From the heights of Pulteneytown, overlooking the quays and curers’ stations, one has before him, as it were, an extended plain, covered with thousands and tens of thousands of barrels, interspersed at short distances with the busy scene of delivery, of packing, and of salting, and all the bustle and detail attendant on the cure. It is a scene difficult to describe, and has ever struck those witnessing it for the first time with wonder and surprise.
Having visited Wick in the very heat of the season, and for the express purpose of gaining correct information about this important branch of our national industry, I am enabled to offer a slight description of the place and its appurtenances. Travellers by the steamboat usually arrive at the very time the “herring-drave” is making for the harbour; and a beautiful sight it is to see the magnificent fleet of boats belonging to the district, radiant in the light of the rising sun, all steadily steering to the one point, ready to add a large quota to the wealth of industrial Scotland. As we wend our way from the little jagged rock at which we are landed by the small boat attendant on the steamer, we obtain a glimpse of the one distinguishing feature of the town—the herring commerce. On all sides we are surrounded by herring. On our left hand countless basketfuls are being poured into the immense gutting-troughs, and on the right hand there are countless basketfuls being carried from the three or four hundred boats which are ranged on that particular side of the harbour; and behind the troughs more basketfuls are being carried to the packers. The very infants are seen studying the “gentle art;” and countless rows of the breechless gamins de Wick are busy hooking up the silly “poddlies.” All around the atmosphere is humid; the sailors are dripping, the herring-gutters and packers are dripping, and every thing and person appears wet and comfortless; and as you pace along you are nearly ankle-deep in brine. Meantime the herrings are being shovelled about in the large shallow troughs with immense wooden spades, and with very little ceremony. Brawny men pour them from the baskets on their shoulders into the aforesaid troughs, and other brawny men dash them about with more wooden spades, and then sprinkle salt over each new parcel as it is poured in, till there is a sufficient quantity to warrant the commencement of the important operation of gutting and packing. Men are rushing wildly about with note-books, making mysterious-looking entries. Carts are being filled with dripping nets ready to hurry them off to the fields to dry. The screeching of saws among billet-wood, and the plashing of the neighbouring water-wheel, add to the great babel of sound that deafens you on every side. Flying about, blood-bespattered and hideously picturesque, we observe the gutters; and on all hands we may note thousands of herring-barrels, and piles of billet-wood ready to convert into staves. At first sight every person looks mad—some appear so from their costume, others from their manner—and the confusion seems inextricable; but there is method in their madness, and even out of the chaos of Wick harbour comes regularity, as I have endeavoured to show.
So soon as a sufficient quantity of fish has been brought from the boats and emptied into the gutting-troughs, another of the great scenes commences—viz. the process of evisceration. This is performed by females, hundreds of whom annually find well-paid occupation at the gutting-troughs. It is a bloody business; and the gaily-dressed and dashing females whom we had observed lounging about the curing-yards, waiting for the arrival of the fish, are soon most wonderfully transmogrified. They of course put on a suit of apparel adapted to the business they have in hand—generally of oilskin, and often much worn. Behold them, then, about ten or eleven o’clock in the forenoon, when the gutting scene is at its height, and after they have been at work for an hour or so: their hands, their necks, their busts, their
“Dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms”—
their every bit about them, fore and aft, are spotted and besprinkled o’er with little scarlet clots of gills and guts; or as Southey says of Don Roderick, after the last and fatal fight—
“Their flanks incarnadined,
Their poitral smear’d with blood”—
See yonder trough, surrounded by a score of fierce eviscerators, two of them wearing the badge of widowhood! How deftly they ply the knife! It is ever a bob down to seize a herring, and a bob up to throw it into the basket, and the operation is over. It is performed with lightning-like rapidity by a mere turn of the hand, and thirty or forty fish are operated upon before you have time to note sixty ticks of your watch. These ruthless widows seize upon the dead herrings with such a fierceness as almost to denote revenge for their husbands’ deaths; for they, alas! fell victims to the herring lottery, and the widows scatter about the gills and guts as if they had no bowels of compassion.
In addition to herrings that are pickled and those sold in a fresh state, great quantities are made into what are called “bloaters,” or transformed into “reds.” At Yarmouth immense quantities of bloaters and reds are annually prepared for the English markets. The bloaters are very slightly cured and as slightly smoked, being prepared for immediate sale; but the herrings brought into Yarmouth are cured in various ways: the bloaters are for quick sale and speedy consumption; then there is a special cure for fish sent to the Mediterranean—“Straits-men” I think these are called; then there are the black herrings, which have a really fine flavour. In fact the Yarmouth herrings are so cured as to be suitable to particular markets. It may interest the general reader to know that the name of “bloater” is derived from the herring beginning to swell or bloat during the process of curing. Small logs of oak are burned to produce the smoke, and the fish are all put on “spits” which are run through the gills. The “spitters” of Yarmouth are quite as dexterous as the gutters of Wick, a woman being able to spit a last per day. Like the gutters and packers of Wick, the spitters of Yarmouth work in gangs. The fish, after being hung and smoked, are packed in barrels, each containing seven hundred and fifty fish.
The Yarmouth boats do not return to harbour every morning, like the Scotch boats; being decked vessels of some size, from fifty to eighty tons, costing about £1000, and having stowage for about fifty lasts of herrings, they are enabled to remain at sea for some days, usually from three to six, and of course they are able to use their small boats in the fishery, a man or two being left in charge of the large vessel, while the majority of the hands are out in the boats fishing. There has always been a busy herring-fishery at the port of Yarmouth. A century ago upwards of two hundred vessels were fitted out for the herring-fishery, and these afforded employment to a large number of people—as many as six thousand being employed in one way or the other in connection with the fishery. The Yarmouth boats or busses are not unlike the boats once used in Scotland, which have been already described. They carry from fifteen to twenty lasts of herrings (a last, counted fisherwise, is more than 13,000 herrings, but nominally it is 10,000 fish), and are manned with some fourteen men or boys.