The Perilous Catch E-Book

Mike Smylie

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 403

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

For centuries Britain's commercial fishermen have ventured out into the ravages of the surrounding seas to bring fish back both to supply a home market and for export around the world. Fishing is one of history's most dangerous jobs, and when disasters occur they can affect whole communities: in 1872 some 129 men were lost in one night alone. Fishermen have lost their lives because of extreme weather, fishing gear entanglement, lack of emergency support and often simply by falling overboard. Today, commercial fishing remains one of the most perilous occupations and still claims the lives of fishermen each year, leaving their families behind. The Perilous Catch is a well-researched, comprehensive and poignant history of the fishing industry written by maritime historian Mike Smylie.

Leseprobe

For Christoffer, Ana and Otis

‘However you look at it, fishin’s a dangerous occupation. At sea it’s the elements; the sea, the cold and the tiredness gets you. On land it’s the trudgery. For there’s no place like being out at the fishin’. It’s in the blood, see. However you look at it, it always gets you one way or other.’

Cruban Stirk

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Quote

Introduction

1 Early Fishers

2 The Growth of the Herring Fishery

3 The Crofter-Fishermen of Scotland

4 Longshoremen of England

5 West Country Pilchard Fishing

6 Fishing the Irish Sea

7 Trawling the Silver Pits

8 Fishing Beyond the Continental Shelf

9 Cockles, Mussels, Oysters and Scallops

10 Lobsters and Crabs

11 War and Peace

12 World War to Cod War

13 Fishing Boat Design Over Time

14 Fishermen and Family

15 Women in Fishing

16 Modern Fishing, the EU and Legislation

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Imagine the scenario: being out in the North Sea off the east coast of Scotland in August, with dusk approaching, aboard a small open boat, the coastline a mere blot on the horizon. The sea is calm and there’s an oily silence about it, with a slight breeze coming from the southwest. The boat, about 30ft in length, has five people aboard, all fishermen and resting, waiting to haul in the net in a few hours, hopefully full of the silver darlings. The presence of herring in the water is signalled by the gannets diving deep, and they keep a lookout for seals and other predators. As the blue hour comes, clouds build up from the east, hiding the full moon that earlier made its presence known and one of the fishers is alerted when he notices a slight shift in the wind direction. The same man points to a sudden reddening of the sky in the west and the wind again backs a few points to the east. Immediately a strong southeasterly wind picks up strength and the crew quickly start to haul in their net, not able to afford losing such a major piece of gear. The warning is apparent: it is time to seek shelter.

That was exactly the scenario on Friday, 18 August 1848. For all along the stretch of the east coast of Scotland, from Berwick-upon-Tweed right up to Wick in the north, these small boats had set out fishing that afternoon on what promised to be a lovely summer evening. But when an unexpected gale rose up around midnight, these fishers were desperately stranded. For, it being full moon with the spring tides, with the high water at midnight, the tide would be half through its ebb by the time they made the coast and with most of the harbours along this coast drying out, there was no shelter for them to return to. Those boats that did reach the 10 miles to the coast either chanced a landing on a lee shore, assuming they successfully passed through the breaking waves, hoping there might be help on the beach. The approach to any of the drying harbours was exacerbated by the fact that few had any lights to lead the boats in. Even though some boats managed to get home and into shelter not too long after midnight, most did not get away quick enough and the end result was carnage among those fleets from the various harbours and beach landings strung along this coast, numbering almost one hundred. One estimate gave 10,000 fishermen working on this coast. The Wick area alone, the town itself being termed the herring capital of Europe in 1865, had 3,500 fishermen working on 800 boats. In all a hundred lives were lost and 124 boats either wrecked or severely damaged. Although the harbours along the southern shore fared well, being in the lee of the storm, others did not. Peterhead Bay alone saw thirty-seven lives lost. Some boats survived by staying out at sea and a few Wick boats sailed northwards. But destruction littered the exposed coast and onlookers ashore could only stare in horror as the scenes unfolded in front of their eyes, sometimes only yards out to sea.

Of course this wasn’t the first time such storms overcame fishing fleets. In 1806, the entire fishing fleet of three boats from the tiny settlement of Stotfield on the Moray Firth, now absorbed into the west side of Lossiemouth, was destroyed on Christmas Day while the boats – open scaffie types – were fishing just offshore. This is often referred to as the first such fishermen’s disaster on the east coast of Scotland. The storm took the boats down the Firth and away from home. Each boat had seven crew and they all simply disappeared in the vengeance of the storm that had taken them unawares, even though they had been fishing in sight of their homes in daylight. This tragedy took away every able-bodied man, leaving seventeen widows, forty-seven orphans and two old men behind.

