught in the North Sea, cured and smoked in Great Yarmouth, packed into Swedish boxes, loaded onto vessels and shipped to Athens and many other ports in the Mediterranean. Once there, they would last for up to six months.

The herring were surrounded in paper in their pretty boxes. They were heavily smoked, whole with their guts in. They were golden herring, similar in looks to red herring, although not exactly the same. A company called AJK also exported golden herring mainly to Greece and Italy, according to Reggie Reynolds. They were cured in big concrete tanks in the ground before being slowly smoked for up to two weeks. Reggie described them as being ‘salty as hell’! Aleko’s father sold them individually from his little shop, from where they were carried home to be baked over the fire. The women of the house saw to this, turning them over frequently as they heated. Then olive oil and lemon was poured over the top – oodles of oil fresh from the trees at that time of year – and they were traditionally served with the local green vegetable ‘horta’, which literally translates as ‘grass’ and resembles spinach. This grows wild on the mountains and is still widely eaten these days, being very tasty. And, this being Greece, the fish was washed down with liberal amounts of ‘retsina’, always homemade just as it is today, and tasting strongly of the pine resin that makes this white wine unique.

In 1932 they built my house, and the shop doubled up as a taverna. Here herring was served. It is said that the taverna owners used to always bake the herring because this made it even saltier. The fish themselves were a lovely golden colour and full of salt. Making the fish more salty allowed them the luxury of drinking more retsina! Then, in 1942, the Germans came to the village and took over the top floor of the house. Aleko’s parents were forced to live downstairs, where they stayed for nearly twenty years after the Germans had gone. War must be abysmal for those who experience it, but for those of us who haven’t it is merely sad. In my village, Karya, war came in the form of reprisal after Greek resistance fighters ambushed and killed twelve German soldiers. The houses were set alight and the villagers fled into the mountains. My house, the German barracks, survived, so that now it is the oldest in the village. After the war, Aleko’s parents stayed below and the taverna never reopened, such were the scars of battle. But the two wooden boxes from Henry Sutton remained with them among their meagre possessions.

One evening we went to Georgios’ workshop where he restores furniture. Work had ceased and a table had been laid out on a board supported by two saw benches. The board was covered in a tablecloth and the cloth in turn by plates of salad and grilled lamb. Retsina came from plastic bottles. Feta cheese was sprinkled with oregano from the mountains. Petros got some fried chicken. An impromptu feast was about to begin. Kostas sat opposite me. He was probably in his late sixties, with hair as white as the cheese and a face that reflected all that is good about Greece. He had been a carpenter, an expert of the wood, I was told. However, once the subject of herring came up, he recalled his first job of the day when he had been serving his apprenticeship in Athens. He made wooden skewers so that he and his fellow workers could roast the herring over the workshop fire for their breakfast. Herring, he said, were the food of the poor man in Greece, and they only ate them in winter. Later that evening he sang, while Vasilis played guitar and Yanis the bouzouki. The music was ‘rebetiko’, traditional folk music that came to Athens in 1927 after the Turks had forced Greek people out of their homes in the eastern part of the Aegean; what was then part of Greece but is now Turkey. With the poignant music came memories. Yanis recalled that the poor folk of Athens, usually those with no work, gathered in open-air cinemas to watch films. While watching, they wrapped their herring in newspaper and set them alight to cook them. Sometimes the dusty arena was alive with these shimmering fires, and one can imagine the sweet scent of herring mixing with the nocturnal smells of the city. We experimented with a herring I’d bought earlier that day. Today’s newspapers don’t burn as well as they used to, but the herring really was salty!

One taverna in Athens, Kostas told me through Petros, who always interpreted (for rarely does anyone in this part of Greece speak English), only sold herring and copious amounts of retsina to wash it down. ‘It was always a crowded place,’ he recalled. Vasilis remembered eating herring at home with onions. Someone else told me that another traditional fare was herring with bean stew. Butterbean stew is well known throughout Greece, even to tourists. Yanis still eats at least one herring a week. ‘It helps to keep the weight down,’ he said with a wry smile.

Making Red Herrings, by Du Hamel du Monceau (1769).

