The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 4

by Frederick Whymper

Yarmouth next demands our attention. It derives its name from its situation at the mouth of the river Yare, and it is, as all know, both a flourishing fishing-town and a watering-place. Its antiquity is great; there are records of it anterior to Roman times. In the eleventh century, at the time of the Conquest, it was known as Moche Gærnemouth, or Great Yarmouth. In 1004, Sweyn, king of Denmark, arrived before it with a powerful fleet, and plundered and burnt the town. It soon rose again. In 1132, artisans, implements, [pg 249]and looms were brought over from the Continent, and spinning was commenced at Worstead, a small town which gave to the yarn the name it still bears. The old town of Yarmouth was formerly defended by walls of which the ruins still remain.

YARMOUTH.

Among the features of Yarmouth are the great broad quays, extending about a mile-and-a-quarter, the principal streets running parallel with them. There are several substantial bridges across the Yare and Bure rivers, one over the latter having been erected on the spot where nearly eighty people were suddenly precipitated into the water by the fall of the old bridge some thirty-eight years ago. There are several small docks and shipyards. Yarmouth Roads afford safe anchorage, and are constantly resorted to by vessels in distress, the captains of which do not dare to brave the elements outside. Forty thousand sail, exclusive of fishing boats, annually pass this part of the coast. The Roads are formed by several very dangerous sands, which, in foggy weather, or when heavy gales sweep the coasts, occasion many fearful shipwrecks. More than 500 vessels have been stranded, wrecked, or utterly lost off this coast in the short period of three years; as a necessary consequence, the loss of life is also considerable, and the number of shipwrecked mariners who are landed at Yarmouth year after year is very large. The Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society has an important branch there. There is a fine Sailors’ Home, which has lodged 600 to 700 poor seamen in a single year. It was established to provide a home for the mariners of all nations, when wrecked, detained by stress [pg 250]of weather, or paid off, in the latter cases giving them board and medical attendance, if required, at the lowest possible charge. It possesses a museum, library, and reading-room, and a collection of charts and nautical instruments. The two lifeboats of Yarmouth have been the means of saving several thousand lives. There is also a little church and mission for fishermen and sailors near the beach, and a mariners’ chapel.

The mackerel fisheries of Yarmouth alone employ one thousand men, but the herring fishery is the most important source of revenue to the town, the produce exceeding one hundred thousand barrels per annum, or one-fifth of the entire yield of the kingdom. A large number of persons of both sexes are employed on shore in drying and curing the fish. The Yarmouth boats with two masts (three during the mackerel season) are manned by twelve or thirteen hands. They have the letters Y. H. and a number painted on the bows. They are now of about sixty-five tons builders’ measurement, many of graceful forms, and are fast sailers. A single boat will often take a hundred and twenty or thirty thousand fish in one night.

In salting herrings the fish are simply gutted and placed in the barrels in alternate layers with salt. Having been allowed to remain in that condition for some few days the barrel is found to contain a quantity of floating liquid, which is poured off; more herrings and layers of salt are added. The branding consists of affixing the month and day on which they were caught and cured, the name and address of the curer, and the presence or absence of the gills and alimentary canal. “Red” herrings are made so by first being placed in salt for three or four days, then being hung on spits which hold about twenty fish apiece. These spits are plunged several times in cold water, and after being sufficiently washed, are then removed to the open air and dried. Next they are suspended from the roof of the smoking-house, which has wood fires on the floor. Those for English use are smoked for ten days or so, but those for exportation often remain as long as three weeks before being packed. As has been mentioned elsewhere, they are used by the negroes of the West Indies as a medicinal corrective to the bad effects of a constant vegetable and fruit diet. Bloaters are cured more speedily. They are placed for a few hours only in a strong brine, are then spitted and well washed in cold water, and are smoked very slightly for about eight hours only, when they are ready for packing.

And now for an incident which occurred some years since, and which was indeed a “struggle for life,” although eventually the sufferer was landed at Yarmouth. It is a sad truism that danger is never so near to us as when we have least apparent cause to fear its presence, and the narrow escape of a seaman, named Charles Hayman, from a melancholy death, with his vessel in sight of his native soil, is only another of the many exemplifications of this stern truth. He belonged to the schooner Osprey, of London, and had just made a successful passage from Lagos, on the West Coast of Africa, with a cargo of palm oil. The Osprey was brought up and anchored off the North Foreland, when a tremendous sea rose and tore her from her anchors, driving her helpless and unmanageable into the North Sea.

Those on board at once made signals of distress, which were seen by the gallant little smack, Fear Not, truly a most appropriate name, and her sturdy crew at once went to the assistance of the disabled schooner. The master of the smack offered to take the crew of the Osprey on board, and the mate of the Osprey, believing her past all power of saving, gladly accepted the generous offer. The hurricane was still raging furiously, and it was with the [pg 251]greatest difficulty that a boat could be lowered from the Osprey, but pluck and perseverance succeeded at last, and the valuables and ship’s papers were, without delay, stowed away in the boat. The mate and Charles Hayman were the first to embark in the tiny craft, which was attached to the schooner by a rope, and the remainder of the crew were about to follow them, when a heavier sea than they had had as yet to contend against snapped the line and cast the boat adrift.

The waves washed over and into the boat, threatening to swamp it at any moment. Hayman and the mate failed completely to bale the water out, in spite of their incessant endeavours to do so, and Hayman, foreseeing the inevitable, stripped himself to the skin, and waited for the moment to come when the boat would capsize. He did not have to wait long in his nudity and the bitter cold; the boat spun over, and carried both men under water; however, they soon rose to the surface, succeeded in reaching the boat, which was floating bottom upwards, and clung to it with the despairing energy of drowning men. Heavy seas broke over them so persistently that scarcely a minute was allowed them for respiration, and the mate, a weakly man, with a low harrowing cry sank for the last time and for ever. Hayman battled on with the courage of a tiger. The smack bore down to him in the teeth of the gale. He was saved and succoured when death seemed about to seize him, and he was supplied with raiment and stimulants by his noble rescuers, and eventually landed at Yarmouth.

The sea has made, and still makes, many encroachments on the Norfolk coasts. Thus at the not inconsiderable fishing station of Sherringham several yards of cliff have been undermined and washed away in a few years’ time; and in 1810 a large inn, placed too near the sea, was thrown in a heap of ruins on the beach. The coast onward to Cromer, a now fashionable watering-place, protected by a breakwater and sea-wall, is extremely dangerous, and between it and Yarmouth there are five lights.