Look around the coast and there are few areas that have not suffered similar fates. But the tragedy of 1848 did rouse the Scottish public’s anguish and the government was forced into action when a 1,000-signature petition was delivered to the Lords of the Admiralty, along with a letter from provost, magistrates and town council of Wick. Eventually the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty decided to instruct a special enquiry ‘as to whether the wrecks occurred from the want of a harbour, from the use by the fishermen of a defective class of boats, or otherwise’ and Captain John Washington, RN, was chosen to head this.

Washington’s thoroughness could not be faulted. He held public meetings in Wick, Banff, Fraserburgh and Peterhead over a week in October 1848, taking oral evidence from fishermen, merchants, Fishery Officers, onlookers and harbour authorities, and later corresponded with a host of people. He also considered the design of vessels all over Britain and Ireland. In his report entitled Report on the Loss ofLife and Damage to Fishing Boats on The East Coast ofScotland and now commonly referred to as the ‘Washington Report’,1 which stretches to over more than a hundred pages and includes drawings of boats and charts of existing harbours and suggested improvements to them, he castigates the British Fisheries Society, the design of the fishing boats and the poor state of the harbours. He also lists all the boats lost with their skippers. In all, the report makes fascinating reading. Fishing boats, in the general opinion of that part of the coast, were best open as this left more space to carry fish. Decks were thought to be superfluous and safety appears to have been low on the list of priorities for these fishermen. However, within ten years fishermen favoured decking over their boats, persuaded by evidence from the report and other authorities.

Following the Douglas Bay fishing disaster2 was another instance of a change in boat design, which attempted to make fishing a safer labour. This happened at the entrance to Douglas harbour on the night of 20/21 September 1787. A storm the previous year had demolished the old Douglas pier and its lighthouse and no repairs had been made although a temporary lamp had been installed on the ruins of the old quay. Four hundred boats set out that evening for the ‘back’ fishing in the bay but when a southeasterly gale sprung up the boats were forced to return to the safety of the harbour. The entrance to the harbour was difficult in the dark and the lanterns along the beach were mistaken for the lamp at the end of the pier by many boats. One boat actually stuck the end of the pier and destroyed the post holding up the one lamp, making the situation even more critical. Boats were simply thrown ashore in the confusion and in the morning the enormity of the disaster became apparent: the beach and rocks were covered in wrecks and bodies were floating around the harbour. Some twenty-one fishermen lost their lives with somewhere in the region of fifty boats being wrecked.

Again it was the design of the boat that was partly to blame although common sense suggests the lack of a good light probably accounted more for the loss of boats. The older boats were of a squaresail type of boat imported from Norway ten centuries before. These scowtes, as they were called, were open vessels and a fierce debate followed regarding their suitability. The lack of a deck was the main fault and it wasn’t long before decked boats, smacks with a cutter rig, appeared. However, within forty years, with the appearance of Cornish luggers, the fishermen turned away from the smacks in favour of the lug-rig.

It was the disaster of 14 October 1881 that must go down in history as the worst such calamity in Scotland. In a storm that sprung up on a Friday afternoon, 189 fishermen from Eyemouth and the surrounding region were drowned.3 In all ninety-three widows and 267 children were left in the storm’s aftermath. All too often it is exactly those left behind – family members and dependents – that suffer the hardship of losing the breadwinner in these disasters. The State itself did not hold any responsibility to care for these victims and it was left to the public to raise money to ensure their survival. The State also chose not to conduct an inquiry into the matter as it had thirty-odd years before.

In Ireland the Cleggan Bay disaster of Friday, 28 October 1927 has left an indelible imprint on the small communities of the west of Ireland but again was not unique.4 Once more it was a violent storm that had sprung up unexpectedly as the men from the Connemara communities of Inishbofin and Rossadilisk were out fishing. Some were drowned at sea while others were dashed against rocks aboard their vessels trying to reach safety. It devastated the communities and in all forty-six men were lost, leaving 187 dependents.

It is now a familiar story: fishing is a dangerous occupation. As a brief interlude, what exactly is fishing? Fishing, by definition, is the taking of fish, shellfish or any other animals from the sea, river or lake, or the foreshore of, for any means. However, in this book we are only concerned with what could be termed ‘commercial fishing’ although this, too, is misleading. Is subsistence fishing commercial fishing? Not really, I would argue, although subsistence fishing is very much at the heart of this book. Angling is not included as that is regarded purely as a sport, although some will argue that they are anglers only to gain food. However, in this book we will refrain from the mention of any angling, even if there are those that will complain. We will simply concentrate on fishing as an occupation as well as that, in centuries long gone, at a subsistence level.