Today’s herring still comes in wooden boxes. I found one such boxful on the island of Skiathos, in a tiny market shop that sold everything one could possibly need to eat. Marketed under the brand ‘Komo’, this came from Comeau’s Seafoods Ltd of Saulnierville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Inside were double-smoked herring. The price was €3.20 per kilo – about £2. The fish I bought cost €0.54 – about 30p. With fresh herring at over £2.50 per kilo in Britain, one does have to query the price difference. How can it be cheaper to cure, smoke and pack the fish, and then send it several thousands of miles, than it is to land it into Britain and transport it to a supermarket?

Filleted herring is popular in Greece these days. This is normally marinated in olive oil and lemon. It is particularly popular served with ouzo. Here I discovered something new in Greece – homemade ouzo. This is not the manufactured variety that turns milky on the addition of water, but a clear fiery liquid that needs no water. Perfect for the fillets of herring,-although some say they prefer beer, I’m told!

I did meet an English-speaking Greek. This was another Kostas who was playing his baglamas (a tiny bouzouki) and singing in a bar. He was an ex-naval officer who suggested that people were perhaps reticent to talk about their herring experiences because of their shyness in not wanting to admit they ate ‘poor food’. Iceland, he told me, had been the source of herring for the country at one time, although Canada seems to have captured the main market these days. ‘You eat herring then?’ he asked my friend, Moe, sitting next to me, after she had told him she had good eyesight. ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘and lots of other fish.’

‘That’s because of the fish, then. Greek fishermen have perfect eyesight. It comes from the phosphorescence in the water. The fish glow. The farmers, they only eat meat. They can’t see at all well’.

‘Does that mean the fishermen don’t touch meat? Are they vegetarian?’ Moe asked him. I’d had years of experience in trying to make Greek people understand that being a vegetarian meant that you can’t even taste a tiny bit of the meat.

‘Well, yes they do, but they prefer fish’.

‘So why are their eyes better than his?’ She was referring to me, of course, short-sighted as I have been since a teenager. Thus began a discussion about the pros and cons of eating meat. We seemed to be drifting off the subject at hand. As they spoke, I considered the meagre herring. Its influence stretched across a continent, and an ocean. Canned herring can be found on any supermarket shelf. It has history, I thought, and it has made history. It was time for a thorough appraisal of the King of the Sea.

Bloater or Herring Paste

Ingredients:

1½lb of bloaters or red herring (weighed after cleaning)

½lb fresh butter

1 teaspoonful of anchovy essence

Salt & pepper

Method:

Clean the herring and cook in boiling water for about 20 minutes, changing the water if necessary. Remove bones and skin and mince the flesh finely by passing through a mincing machine. Put into a bowl with the butter and anchovy essence and mix thoroughly. Season to taste. Put into small jars, pour some melted butter on top and tie down when cold. Store in a cool place.

Note: kipper paste can be made in the same way.

CHAPTER TWO

A Hundred Herring Baked in a Pie

They were the favoured food of kings and queens and, at the same time, the fodder forced upon marching armies. They were almost force-fed to the slaves of the Caribbean plantations in their undignified bondage. Early prehistoric man ate them, as did the Romans, then the Saxons, and the Vikings after them. Mediaeval communities caught them and ate them. All out of choice. The Industrial Revolution progressed on the back of the meagre herring. From the Lancashire cotton mills to the South Wales coal pits, herring were the staple food of the workers. Samuel Johnson ate them for breakfast, as did thousands of others. Hundreds of thousands ate them for tea. Today, though, we shun this tasty, precious little fish. While our north European neighbours still regard herring as a source of nutrition, and here a few seek the scarce supply of a decent kipper, to the majority the herring is dead. How far from the truth they are, for the King of the Sea is about to stage a spectacular comeback.

Much of the evidence for man’s early consumption of herring comes from middens, where large amounts of their bones have been found among other kitchen rubbish. To the archaeologist, a midden is a worthy paradise, for it enables him to formulate a picture of the different layers in that heap of what, to most, is just ancient household refuse.

