CHAPTER XVIII
BRIXHAM—THE FISHERY—ROUND THE COAST TO DARTMOUTH
The statue of Dutch William makes the background of Brixham Harbour picturesque, and the fishing-fleet and the houses climbing up, tier above tier, confer a nobility upon the statue: they re-act upon one another, in short, in a most admirably pictorial way. There are over three hundred vessels in the trawling fleet of Brixham, and all are sailing-boats. The largest, known technically as “dandies,” are of fifty tons burthen, and cost about £1,000. The intermediate, and most numerous class are “bumble-bees,” and the smallest are merely “hookers,” “hukers,” in the Devon inflection, of twenty-five tons. The cost of a “bumble-bee” is £450. It carries a crew of three men, who work according to the custom of the Brixham fishery, on rarely changing lines. Brixham, unlike the great fishing port of Grimsby, where steam-trawling and highly costly vessels owned by corporations are the rule, conducts its industry on more individual and joint-stock lines. Here we find the captain and the owner usually one and the same person, working with his two men on the partnership principle. He is, of course, by virtue of his ownership a capitalist in his way, and for the purpose of getting a return for his venture, as well as for his labour, the shares of the boat are divided into five parts, of which he takes three; one for self, one for the boat, and one for the nets and general gear, leaving one each for the crew, who contribute only their labour. The takings are divided every week, and, like the fortunes of war, they vary extravagantly.
If you conceive a bag forty to fifty feet in length, you will have some approximate notion of the size of a trawl-net. The mouth of it is stretched wide apart by a pole like a builder’s scaffold-pole, heavily shod at each end with iron, for the purpose of weighing down the mouth of the net as it is drawn, or “trawled,” along the bottom of the sea. Sailing out of harbour, the trawl-net is “shot” the length of some seventy fathoms, necessary to reach the bottom of the fishing-grounds in Torbay, and thus, going with the wind for six to eight hours, the smacks drag their exaggerated bags along the bed of ocean, scooping up whatever lies in the way. It may thus justly be supposed that the bed of Torbay is a pretty well-swept floor.
It is a comparatively easy thing to shoot a trawl-net, but a long and laborious job for two men, straining at the winch, to wind it aboard again, with its load of fish, often very largely useless. So soon as the hauling up of the nets begins, myriads of sea-gulls, springing apparently from nowhere in particular, appear, with the instantaneous promptitude of a crowd in a quiet street of London when an accident has happened. Screaming and circling about, dipping instantaneously into the water, and rising up quickly, they often make daring snatches at the fish aboard. Surely there is nothing so sharp-eyed on earth, in air, or water, as a sea-gull, and nothing so greedy and insatiable. The sea-gull is the scavenger of the fisher towns and villages, and is not nice in his tastes. Nothing comes amiss to his hungry maw, from fresh fish down to stale, ancient enough to be a very monument of offence and a something beyond the worst experiences of a sanitary inspector; and the dead kittens and rats of the seaside communities form welcome side-dishes.
The gulls’ turn, however, comes when the sorting of the nets begins. When the useless dog-fish are flung overboard they struggle and guzzle their fill: for, unfortunately for the fisherfolk, the dog-fish are never lacking, although the saleable fish may be often sadly to seek. But now dog-fish are often marketed as “flake.” The catch is generally a miscellaneous one of turbot, bream, plaice, whiting, hake, haddock, gurnet, sole, and brill, with a few lobsters, crabs, and eels, and when the undesirables among the fish, and the stones and the seaweed, are sorted out, frequently resolves itself into a dozen or so pair of soles, and a few baskets and “trunks” of other fish. The aristocracy of the catch are, of course, the turbot and the soles, but when a bad day’s trawling and a day of poor market prices come together, the day’s labour for three men may not bring the skipper more than twelve shillings and his two men four shillings apiece.
BRIXHAM HARBOUR.