Travel around the coast and there are umpteen memorials in unsuspecting places, declaring the names of fishers lost at sea. One that instantly comes to mind is at Portskerra on the very north coast of Scotland, a few miles west of John O’Groats. Here, on a stone plaque by the beach, are the names of folk of the community ‘who perished within sight of their homes’. The outcome of three disasters is etched into the stone by way of the names of people: 5 December 1848 when eight men were taken; 25 June 1890 when eleven perished; 22 August 1918 with seven lost. It’s a sobering memorial and simply illustrates that fishermen are often lost close to home.

That reminds us of ‘Crazy Kate’ of Clovelly, north Devon, who saw her husband perish from her house overlooking the harbour. The story goes that Kate Lyall’s husband was a fisherman who fished within sight of the house, watched by Kate from the upper window. One day he was overcome by a heavy squall and drowned. She lost her mind without him and eventually walked into the sea, dressed in her wedding dress, to join her husband in a watery grave.

Of course, at the bigger ports where boats used to sail up into the deep Arctic, there resulted in a greater loss of life but that in no way belittles the losses close to our shores. In the northern latitudes stories of vessels overturning because of ice build-up on deck were common and often grabbed headlines whereas local drownings often did not. However, the fact that some 120 large trawlers were lost between 1946 and 1975 illustrates just what the risk involved, in working in what were at times extreme conditions. And on top of this there are the unexplained mysteries such as the loss of the trawler Gaul off the Norwegian coast in February 1974, the cause of which has never been completely determined.

The plaque at Portskerra in memory of the fishermen from the local community who drowned within sight of their homes while fishing.

And of course it never ends. In March 2014, just as the finishing touches were being put to this book, the 35m Portuguese stern trawler Santa Ana sank off the Asturian coast of northern Spain, killing eight members of the crew while only the skipper, who was on the helm, was rescued. The crew had all been asleep below. The vessel had run aground after hitting a rock around Erbosa Island at 5 a.m., shortly after leaving the port of Avilés to fish for mackerel. After being submerged and smashed around by the sea, the wreck was later raised in a spectacular fashion and the resultant vessel was not a pretty sight. Part of the port side was missing and the rest was a tangled mess of metal, winches and net, a latent reminder that, wherever fishing boats work, there is danger from many different angles and not always just the weather. Groundings, collisions, nets snagging on the seabed (and submarines) and possible tales of intrigue in the Cold War days all have contributed to the loss of life. In the following pages we tell of the development of the fishing industry, the ways people have fished through two millennia and the perils they faced, and still do even today.

Notes

1 The Washington Report 1849. For a succinct article on the report by Adrian Osler, see Maritime Life and Traditions, issue no. 3, June 1999.

2 The best report on this is from the Manx Society vol. XVI with a personal account taken from A Tour through the Isle ofMan by David Robertson (1794) who witnessed the disaster.

3 See Peter Aitchison, The Children ofthe Sea, East Linton, 2001.

4 See Marie Feeney, The Cleggan Bay Disaster, Glencolumbkille, 2001. The author is a granddaughter of one of the survivors.

1

EARLYFISHERS

I have a friend who is an archaeologist and he works for the Greek government, the country of his origin. For his doctorate he excavated and studied part of the coastal settlement of Kynos which is situated opposite the island of Eubeoa in the North Eubeoan Gulf, some 100 miles north of Athens. The majority of the site had already been excavated in the 1980s. Several sherds of the same pot (a krater, to be exact) were discovered, dating to the late Helladic IIIC Bronze Age period, approximately 2500 BC, some 4,500 years ago.1 The illustration on the krater depicts seine-net fishing and is considered to be one of two of the earliest such depictions, the other coming from a vase discovered on the island of Naxos. The position of the settlement just yards from the sea, and given that Homer in the Iliad described ships sailing past these waters on their way to Troy, it would seem fairly obvious that the people living in the settlement turned to the sea for much, or at least some, of their diet. According to one source, fish was eaten only by the very impoverished and was considered poor food at the time. In the Iliad and the Odyssey ‘no fish appear at banquets or in the houses of the well-to-do: only in connection with the poorest or starving do they obtain mention’.2 This has since been countered by scholars who believe fish was eaten by the Mycenaean elite.

Moreover, it is believed that a number of fishing techniques were used at this time. Fishing with spears, traps, hooks and nets both from the coast and aboard small one-man craft, was prevalent. Spears include the trident which was often used to catch octopus although evidence from Kynos suggests that they were using clay pots to trap octopus as well. The same type of pot with a hole in the bottom is used in many Mediterranean countries today and, several years ago, I reported on such techniques seen in Tunisia.3

The other fishing evidence from Kynos comes from the bronze hooks, both with and without barbs, and net or line sinkers in the form of perforated sherds. The evidence for the use of nets is backed up by Homer who also mentions net fishing and it has been suggested that these were made from flax.

The depiction on the Naxos vase clearly showing fish inside a seine-net which is being hauled in by fishers on the shore.