We know the Romans were keen on herring, as the remains of their bones have been found in their encampments, among, of course, all the other fish bones and shells. For the sea was an easy and nutritious source of food; archaeological excavations have proved this beyond doubt. Nothing, indeed, has been documented concerning these little fishes before the seventh century, so all reliable information has been discovered through these various digs around our coasts, although some of the stories are based on local tradition. We know from the Bible that fishers have been skilful in their work from man’s very early days on earth, but it makes no mention in particular of the herring. This isn’t surprising, given that the herring is a fish of the northern latitudes and is rarely found south of a line drawn across the Atlantic between Brittany on the European side and Chesapeake Bay on the other. This particular species is the Clupea harengus and is the herring we know in Europe. In the Pacific Ocean another branch of the species is to be found and this goes under the name of Clupea pallasi. Both of the species are subdivided into smaller groups, as we shall discover in time.

It is probable that man’s first fishing experiences were quite by chance. Many of us have walked along beaches and seen rock pools. In the days when fish was plentiful – before man had begun his assault on the seas to denude them of all living creatures – these rock pools would have stranded fish once the tide had ebbed away. All early man had to do was get to the rock pools before the seabirds did and carry the fish home. He then learnt to increase the size of the pools by adding stones around. Thus he discovered the secret of the fish weir. We know, from archaeological evidence, that early man was doing this 6,000 years ago. He learnt to build his own weirs in suitable situations on beaches, sometimes using stone to build up the walls, and sometimes wooden posts intertwined with hazel or willow. These passive structures simply filled up and emptied with the tide, leaving fish trapped behind the walls. Later he used the tide to take the fish into the structures and prevent them from escaping as it ebbed. These active fish weirs were deadly. He used nets instead of solid walls, and then thought about setting nets on their own. He set lines with hooks attached on the beach. These, he thought, would be better in the open sea, as would the nets. And so he developed his fishing boat and ventured out to become a true hunter-gatherer, a warrior of the sea. Fishing, for the first time, became more than a simple search for food. It became a skill and a fight with the most basic of elements – the sea.

The Romans are said to have learnt about herring on the East Anglian coast. Of course, it wasn’t known as East Anglia when the soldiers at the Garianonum encampment, a few miles west of what is now Great Yarmouth, caught and ate the fish. It was a huge estuary with sandbanks stretching over what we today call the Norfolk Broads with Breydon water being all that remains of this marshy area, the name probably originating from the Viking period. But the Romans began a tradition of herring fishing along this coast that lasted well into the twentieth century. To the south of Burgh Castle, close by this Roman fort, lies the village of Herringfleet, a sign surely of an industry of importance.

Map of what is now the Norfolk Broads dating fromAD1000, with Herringfleet clearly shown by John Ives (1774).

Once the Romans had departed in the fifth century, along came the Saxons from across the water. Cerdick the Saxon is said to have arrived with five ships in the year 495 and found an ideal base upon a sandbank. In the next century he and his men built a stronghold here and discovered an abundance of herring. Felix, Bishop of the East Angles, built a church with ‘godly men placed in it to pray for the health and success of fishermen that came to Yarmouth in the herring season’. That was in AD 647.

Two documented citations of herring support the belief of a fishery of substance in England before 1066. In the annals of the monastery of Barking in Essex, which was founded in 670, there is a mention of a tax known as ‘herring silver’ levied upon herring. Meanwhile, from the monastery of Evesham, which was founded in 709, come various references to the herring fishery. With Evesham being many miles away from the sea, it is presumed that herring was widely accepted and valued as an advantageous food. Royalty considered herring pies a delicacy and Yarmouth pledged to furnish the king each year with a hundred herring baked in twenty-four pasties. More than one private estate on the coast was held on the tenure of herring pies!

So what exactly is a herring? The word itself is said to come from the Teutonic word heer, meaning ‘army’. This is an apt description indeed, for the fish swim in huge shoals – sometimes three or four miles long and more than two miles wide – containing millions of the silvery fish. That the word comes from the Teutons, an ancient Germanic people living in Jutland in the fourth century BC and moving to France by the second century BC, shows the antiquity of the fishery. However, this is disputed by some that say the word is simply a variation of the Anglo-Saxon word haering, although it is probable that that word itself comes from the Teutons.

The herring is delicately shaped for speed and has a beautiful colouring when out of the water. It is about ten inches long, although there are regional variations as in the North Atlantic where they can grow up to fifteen inches. It is pelagic because it comes to the surface of the sea to feed. This is the time when the fishermen have their best chance of catching the fish.

