Fishing
For the most part, the following
was taken from a published article of mine, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Mass
Deep-Sea British Fishing Industry in Two-Hundred Years’ in the 12th
edition of The Family and Local
History Handbook:-
Fish have, of course, been an
important contribution to people’s diets in these isles as far back as
prehistoric times. All the same, it was not until the nineteenth century that
various elements combined to produce deep-sea operations on such a large scale
to make white fish, fried with chips, so
popular as to almost enter the British nation’s psyche!
Until the eighteenth century
certainly, the majority of fish taken in Britain had been for subsistence only,
whether on a part-time basis, or seasonally. Depending on the species that
apparently numbered around twenty, these were caught variously using lines and
hooks, traps and nets.
That is not to say that there was
not larger-scale fishing though. As far back as the mid-tenth century there was
a Scots herring fishery that exported their products to the Netherlands. Being
migratory and surface shoaling, these were taken by seine and drift netting all
along their annual routes. For instance, in Cardigan Bay, the transit of
herring and mackerel immediately followed the autumn harvest period ashore and
so, farmers and labourers turned their hands to this gift from the sea at an
opportune time. Preserved in salt, these could and were transported
considerable distances inland before consumption.
During the mediæval period sea
fishing expanded in Europe while freshwater fishing contracted: the latter
through overworking and degradation of inland habitats. Also, the Catholic
doctrine of meat-free days was clearly an important inducement to sea
extraction. And, although probably due to ecological reasons as well as over
fishing, there were massive fluctuations in fish stocks of all varieties in the North
Sea. From the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, the Dutch were the masters of
the deep-sea herring trade, with their busses: especially in Scottish East
Coast waters. This not only caused the usual political, diplomatic and military
clashes, but also gave rise various Royal schemes to increase the Scottish
fisheries. Incidentally, the demise of the Dutch superiority in this industry
can be seen in the same terms as in Arctic whaling: as mentioned in an article
of mine in the eleventh edition of The
Family and Local History Handbook.
With similar environmental
problems in western waters some West Countrymen ventured north to Iceland, then
west all the way to Newfoundland and Maine as early as the fifteenth century.
By the early the eighteenth century, while herring and cod were still caught,
dried or barrel-salted and transported across the Atlantic from the Grand Banks
of Newfoundland, by then they were cargo of merchantmen as part of their
mercantile ‘triangular trade’.
Taking an older technique used
inshore, with modern more efficiently fore-and-aft rigged vessels, beam
trawling in relatively deep sea had also begun in the eighteenth century. In
this a net was towed, the mouth being secured open with a heavy wooden beam.
Two different ports claim to have invented this, Brixham,
in Devon and Barking, in London. Scouring the bottom, species such as plaice,
sole, turbot and perhaps most importantly, cod were forced into the nets.
Previously, these fish had been difficult to catch by line and because they
were so perishable, had been luxuries.
As well as coastal towns London
also had a fresh fish market, with Billingsgate’s first charter dated as far
back as the ninth century. From a time as yet unidentified by me, Billingsgate
had originally been supplied by vessels with wells (to keep the fish alive)
from Harwich and Barking. Even with high overland transport costs, the Devonian
fishermen had also managed to service the London market, certainly by the
eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it was not until the next century that the
trawling industry really got going.
The railways largely provided the
answer to the internal shipping problems. While trawling took off in other
parts of Britain, the North Sea became the focus for this particular part of
the industry and with good railway communications, a considerable percentage of
Devon’s fishermen moved to Hull and Grimsby from the late 1840s. They then
competed with traditional East Coast ports such as Yarmouth (that had also had
a herring fleet for centuries) and Scarborough.
As well as taking the expensive
species, the deep water trawling also scooped up everything else, including the far more populous and
therefore, cheaper stocks such as haddock, plaice and smaller cod. Ashore, fish
for the masses was marketed assiduously. Incidentally, all sectors of the
industry benefited from this including those operating inshore, getting
increased sales of their shellfish for instance. In fact, fish consumption
expanded in Britain until the 1930s.
Trawling was not regarded as
beneficial by all though. Traditional fishermen saw this as wasteful and
destructive of fish stocks. Inevitably, the trawlermen
decried this, maintaining that they were not a threat and Her Majesty’s
Government agreed, sweeping away past restrictions in an Act of 1868. That said, foreign boats were banned from British coastal waters,
through a three-mile limit.
Although experiments with
paddle-tugs towing trawls were conducted in the 1870s, it was not until the
development of the triple-expansion engine in the 1880s that steam trawlers,
made their appearance. With a much enlarged range and greater towing power when
compared with the sailing smacks, the steam trawlers were far more efficient
fish catchers. Not insignificantly, this coincided with signs of over fishing.
Although the steam trawlers allowed for new grounds to be opened up in time,
fleeting only exacerbated the problems in the existing North Sea grounds. Begun
in the late 1870s, or early 1880s, entire sailing fleets worked the more
accessible areas for periods up to eight weeks, employing fast steam cutters to
get the fresh fish to market regularly. Incidentally, it was a Barking company,
Hewett’s, which had first introduced steam cutters in 1864.