In Ancient Egypt, it was thought that a fishing industry of sorts was established much because of the physical appearance of the land, which has little fertile land between desert and coast. It was only the River Nile that gave the country both a surplus of fish and good agricultural land. Fish was eaten widely in prehistoric times, as attested by the amount of fish bones recorded by archaeologists and various depictions of fish related subjects, as well as some implements, have been discovered. One particular sherd shows a hunted animal along with a fish, suggesting a hunter-gatherer environment.4

Nevertheless, this evidence doesn’t tell us when humans first started fishing and the common belief is that the presence of rock pools on the foreshore that had been left on an ebb tide with fish stuck in them alerted early humans to this fact. In the tidal areas of the world it is assumed that this is how humans discovered how to build fish weirs on the foreshore that created bigger pools once the tide had ebbed. However, this presupposes a significant tidal difference which was lacking in the eastern Mediterranean. Any change in the height of the water from day to day was from weather patterns (high or low pressure) and not only was the difference in height small, it was pretty unreliable.

Evidence in Britain comes mostly from the Mesolithic era when the country had become an island cut off from mainland Europe. We know people were seafaring during this time because the settlement of Ireland can be dated to c. 6000 BC. Later communities started arriving off the west coasts of Scotland, and especially Orkney. Shell middens contain archaeological evidence of human occupation from the seventh to fifth millennia BC. In England middens dating to approximately 4500 BC have been excavated at Westward Ho! in Devon, Culver Well, Isle of Portland in Dorset, and in South Wales at Nanna’s Cave, Caldey Island, off Tenby.

Twenty-first-century octopus pots seen in Tunisia. The design hasn’t changed much in millennia and the main difference is the line they are attached to and the plastic floats.

The first fishers were undoubtedly hunter-gatherers, living off the land and the sea or rivers. In Britain, the landscape was one of a heavily forested hinterland with prime rivers for catching fish in many parts. In others it was the sea, again rich in all manner of fish and seafood. If one considers what was available before humans started a determined effort to harvest the fruits of the sea, the foreshore alone gave them shellfish – mussels, cockles, oysters, whelks, winkles, limpets and other shellfish – while the rock pools might have contained small fish, crabs and shrimps. The rivers were rich, with their salmon, trout, sea-trout, eels and flounders, while just offshore were all manner of shoaling and bottom-feeding fish and other shellfish such as lobsters. Even the inland lakes produced fish like pike and tench. What a banquet could be collected in a short time.

This may present a false picture that the life of hunter-gatherers was a simple one – the truth is the opposite. It was a strenuous and hard life, with the added conflict between tribes, and roving bandits who were always keen for a free meal and not concerned about the value of human life. History is full of tales of death and destruction, and fishers were not exempt.

The excavations of shell middens on the island of Oronsay, Inner Hebrides produced much information about the gathering of food from the foreshore. Bevel-headed antler, bone and stone tools found in large numbers have been interpreted as ‘limpet hammers’ or ‘limpet scoops’. However, other archaeologists think they were tools for softening skin hides as some show signs of rubbing, polishing and abrasion. Moreover, they also found barbed pots and harpoons which were probably used for the procurement of marine animals and large fish using hand- or long-lining. The most common species of fish found in the middens was wrasse, saithe (coley) and ling which were probably caught using nets or spears.

As time went by, fishing techniques have improved. Fishing without gear – just hands and feet – then led to the development of fishing tools such as knives, spears and long-handled hooks. Divers used such hooks for loosening shells and hooking octopus. There are a number of finds in Scotland that point strongly to the development of deep-sea fishing during the late Mesolithic period. At a midden on the tiny island of Risga, in the mouth of Loch Sunart, bones of various sea fish were found, including skate, conger eel, grey mullet and haddock, indicating the use of a boat for line-fishing or netting.

Over the centuries all manner of methods have been used for catching fish. These include the use of animals such as dogs, otters, cormorants, turtles, octopi and porpoises, using mechanical ways of stupefying fish such as dynamite, toxic plants, clamps and rakes, and electrical fishing. Shooting, spearing and harpooning were ways of capturing fish, especially after it was discovered that light attracted fish.5 In many parts of the world today bright lights are shone into the water to bring the fish to the surface before they are netted. Few visitors to Southern Europe will have failed to see small open Mediterranean craft sitting on beaches fitted with big lamps.

But we must return to Britain in our discussion with regard to the more common fishing methods and, first and foremost, are fish weirs and traps.

