The Harvest of the Sea / A contribution to the natural and economic history of the British food fishes

by James Glass Bertram

The scene along the seabord from Buckhaven on the Firth of Forth to Buckie on the Firth of Moray is one of active preparation, and all concerned are hoping for a “lucky” fishing; “winsome” young lassies are praying for the success of their sweethearts’ boats, because if the season turns out well they will be married women at its close. Curers look sanguine, and the owners of free boats seem happy. The little children too—those wonderful little children one always finds in a fishing village, striving so manfully to fill up “daddy’s” old clothes—participate in the excitement: they have their winter’s “shoon” and “Sunday breeks” in perspective. At the quaint village of Gamrie, at Macduff, or Buckie, the talk of old and young, on coach or rail, from morning to night, is of herrings. There are comparisons and calculations about “crans” and barrels, and “broke” and “splitbellies,” and “full fish” and “lanks,” and reminiscences of great hauls of former years, and much figurative talk about prices and freights, and the cost of telegraphic messages. Then, if the present fishery be dull, hopes are expressed that the next one may be better. “Ony fish this mornin’?” is the first salutation of one neighbour to another: the very infants talk about “herrin’;” schoolboys steal them from the boats for the purpose of aiding their negotiations with the gooseberry woman: while wandering paupers are rewarded with one or two broken fish by good-natured sailors, when “the take” has been so satisfactory as to warrant such largess. At Wick the native population, augmented by four thousand strangers, wakens into renewed life; it is like Doncaster on the approach of the St. Leger. The summer-time of Wick’s existence begins with the fishery: the shops are painted on their outsides and are replenished within; the milliner and the tailor exhibit their newest fashions; the hardware merchant flourishes his most attractive frying-pans; the grocer amplifies his stock; and so for a brief period all is couleur de rose.

They are not all practical fishermen who go down to the sea for herring during the great autumnal fishing season. By far the larger portion of those engaged in the capture of this fish—particularly at the chief stations—are what are called “hired hands,” a mixture of the farmer, the mechanic, and the sailor; and this fact may account in some degree for a portion of the accidents which are sure to occur in stormy seasons. Many of these men are mere labourers at the herring-fishery, and have little skill in handling a boat; they are many of them farmers in the Lewis, or small crofters in the Isle of Skye. The real orthodox fisherman is a different being, and he is the same everywhere. If you travel from Banff to Bayonne you find that fishermen are unchangeable.

The men’s work is all performed at sea, and, so far as the capture of the herring is concerned, there is no display of either skill or cunning. The legal mode of capturing the herring is to take it by means of what is called a drift-net. The herring-fishery, it must be borne in mind, is regulated by Act of Parliament, by which the exact means and mode of capture are explicitly laid down. A drift-net is an instrument made of fine twine worked into a series of squares, each of which is an inch, so as to allow plenty of room for the escape of young herrings. Nets for herring are measured by the barrel-bulk, and each barrel will hold two nets, each net being fifty yards long and thirty-two feet deep. The larger fishing-boats carry something like a mile of these nets; some, at any rate, carry a drift which will extend two thousand yards in length. These drifts are composed of many separate nets, fastened together by means of what is called a back-rope, and each separate net of the series is marked off by a buoy or bladder which is attached to it, the whole being sunk in the sea by means of a leaden or other weight, and fastened to the boat by a longer or shorter trail-rope, according to the depth in the water at which it is expected to find the herrings. This formidable apparatus, which forms a great perforated wall, being let into the sea immediately after sunset, floats or drifts with the tide, so as to afford the herring an opportunity of striking against it, and so becoming captured—in fact they are drowned in the nets. The boats engaged in the drift-net fishing are of various sizes, and are strongly and carefully built: the largest, being upwards of thirty-five feet keel, with a large drift of nets and good sail and mast, will cost something like a sum of £200.

VIEW OF LOCHFYNE.

