The demand for native and other oysters by the Londoners alone is something wonderful, and constitutes of itself a large branch of commerce—as the numerous gaily-lit shell-fish shops of the Strand and Haymarket will testify. These emporiums for the sale of oysters and stout are mostly fed through Billingsgate, which is the chief piscatorial bourse of the great metropolis. It is not easy to arrive at correct statistics of what London requires in the way of oysters; but, if we set the number down as being nearly 800,000,000 we shall not be very far wrong. To provide these, the dredgermen or fisher people at Colchester, and other places on the Essex and Kent coasts, prowl about the sea-shore and pick up all the little oysters they can find—these ranging from the size of a threepenny-piece to a shilling; and persons and companies having layings purchase them to be nursed and fattened for the table, as already described. At other places the spawn itself is collected, by picking it from the pieces of stone, or the old oyster-shells to which it may have adhered; and it is nourished in pits, as at Burnham, for the purpose of being sold to the Whitstable people, who carefully lay that brood in their grounds. A good idea of the oyster-traffic may be obtained from the fact that, in some years, the Whitstable men have paid £30,000 for brood, in order to keep up the stock of their far-famed oysters. Mr. Hawkins says that he knows a man who is proprietor of only three acres of oyster-layings, and yet from that confined area he annually sells from 1500 to 2000 wash of the best native oysters.
The chief centre in England for the distribution of oysters is Billingsgate, and the countless thousands of bushels of this molluscous dainty which find their way through “Oyster Street” to this Fish Exchange mark the everlasting demand. Oysters are sold by the bushel, and every measure is made to pay a toll of fourpence, and another sum of a like amount for carriage to the shore. All oysters sold at Billingsgate are liable to this eightpenny tax. The London oysters—and I regret to say it, for there is nothing finer than a genuine oyster—are sophisticated in the cellars of the buyers, by being stuffed with oatmeal till the flavour is all but lost in the fat. The flavour of oysters—like the flavour of all other animals—depends on their feeding. The fine goût of the highly-relished Prestonpans oysters is said to be derived from the fact of their feeding on the refuse liquor which flows from the saltpans of that neighbourhood. I have eaten of fine oysters taken from a bank that was visited by a rather questionable stream of water; they were very large, fat, and of exquisite flavour, the shell being more than usually well filled with “meat.” What the London oysters gain in fat by artificial feeding they assuredly lose in flavour. The harbour of Kinsale (a receptacle for much filth) used to be remarkable for the size and flavour of its oysters. The beds occupied the whole harbour, and the oysters there were at one time very plentiful, and far exceeded the Cork oysters in fame (and they have long been famous); but they were so overfished as to be long since used up, much to the loss of the Irish people, who are particularly fond of oysters, and delight in their “Pooldoodies” and “Red-banks” as much as the English and Scotch do in their “Natives” and “Pandores.”
The far-famed Scottish oysters obtained near Edinburgh, and once so cheap, are becoming scarce and dear, and the scalps or beds are being so rapidly overfished that, in a short time, if the devastation be not at once stopped, the pandore and Newhaven oysters will soon be but names. Some of the greediest of the dredgermen actually capture the brood, and, barrelling it up, send it away to Holland and other places, to supply the artificial beds now being constructed off that coast. English buyers also come and pick up all they can procure for the Manchester and other markets. Thus there is an inducement, in the shape of a good price, to the Newhaven men to spoliate the beds—another illustration of “killing the goose for the golden egg.” The growth of the railway system has also extended the Newhaven men’s market. Before the railway period very few boats went out at the same time to dredge; then oysters were very plentiful—so plentiful, in fact, that three men in a boat could, with ease, procure 3000 oysters in a couple of hours; but now, so great is the change in the productiveness of the scalps, that three men consider it an excellent day’s work to procure about the fifth part of that quantity. The Newhaven oyster-beds lie between Inchkeith and Newhaven, and belong to the city of Edinburgh, and were given in charge to the free fishermen of that village, on certain conditions, which are at present systematically disregarded. The rental paid by the Newhaven men to the city is £10 per annum, and a sum of £25 per annum is paid by the same parties for the use of the oyster-beds belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, which are also situated in the Firth of Forth, just off the port of Granton; and besides these there are one or two beds in the Firth of Forth of considerable size belonging to the crown, which have been also worked by the Newhaven men. The beds are of great extent, and years ago used to yield for the consumption of the city of Edinburgh from six to eight thousand oysters a day, but I question very much if we shall obtain anything like that quantity during this present season. The proprietor of the most popular Edinburgh tavern experiences the greatest difficulty in obtaining oysters; and I take this opportunity of informing the Lord Provost of that city that, in the course of a year or two, “Auld Reekie” will, most probably, unless the authorities actively bestir themselves in the matter, have to obtain her oysters from Colchester or Whitstable. Last season (1864-65), thousands of barrels full of young oysters were disposed off to English and foreign fishermen at the rate of about 20s. a barrel. This, surely, is a state of things dreadful for Scotchmen to contemplate. In former and more energetic times, the municipal authorities of the modern Athens used to venture on a voyage of exploration to view their scalps, and afterwards hold a feast of shells, as they do yet at some oyster towns on the annual opening of the fishery.[15]
OYSTER-DREDGING AT COCKENZIE.
The “pandore” oysters are principally obtained at the village of Prestonpans and the neighbouring one of Cockenzie. Dredging for oysters is a principal part of the occupation of the Cockenzie fishermen. There are few lovers of this dainty mollusc who have not heard of the “whiskered pandores.” The pandore oyster is so called because of being found in the neighbourhood of the saltpans. It is a large fine-flavoured oyster, as good as any “native” that ever was brought to table, the Pooldoodies of Burran not excepted. The men of Cockenzie derive a good portion of their annual income from the oyster traffic. The pursuit of the oyster, indeed, forms a phase of fisher life there as distinct as at Whitstable. The times for going out to dredge are at high tide and low tide. The boats used are the smaller-sized ones employed in the white fishery. The dredge somewhat resembles in shape a common clasp-purse; it is formed of network, attached to a strong iron frame, which serves to keep the mouth of the instrument open, and acts also as a sinker, giving it a proper pressure as it travels along the oyster-beds. When the boat arrives over the oyster-scalps, the dredge is let down by a rope attached to the upper ring, and is worked by one man, except in cases where the boat has to be sailed swiftly, when two are employed. Of course, in the absence of wind recourse is had to the oars. The tension upon the rope is the signal for hauling the dredge on board, when the entire contents are emptied into the boat, and the dredge returned to the water. These contents, not including the oysters, are of a most heterogeneous kind—stones, seaweed, star-fish, young lobsters, crabs, actinæ—all of which are usually returned to the water, some of them being considered as the most fattening ground-bait for the codfish. The whelks, clams, mussels, and cockles, and occasionally the crabs, are used by the fishermen as bait for their white-fish lines. Once, in a conversation with a veteran dredger as to what strange things might come in the dredge, he replied, “Well, master, I don’t know what sort o’ curiosities we sometimes get; but I have seen gentlemen like yourself go out with us a-dredgin’, and take away big baskets full o’ things as was neither good for eating or looking at. The Lord knows what they did with them.” During the whole time that this dredging is being carried on, the crew keep up a wild monotonous song, or rather chant, in which they believe much virtue to lie. They assert that it charms the oysters into the dredge.
“The herring loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind;
But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,