Fish Weirs

Fish weirs are barriers that are referred to as ‘fixed engines’. Documented evidence of weirs is scarce though three traps excavated at the Late Kongemose site Agerod V in southern Sweden are said to date back more than 6,000 years. Another, at the Ertebolle site of Jonstorp, still contained a cod and several have relatively recently been excavated in Denmark that date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic times.6 In Britain various fishing baskets and fish traps at Goldcliff, in the River Severn estuary, have been observed in the minerogenic sediments and date to around 5400–4000 cal BC.7 Many others have been established for hundreds of years. Indeed, as F.M. Davis recounts, ‘the first settlers in Queensland, some of whom lived much among the then Blackfellows, have left very full descriptions of the stone-weirs used by these primitive people who were still in the Stone Age of culture’.8 The same he says of the Indians of Virginia who developed ‘great fish weirs and fish pounds’. Davis also suggests that it is not improbable that the earliest method of fishing in any quantity was by stopping the mouths of narrow tidal creeks with brushwood or stones but when it was discovered that this also blocked the ingress of fish, the weir was developed by forming an opening that could be closed on the ebb. Davis gives the ‘Fish-ponds’ of south Devon as an example. In the Outer Hebrides:

one method of catching fish which was once common was by building yares or stone dykes across a river estuary. The fish that swim in at high tide when the yare was submerged were left stranded when the tide ebbed, and could be collected without much trouble.9

As has been mentioned previously, fish weirs are only capable of working effectively in tidal waters and Britain has the remains of many littered around its coast, especially on the western side of Scotland, England and Wales. These weirs were positioned in such a way that they used the natural swimming behaviour of fish that in shallow flowing water tend to swim parallel to the coastline. On the flood many tend to swim towards the shore and away on the ebb. Thus, as the tide recedes, the entrance should be behind the fish. They were generally constructed with stout oak posts bedded into the foreshore with stone walls built up for the first foot or two, and then hazel or willow was used to weave a framework which allowed a flow of seawater to pass. The weave was more tightly woven at the bottom to prevent fish escaping and looser at the top, thus ensuring the greater flow at the higher level of tide passed through without damaging the structure, for the pressure of water can be immense. Some weirs had intricate openings at their mouths with sluices so that these mouths could be opened or shut. The gorad bach – literally little weir – on the Menai Strait in North Wales has a ‘bass trap’ which is a little sluice that could be opened to let whitebait out (a common fish in these parts). Bigger fish such as salmon and bass tended to linger outside awaiting a tasty meal – the owners of the weir, John and Wilf Girling, would wait above with a lap-net to catch the unsuspecting salmon or bass. This weir, along with another larger one a mile to the east called the Trecastell weir, date back several centuries and were very effective at catching all manner of fish: herring, whitebait, salmon, mackerel, bass and even the green-boned garfish. In shape they were the same and consisted of a wall running at right angles to the shore, and out to the low water mark, and then another along the low water mark perpendicular to the first. At the right-hand end, looking from the shore, the end that faces the ebb, a short wall runs back on itself at a sharp angle, thus forming the ‘crew’ where the fish were unable to escape. The gorad bach was in use until the 1960s and the owners then only packed up as it was obvious that the seagulls and bait diggers were having more of the catch than they were! Another weir in this area, called the lyme-kiln, was leased to Thomas Norrey in 1438 for twenty years while Thomas Sherwin paid a rent of sixpence a year ten years later for another said to be ‘lying between the lyme-kiln fishery and the house of the Friar Minor of Llanfaes’. Given that the gored bach is in the vicinity of Llanfaes, it could be assumed that the report refers to this weir.10

The Menai Strait had several other fish weirs and one in particular was restored in recent times. Current regulations ban their use so this one has holes in the restored wall that allow any fish to escape. Situated on the small island between the two bridges over the Menai Strait, the weir can be studied from above and if the tide is high, the shape of the weir can clearly be seen. Another used to be worked on the island – the remains are still visible – and the remnants of two others can be found nearby on the Anglesey shore. One of these two uses the method of building a barrier between two islands so that the fish can pass around the outside of the island and towards the shore on the flood, but are then are caught when trying to make their way between the islands on the ebb. Further northeast, there is the outline of another at Cadnant clearly visible in the mud at low water. Another used to lie across the Straits on the Bangor side, a vague remnant still visible with the tide out.

John Girling Snr with a landing net full of whitebait in his fish weir, the gorad bach, near Beaumaris, Anglesey. The weir is said to date back to medieval times. (Courtesy of Bridget Dempsey)

Weirs follow various patterns and an attempt has been made to classify them as to whether they are active or passive. Again the shape is important, for a couple on the west coast of Wales are crescent shaped – described by one writer as ‘somewhat shaped as a boomerang’.11 Others are V-shaped often with several side by side and a net of some form across the neck where the fish are caught. But in reality they come in all shapes and sizes. As I write this, the family are watching a programme on television and suddenly there’s a mention of fish traps. I stop and listen to hear how dolphins are trapping fish in a manoeuvring technique similar in some ways to these structures. And a very successful technique it is, as fish after fish flop into their jaws. Maybe, then, the development of fish weirs simply came about by watching closely the ways of the creatures that inhabit the seas.