It is at night that the herring rise to the surface to feed. The Vikings must have discovered this when they arrived on these shores in the late eighth century. Some say that the reason they came was that, being fishers and farmers, they needed fertile land and rich inshore waters, neither of which they had back home. It has also been suggested that they were the first traders in herring, judging by the amount of herring bones found in South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, for the suggestion is that if there is more fish caught than can be eaten, the fishers must be trading the surplus to other groups of people. The Vikings settled all around northern Britain, from the Thames estuary right round to the Severn estuary and over to the Irish coast, so it would seem that they might have been catching herring on a large scale. That their influence remained in the fishing field is proved by the design of their boats, which had an enormous – everlasting in fact – impact on boat design all around our coasts.

Before the Norman Conquest, the night waters off Great Yarmouth and other fishing bases along the east coast were packed with fleets of boats from Holland, Flanders and Normandy in the autumn, for it was then that the shoals appeared. Some came from as far away as Norway. Yarmouth was the centre of herring activity according to the Domesday Book (written in 1086) and became the English herring capital. Twenty-four fishermen were based there. Nearby Lowestoft didn’t fair as well, its fortunes flagging while those of Yarmouth thrived. Competition between the two towns lasted into the twentieth century. The Domesday Book tells us that the manor of Beccles, a few miles inland of Yarmouth, paid an annual tribute of 30,000 herring to the Abbey of St Edmund, which was later increased to 60,000 herring after the Norman invasion. Beccles, now several miles west of Lowestoft, was then another small herring-fishing harbour on the shore of a shallow estuary that, in reality, was entered through one of two channels either side of Yarmouth. It appears that the sea retreated in the years before the Norman Conquest, creating the town of Yarmouth proper, and that the ‘estuary’ reached as far inland as Norwich. According to eighteenth-century writer John Ives, these two channels were for:

shippes and fishermen to pass and enter into that arme of the sea for utterance of theire fishe and marchandizes.

Nearby Dunwich became a free burgh on payment of, among other items, an annual tax of 24,000 herring. Sandwich in Kent paid 40,000 herring annually to the monks. Silver was brought into Newcastle-upon-Tyne and exchanged for silver from Bohemia, along with wool, butter, oysters, cheese and cattle.

Yarmouth was the centre of a ‘free fair’ and the herring fishery was described as ‘the noblest fishery for herring in Europe’. The fair lasted from 29 September through until 10 November, a period of forty-three days, and the fishermen themselves and the merchants who bought the catch regulated the entire business. The sixteenth-century historian Damet described the town as having:

great numbers of the fishermen of Fraunce, Flaunders, and of Hollande, Zealande and all the lowe countryes yerelie, from the feaste of Sainte Michaell the Archangell, untylle the feaste of Sainte Martine, about the takinge, sellinge and buyenge of herringes.

The Packing of the Herring into the Barrels, by S.V. Meulen (1792).

The town itself was under the control of the Crown when, in the eleventh century, the king granted the rights for regulating the mediaeval fair to the barons of Hastings, one of the Cinque Ports of the south coast. Later on, these privileges were extended to the other Cinque Ports, much to the dismay of the local merchants and fishermen, especially after Henry I made Yarmouth a burgh in 1108 for an annual payment of ten milliards of herring. However, as this equates to ten billion fish, it does seem a preposterous amount! King John granted another ‘most important’ charter to the town in 1209 on the proviso that they provided the king with fifty-seven ships for forty days at their own cost. According to De Caux, this number of vessels from the one town was the same number as all the Cinque Ports could muster, which suggests the importance of Yarmouth at the time. Agreement was eventually reached between the town fathers and those in control of the Cinque Ports that the herring fair be equally regulated by the two bodies. But the bitterness continued until, in 1297, twenty-nine vessels belonging to Yarmouth were set alight and 200 fishers killed by boats from the Cinque Ports. Yet it was almost another 400 years before the latter stopped sending their bailiffs to the fair after their power waned.

The Hooping of Herring Barrels, by S.V. Meulen (1792).