The other mode of fishing for herrings, which has existed for about a quarter of a century, is illegal, although it is as nearly as possible the same as is legally used to capture the pilchard on the coast of Cornwall. In the west of Scotland, on Lochfyne in particular, where it is still to some extent practised, it is called “trawling;” but the instrument of capture is in reality a “seine” net; and, so far as the size of the mesh is concerned, is all right. The mode of using this net I shall presently describe; in the meantime I may state that the practice of “seining” has given cause to much disputation and many quarrels, some of them resulting in violence and bloodshed; the whole dispute having given rise to the recent Commission of Inquiry. It is worth while, I think, to abridge the commissioners’ account of the cause of quarrel, and the arguments used on both sides of the question. The drift-net men assert that immature herrings are caught by the trawl, and that that mode of fishing breaks up the shoals, and that these scatter and do not again unite, as also that the seine destroys the spawn. A graver assertion is, that the trawled herrings are not fit for curing in consequence of their being injured in the capture; likewise that the seine-net fishers are given to brawling and mischief. The assertion is also made that it is quite impossible for the two kinds of fishing to be carried on together, especially in confined places like Lochfyne. The real reason is, I think, brought in last—viz. that the great quantities of fish taken on a sudden by the trawlers affect the markets and derange the prices—all to the great detriment of the drift-net men. The trawlers are quite able to answer all these questions both individually and by a general denial. They say that it is not their interest to contract the width of the mesh, and that, in fact, the trawl-net mesh is quite as large as the other. They assert that a seine-net is not so much calculated to disturb a shoal of herrings as the drift-net, which is of great length and at once obstructs the shoal. They deny that they have interfered with the spawning-beds, and also state that they have no particular interest in catching foul fish, as they sell their herrings chiefly in a fresh state, and say that their fish are most adapted for the fresh market, likewise that they can be cured as easily as herrings caught by the drift-nets. They emphatically deny being brawlers, or that they wilfully injure the drift-nets; and they assert that both kinds of fishing can perfectly well be carried on simultaneously on the same fishing-ground. In fact the trawlers, in my opinion, have thoroughly made out their case; and the commissioners, I am very glad to record, have decided in their favour.

The pilchard is generally captured by means of the seine-net, and we never hear of its being injured thereby. It is also cured in large quantities, the same as the herring, although the modus operandi is somewhat different.

The pilchard was at one time, like the herring, thought to be a migratory fish, but it has been found, as in the case of the common herring, to be a native of our own seas. In some years the pilchard has been known to shed its spawn in May, but the usual time is October, and Mr. Couch thinks that fish do not breed twice in the same year. Their food, we are told by Mr. Couch, is small crustaceous animals, as their stomachs are frequently crammed with a small kind of shrimp, and the supply of this kind of food is thought to be enormous. When on the coast, the assemblage of pilchards assumes an arrangement like that of a great army, and the vast shoal is known to be made up by the coming together of smaller bodies of that fish, and these frequently separate and rejoin, and are constantly shifting their position. The pilchard is not now so numerous as it was a few years ago, but very large hauls are still occasionally obtained. According to a recent statement in the Times, the present pilchard season (1865) seems to have been a very bad one—“the worst that has been experienced for upwards of twenty years. The great majority of the boats have not nearly cleared their expenses.”

Great excitement prevails on the coast of Cornwall during the pilchard season. Persons watch the water from the coast and signal to those who are in search of the fish the moment they perceive indications of a shoal. These watchers are locally called “huers,” and they are provided with signals of white calico or branches of trees, with which to direct the course of the boat, and to inform those in charge when they are upon the fish—the shoal being best seen from the cliffs. The pilchards are captured by the seine-net—that is, the shoal, or spot of a shoal, that has risen, is completely surrounded by a wall of netting, the principal boat and its satellites the volyer and the lurker, with the “stop-nets,” having so worked as quite to overlap each other’s wall of canvas. The place where the joining of the two nets is formed is carefully watched, to see that none of the fish escape at that place, and if it be too open, the fish are beaten back with the oars of some of the persons attending—about eighteen in all. In due time the seine is worked or hauled into shallow water for the convenience of getting out the fish, and it may perhaps contain pilchards sufficient to fill two thousand hogsheads. Generally speaking, four or five seines will be at work together, giving employment to a great number of the people, who may have been watching for the chance during many days. When the tide falls the men commence to bring ashore the fish, a tuck-net worked inside of the seine being used for safety; and the large shallow dipper boats required for bringing the fish to the beach may be seen sunk to the water’s edge with their burden, as successive bucketfuls are taken out of the nets and emptied into these conveyance vessels. To give the reader an idea of quantity, as connected with pilchard-fishing, I may state that it takes nearly three thousand fish to fill a hogshead. I have heard of a shoal being captured that took a fortnight to bring ashore. Ten thousand hogsheads of pilchards have been known to be taken in one port in a day’s time. The convenience of keeping the shoal in the water is obvious, as the fish need not be withdrawn from it till it is convenient to salt them. The fish are salted in curing-houses, great quantities of them being piled up into huge stacks, alternate layers of salt and fish. During the process of curing a large quantity of useful oil exudes from the heaps. The salting process is called “bulking,” and the fish are built up into stacks with great regularity, where they are allowed to remain for four weeks, after which they are washed and freed from the oil, then packed into hogsheads, and sent to Spain and Italy, to be extensively consumed during Lent, as well as at other fasting times. The hurry and bustle at any of the little Cornwall ports during the manipulation of a few shoals of pilchards must be seen, the excitement cannot be very well described.