Fish Traps

Various forms of fish traps have been in use since prehistoric times, albeit in a different, possibly updated, form. The best example is perhaps the octopus clay pot mentioned above. Just as lobster, crab, eel and whelk are caught using pots – or creels as they call them in Scotland – today, so were they many years ago. However, throughout the world small-scale fishermen have developed various shaped baskets used as traps, made from an equal variety of material – willow, hazel, bamboo, reeds, rattan and palm leaves. Some are very basic structures while others consist of an intricate weave of materials.

Fish traps do not simply have to be in a basket form and can be man-made structures placed across the current in a river and here, it could be said, there is little difference between a fish weir and a fish trap. However, there is one very important dissimilarity in that weirs are fixed engines while fish traps can be removed and placed elsewhere. One example of this is the Wing trap from the Mekong River in Laos. At the Khone Falls these structures are used between May and July to catch migrating fish moving upstream. When fish reach the falls they are held in the trap by the strong current.12

Such structures also occur in Britain, most notably in the River Severn. Putts and putchers are basketwork traps set into frameworks of stakes placed across the flow of the river, the difference between the two being the size. The putcher is the smallest at about 5 or 6ft in length and is a cone-shaped woven basket of willow and hazel. Putchers are mounted in the framework in tiers of three or four, up to thirty or forty along (or more even), giving a total of several hundred. They normally face upstream, thus catching the fish as they swim down on the ebb though occasionally they might face downstream. Once a fish swims into the trap there is no way out. Once the short fishing season is over (June to August), then the putchers have to be removed and taken ashore.

Putts are altogether much bigger and are made up of three integral parts – the kype, butt and forewheel. They work the same way as the putchers and always face upstream. The entrance to the trap, the kype, can be as big as 6ft in diameter and the whole putt up to 14ft in length. They have to be closed to salmon out of season and this is done by driving two lengths of willow cross-wise through the rear of the kype where it joins the butt. Salmon cannot then get in but other fish and eels can still be fished. Putts are thought to go back to the fifteenth century and possible even as far as the tenth.13

In Greece fish traps were positioned in rivers. Recently I met a fisherman named Kostas Giotis who made one that he called a silpi in Greek. Made from local reeds, it is some 6ft long and 2ft wide. It looks a bit like a conical basket that has been split longitudinally so that the mouth is flat, though the tip of the cone is still in place. The trap sits in the river and stones are moved to act as a hedge to lead the fish into it. They get stuck in the tip, unable to swim backwards against the current. This he used when the river was in flood in March, with the snows melting and filling the River Sperheios, in central Greece. Mostly set at night and emptied the next morning, sometimes he would sit by river spearing or stringing fish with worms, the latter used for jigging so that when a fish bites the string is flicked downstream and towards the bank to land the fish. Just after the war, he informed me, they were using grenades to fish with too, as well as poisons. With regard to the latter Aristotle mentions fleabane to make octopi drop off rocks. Mullien was used and continued in use into the twentieth century, as was fleabane. Cyclamen is mentioned by ancient writers as a poison for catching tuna and mullet.

Gorges and Hooks

Although we have mentioned hooks from the Bronze Age, gorges are believed to predate hooks as the method of ensuring a fish doesn’t get away after eating the bait on a line and have been in use since the Palaeolithic period. The earliest form of gorge was a straight or slightly curved piece of wood, sharpened at both ends and tied to the line in the middle. It was then inserted lengthways into the bait and is swallowed by that fish so that when the line is tightened it turns transversely inside the belly or throat and cannot be spat out. Gorges are also used for catching birds and similar devices are used for catching crocodiles. Gorges were also made from bone, horn, flint and metal.

Gorges do work, as we once discovered while filming for the BBC for a programme called The Truth about Food. I’d made a couple out of thin branches as part of a demonstration on archaeological fishing methods and was fishing with the camera crew and participants a few miles off Dartmouth. On one side we made rods with modern fishing gear and on the other side a gorge and a hook made from a rose thorn. To our surprise a fish took the gorge but, to our dismay, the line broke while pulling it in. However, the rose thorn hook, although I felt one fish having a nibble, didn’t catch anything. Meanwhile on the other side of the boat the participants were reeling in the mackerel!

Hooks come in all manner of shapes and sizes, made from a number of materials such as bronze, copper, thorn, bone, antler, ceramic and later iron. Indeed, according to J. Bickerdyke, the thorn hooks mentioned earlier were still in use in parts of the Thames estuary up to 1895.14 Early hooks didn’t have a barb and proved much more ineffectual then those with. Among the fishing collections of the world are beautiful hooks made from mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, whalebone and human bones, and these remained treasured artefacts from an era when fishermen took great pride in their gear. Today steel hooks are mass-produced in the same way as their nets, lines and ropes are.