The Statutes of Herring were passed in 1357 and again three years later. By the first set of statutes, herring had to be brought into Yarmouth for selling and could not be sold prior to this. Furthermore, people were not allowed to buy herring to hang in their houses ‘by covin’ at a price above 40s a last. Small boats, called pykers, were forbidden from selling herring in the harbour at Yarmouth between Michaelmas and the feast of St Martin. The second statute removed many of these restrictions on what the fishermen could and could not do to sell their catch.

Whereas much of Yarmouth’s herring was exported, that of Scarborough was consumed within the boundaries of Yorkshire. There, too, was a herring fair, lasting for ninety-eight days from 24 June up to the start date of the Yarmouth fair. Although over twice as long, the Scarborough fair wasn’t as busy, yet even so hundreds of vessels are said to have landed fish there, including many foreign ships, especially from Flanders and northern France. This peaked in 1304 with 355 lasts of herring being landed by foreigners, a last being a 100 Hundreds and the latter being, at that time, 100 fish (nowadays this is between 123 and 132 depending on the region). The same source tells us that there were 5,237 foreign landings and that this market was valued at £444. The average vessel landed between 5,000 and 15,000 fish, which were valued between 10s and 60s. Small fishing boats started to be charged a 2d landing fee while the larger fishing ships were already paying 4d fifty years previously to finance the building of a new quay.

At about the same time, Edward III gave the ‘good men of Tenby’ in south-west Wales the rights to raise money to build the town’s first quay. This was completed in 1328. Previous to this, boats had to draw up the tidal river Ritec into Pill Lake to beach in the mud and unload. The fishermen paid tithes of herring and oysters for Mass to be said on their behalf in the tiny St Julian’s chapel that was located at the harbour. Herring was landed in substantial quantities all around the Welsh coast at this time. In 1206, in the Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes) it is written that:

that year Maelgwn ap Rhys built the castle of Abereinion. And then God gave an abundance of fish in the estuary of the Ystwyth, so much that there was not its like before that.

Judging by the records, this was herring, for fishermen were being fined for selling herring below the high-water mark, thus escaping the payment of market tolls. In 1294, at Llanfaes on the Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Môn), a custom of one penny on every measure of herring landed was charged, as well as every herring boat having to pay another one mease of herring every time they entered or left port. The money raised helped Edward I build the castle at Beaumaris, part of the chain of castles he built around the coast to keep the Welsh in hand! On the north side of the jutting arm of the Lleyn peninsular, the tiny hamlet of what is now called Nefyn possessed sixty-three fishing nets in 1287. Across the St George’s Channel, herring were being caught in 1202 by Irish fishermen, who donated them to the Abbey of Connal.

In Scotland very little is known of the Middle Ages’ fishery. Tradition has it that the men of Loch Fyne and the Clyde were catching herring on a grand scale long before anyone else. It is also said that the Dutch came in the year 836 to buy salt herring from that area. The Abbey of Holyrood was granted the right ‘to fish herring at Renfrew’ in the mid-twelfth century. About the same time it is said that English, Scottish and Belgian fishermen followed the herring around the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth. However, herring are referred to as dried, as opposed to smoked, as well as salted in the Scottish Parliamentary Papers of 1240. No taxes appear to have been levied on their capture. At Berwick-upon-Tweed, the mayor in the year 1285, one Robert Durham, ordered herring, among other fish, to be sold ‘on the bray’ alongside the boat that landed them, and the fishermen were not allowed to carry the fish ashore after dusk. In Fife, it was to the Cistercian Abbey of Balmerino, in north Fife, that the fishermen were required to pay a levy of 100 salted herring from every barrel they landed. In return, the fishermen were given rights to dry their nets on the foreshore and erect and lease booths. Today, the site where the fishermen dried their nets is close by the Scottish Fisheries Museum where the story of the Scottish herring fishery is told.

In France, the first mention of the herring fishery appears in a charter of about 1030 of the Abbey of St Catherine, near Rouen. This allowed for a saltworks near Dieppe to pay the abbey ‘five milliards’ of herring. In 1169, huge amounts were being caught in the river Meuse, proving that the shoals swam to the French coast. In 1155, Louis VII outlawed the buying of anything but mackerel and salted herring at Etampes and, some thirty years later, Philip II gave a charter to the town of Liège, allowing them to sell fresh and salted herring. Thus herring remained a staple fish for the fishers of ports such as Boulogne and Dieppe right through into the twentieth century.