During the last two decades of
the nineteenth century there was increasing concern from the industry over falling
catches. Not only were there national conferences with the aim of seeking
regulation over conservation and in limiting foreign competition, a Royal
Commission on trawling sat in 1883. While much of the trawling community had
reversed its earlier opinion on man’s ability to harm fish stocks, the findings
of this Commission were lukewarm, in acknowledging the possibility of this within coastal waters at least. As most
trawling was conducted outside territorial waters, it was not seen as the
government’s responsibility though. Meanwhile, the smacks continued their
intensive extraction.
In 1895 the introduction of otter
trawls meant even more efficient working by the steam-powered boats. In the
previous five years Hull and particularly Grimsby steam-trawlers had worked
among places as far north as the Faeroes and Iceland. At the very edge of their
operational range, seasons were short, returns were limited and the fish not
all that fresh: with little space for ice, since most was taken up with coal.
This resulted in the building of larger, more powerful craft suitable for the
northern waters.
Steam trawlers required much more capital in building and
running than had traditionally been the case with smacks that had very often
been owned by their skippers. Therefore, joint stock limited liability
companies utilising outside money met these needs. Hull and Grimsby specialised
in the long-range Icelandic grounds; while other ports such as Aberdeen, North
Shields and Fleetwood, did not venture quite so far. The ports that prospered
were those that could provide the requisite engineering and coaling back up,
those without ambling along with the old sailing smacks.
As could be predicted there was
friction with the Icelanders. In the 1880s they sought to keep the foreigners
out of four-mile territorial waters by law: failing. A colony of Denmark, in
1894 this law was strengthened unilaterally by the Icelanders, but in doing so
created three-way political strains. Eventually, the Anglo-Danish Territorial
Waters Treaty was negotiated in 1901. Saliently, the Icelanders lost out and
the British had unfettered access of Icelandic waters except within a
three-mile limit: with the Danish Navy enforcing this.
In the Edwardian era grounds even
further were explored in the quest to provide ever larger tonnages of white
fish for frying. As well as returning to Newfoundland, the Barents Sea was at
least reached in 1905.
The Great War (1914-19) disrupted
this process badly. Apart from many hundreds of craft and their crews taken up
for the Auxiliary Patrol and Minesweeping Service, large
areas around the British Isles and in the North Sea were put out of bounds,
although some fishing in the north continued.
With this brief, if unplanned
respite for breeding, following the Armistice there was an eighteen month boom
period in the North Sea. Even so, once again catches and prices began to
decline. Hull, however, increased its landings, concentrating on the insatiable
frying market. Even if Icelandic waters remained the main haunts of the large
steam-trawlers, this required even longer voyages from the late 1920s. New
grounds off the Lofotens, Bear Island, Spitzbergen and even Novaya Zemlya in Soviet Russia at far
end of the Barents Sea came into use. Also, although this had already begun
prior to the war, Hull was also the first port to go into large-scale, modern
filleting operations. These not only added value to the products; and saved on
transport costs; fish-meal factories used the by-products for further profits.
Saturation of the market had to
come at some stage and for the fish-frying business this was in the early
1930s. Supply at last outstripped demand, not helped by the Great Depression
that gravely affected the heavily industrialised areas. By this time business
had been concentrated into large companies and Hull’s collective answer was to
get rid of her last North Sea craft in 1936 and build, ever-larger boats that
were capable in virtually all Arctic weathers. Meanwhile, times were poor for
all other ports and the herring trade was in a state of collapse. This decade
also saw the first British legislation limiting catches and introducing quotas.
If the First World War had been
hazardous to fishing craft, through mines, surface warships, submarines and
occasional if not spectacularly successful air attack, the Second World War
(1939-45) was far worse. Aircraft especially had
evolved much in the
interwar period. But, once again fishing craft were required for the war
effort. Initially as the Royal Naval Reserve Patrol Service, with the influx of
non-fishing personnel ‘Reserve’ was dropped from its title. Generally, the
R.N.P.S was known as ‘Harry Tate’s Navy’.
Post war, until the 1950s there
was again expansion, but with general contraction ever since. This has partly
been through European countries gaining control over their own Exclusive
Economic Zones, an invention of the United Nations. The three so-called ‘Cod
Wars’ between 1958 and 1976 whereby Britain’s Royal Navy unsuccessfully
disputed Iceland’s zone can be seen in this light. These
E.E.Z.s have not prevented over-fishing though and falling stocks have brought
about great hand-wringing. The European Economic Community introduced a Common
Fisheries Policy through the Treaty of Rome in 1967, with schemes of paying off
fishing fleets and imposing quotas. That the quota system is basically flawed
in conception is not a topic for this article; or indeed changing palates for
other types of fish, such as tuna...
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