Hooks can be used in a multitude of ways: either singly on hand lines; set on paternosters, again for hand lines; set on feathers for trolling; for multi-line trolling; on spinning hooks for mackerel; fixed into lures for hand lines; and long lines.

Long lines are made up are hundreds of hooks which are tied to ‘snoods’, short pieces of horsehair, which are in turn tied to the line itself, the snoods being about a foot apart. Long-lining has been described as the simplest method of commercial fishing though its downside was the baiting of the hook which took hours, even after spending time catching the bait. Then, once they were set – another time-consuming labour – they had to be hauled in without getting all the hooks stuck into the side of the boat (or fingers and other parts of the anatomy). In time mechanisation brought about much longer lines that were hauled in with the use of hydraulic winches and, for larger craft, systems were designed for casting lines out. However, we are now in the realms of large-scale commercial fishing, a place we do not want to be in at present.

Nets

Remains of nets have been found at Herculaneum and in Egypt, though because all nets (until recently) were made from organic material, only tiny bits have survived. As we’ve seen, only implements made from inorganic materials have been discovered on the whole. It is believed that in early times fishing with nets was only from the shore with beach seine-nets, as the Kynos and Naxos depictions suggest.

Nets were made from plant fibre and, according to Oppian, ‘very light nets of buoyant flax’ were used for tuna fishing. He added that ‘they wheel round in a circle round about while they violently strike the surface of the sea with their oars and make a din with the sweeping blow of poles’.15 The fish are frightened and chased into the net. Also a man used to be positioned in a watchtower to search out and point the boats to a shoal. Part of a net was also found at Nikonion, an ancient (600–300 BC) Greek city on the east bank of the River Dniester estuary in modern-day Ukraine, while a fragment of a net discovered was found to be hemp.

Although various natural fibres could be used – flax, willow, lime, jute, sisal, iris, coir seed, Cretan lily leaf – by far the most common material that would have all the necessary qualities for use as lines and for nets is nettle-hemp. The nettles would be gathered in spring and early summer, the leaves stripped off the stems and the stems immersed in water for several hours. After removal from the water, they would be pulped so that the individual strands would peel away producing long, thin fibres. These fibres would then be spun in the same way as flax and wool, the resulting ‘yarn’ would then be used for the lines, to make nets and also for the strings of bows. Hemp was considered too rough and used for ropes.

Floats were made from cork, wood, pumice, pieces of bark, goats’ wool and sealed containers. Sinkers, as mentioned earlier, were perforated sherds, or stones with natural indentations, lead wrapped around a line, clay wrapped around sticks and fired and terracotta flat discs with two holes at the top. Weights used in weaving were also sometimes used.

Notes

1 F. Dakronia and P. Kounouklas, ‘Fishing Technology: The Kynos Contribution’, unpublished report.

2 William Radcliffe, Fishing from the Earliest Times, London, 1921.

3 See Mike Smylie, ‘Octopus Pots’, Maritime Life & Traditions no. 31, 2006.

4 See D.J. Brewer and R.F. Friedman, Fish and Fishing in Ancient Egypt, Warminster, 1989.

5 A. von Brandt, in Fish Catching Methods ofthe World, London, 1972, gives a thorough account of these more unusual forms of fishing.

6 L. Pedersen, ‘7000 Years of Fishing: Stationary Fishing Structures in the Mesolithic and Afterwards’, in A. Fischer (ed.), Man and Sea in the Mesolithic, Oxford, 1995.

7 See M. Bell, ‘The Goldcliff Late-Mesolithic Site 5400–4000 Cal BC’, CBA report 120, 2000.

8 F.M. Davis, An Account ofthe Fishing Gear ofEngland and Wales, London, HMSO, 1936.

9 D. MacDonald, Lewis, A History ofthe Island, Edinburgh, 1978.

10 Mike Smylie, Anglesey and its Coastal Tradition, Llanrwst, 2000.

11 E.E. Evans, Mourne County, 1951. Perhaps the best classification of these weirs has been put forward by N.V.C. Bannerman in The Bronze Age Coast Project – Ancient Fish Trap Types, 2000.

12 See R.J. Slack-Smith, Fishing with Traps and Pots, Rome, 2001. Also ‘Fishing Baskets of Asia Pacific’, a pamphlet of an exhibition of fish traps held in Canada in 1997–98.

13 Various authors have written on the fishing techniques of the River Severn, including the present author. For a brief look, see John Neufville Taylor, Fishing on the Lower Severn, Gloucester, 1974.

14 J. Bickerdyke, Sea Fishing, The Badminton Library ofSports and Pastimes, London 1895.

15 Oppian of Corycus, Halieutica, LOEB, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1928 (translated by A.W. Mair). This was his poem of fishing (Halieutica) of some 3,500 lines, which he wrote in the second half of the second century.

2

THEGROWTHOFTHEHERRINGFISHERY

In terms of fishing, both in the species and the techniques employed, there is a distinct difference between pelagic and demersal fishing. Pelagic refers to fish that live near or on the surface, rarely swimming to a more than a moderate depth while, on the contrary, the latter is said of fish that live in or near the bottom of the sea or ocean. This not to say that pelagic fish do not swim close to the seabed: they can reach depths up to 400m. Generally, though, they live in the top levels of the sea and also feed at the surface.

In Britain the four main pelagic species fished commercially are herring, mackerel, pilchard and sprat, though there are others such as whitebait, anchovy, tuna and blue whiting. Sardines are the same species as pilchard, the latter being a more mature sardine. In Cornwall, where all British pilchards are landed, the name ‘Cornish sardines’ has been coined in an effort to increase sales. (The word ‘pilchard’ seems to have unfavourable connotations that ‘sardine’ doesn’t!)

It is the herring fishery that has attracted the attention of writers and historians throughout the last thousand years. Thus much more is known about it and its effect on society than, say, for the mackerel, even if the mackerel is today often regarded as everyone’s favourite summer fish.

Herring swim in huge shoals at spawning time and they have done so off almost every part of the British coastline over the last 300 years, even if their numbers are depleted today through overfishing. However, it has always been the fact that the North Sea saw a greater concentration of fish than did the west coast, with the obvious result being a higher concentration in fishing activity. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, the herring fishery as such didn’t really exist and was a resource largely ignored except by the small inshore fishermen who fished mostly for themselves and the locality. Nevertheless, the fishermen realised for themselves that the best time to catch herring at their prime was when they were about to spawn, and that they return year after year to spawn in the same place until something changes their behaviour.

Before we discuss the growth of the business in catching and landing herring into an actual industry, we must go back over a thousand years to the times when the Romans were getting up and departing south from these shores. Yes, of course, they ate herring, understanding the healthy and appetising aspect of the fish, and having learnt what almost sounds like the secrets of the fish from the locals near to their garrison at Garianonum which was a few miles west of what is now Great Yarmouth and thought to have been Burgh Castle. Then the area was a huge estuary with a mass of sandbanks stretching over what we call the Norfolk Broads today.1

As the last of the Romans left over the Straits of Dover in the fifth century, a confederation of Germanic tribes migrated towards Britain under Cerdick the Saxon with five ships, although they had been sending incursions over to battle against the Romans for centuries, necessitating the Romans to build their coastal fortifications. Cerdick and his gang found an ideal base upon a sandbank and built a stronghold upon it and discovered an abundance of herring offshore. A century later we find that Felip, 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’.2

The Vikings, who came to Britain in the late tenth century, have been accredited with bringing the techniques of their boatbuilding skills to Britain. This has resulted in influences still being obvious among fishing and other working craft along a huge swathe of coast from the Thames, around the Scottish coast and down the other side as far as the Bristol Channel, and from the southeast of Ireland around to Donegal on the northwest coast. Double-ended in shape, clinker-built in construction, it is now considered that it was the Saxons who first brought these techniques into Britain and which the Vikings only substantiated because they, too, were using similar ways, probably brought about through the same development over the intervening 400 years.3

We do not know what life was like for the simple fisherman in these times though presumably they were seamen rather than dedicated fishers. It is probable that the boats were open, propelled by oars, much in the way that Viking boats are today represented. It is, too, unclear exactly how the fish were being caught although we do know that nets were involved. Presumably it was with some form of a drift-net though it is equally possibly that such nets were anchored in specific places and left overnight. Herring tend to rise to the surface after dark, to feed off the plankton that floats there, and this was the best time to catch them, and remained so right up to the development of the mid-water trawling system in the second half of the twentieth century. So, if you don’t want to hang about for several hours at night with a train of drift-nets attached to the bow of your boat, given your boat is open and vulnerable to adverse weather, you anchor them, in the same way as Welsh herring fishers did up to the late twentieth century.

The first herring fishery that was under any sort of centralised control was that of the southern Sweden area of Skanor in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This fishery was commanded by the growing Hanseatic League of merchants from the German towns of Lübeck and Hamburg, which later spread its influence across Europe by trading far and wide over the continent. The herring were in these waters a century before when, in a Polish poem recording a victory in Kolberg, famous for its salt herring, in 1105, it was said that ‘They brought us herring and stinking fish, and now our sons are bringing them to us fresh and quivering.’4 The Hanse was greatly helped by the Catholic Church’s insistence that fish was eaten on Fridays and other days. Herring largely supplied that market.