Having given a short sketch of the rise and progress of the Scotch herring business, some notes on the social aspect of the industry, and a general description of the present mode of catching and curing the fish, will probably prove interesting to those who have not been privileged to visit any of the great fishing-towns during the months of July and August, a time of each year when the mighty herring constitutes the sole topic of conversation.
At the harbours of the herring-towns in the end of June and beginning of July, boats are arriving from north, south, and west laden with all kinds of household goods; and uppermost are the fisher-folk’s beds and blankets, upon which are lying the wives and children, who have been taken by this route to save the expense of a trip by rail, but whose condition, from the effects of stormy seas, often demonstrates the folly of the fishermen’s financial policy. In addition to the fishermen and their belongings, every train brings hundreds of Highlanders from Inverness, Sutherland, Ross, and the Isles in search of employment on board the boats; and they, in conjunction with the influx of crofters (to be engaged for carting purposes), tramps, itinerant dealers, preaching representatives of various denominations, &c., soon swell the normal population by many thousands, and form as motley a crowd as can be well imagined. The fishing-towns of Aberdeenshire and more northern ports awaken, after a protracted period of somnolence, to the fact that the season of activity has arrived; and the streets which formerly looked bare and deserted, now teem with men, women, and children, all drawn together to share in the spoils of the deep. Order in such a miscellaneous population is sometimes not easily maintained, and the surging and unruly masses which on a Saturday night congregate about the leading thoroughfares tax the energies of the police to the uttermost; and if the Highlanders be on the ‘warpath’ from the effects of too liberal potations of their own ‘mountain dew,’ the question of local government has to be settled by military force—an instance of which took place at Fraserburgh in 1874, when fully a thousand Highlanders in an infuriated condition wrecked the police station, bombarded the town-house, and threatened to burn the town, and were only brought to their senses by the arrival of a detachment of soldiers from Aberdeen.
The evening of the seventh day of the week is invariably one of confusion, noise, and fight in every large fishing-town; but throughout the other nights, all frivolities are cast aside, and the single aim of the whole community is to secure as rich a harvest of herrings as possible. Under ordinary circumstances, the sight afforded by the departure from the harbour of so many craft crawling lazily along in twos, threes, and half-dozens, is very pretty; but when the prospects of a good fishing are exercising the fishermen’s minds, and every one is anxious to reach the fishing-ground early, the excitement and competition among the fishermen to secure a good start, transforms the harbour channel into a scene of the wildest confusion, where the fishermen shout, threaten, and at times deal blows at each other, playing tragedy and comedy in turns, to the intense delight of those watching their movements from the piers. Should the weather be favourable, the boats keep constantly streaming from the harbour-mouth; and if a fresh breeze prevails, a very short time will suffice to fill the bay with hundreds of the handy little craft, gaily ploughing their eastward course to the fishing-ground. By-and-by the horizon for a considerable stretch will be dotted with their brown sails, still holding onwards; and only when the sea and clouds join hands, do they finally disappear in the wide waste of waters.
On leaving the harbour and getting the sails set and trimmed, the crew of the craft betake themselves to comfortable quarters among the nets and spare sails lying about the deck, where local yarns are told, and the Highlanders sing Gaelic songs, or rehearse the leading incidents of their life in the Western Isles since last ‘she’ was in the east coast; but as the fishing-ground is neared, the stories cease, and every one, from the skipper down to the ‘scummer’ boy—the lad who is employed with a small hand-net to pick any herrings out of the water that happen to fall from the nets—eagerly scans the water in hopes of descrying indications of fish. Should the wished-for appearances be discovered, so much the better; but it often happens that no certain proofs of the existence of fish are obtained, and after reaching a distance where fish are supposed to abound, the sails are lowered, and the men commence to cast the nets into the sea in the dusk of the evening. In doing this, a small portion of the sail is hoisted, and while the craft moves slowly through the water, the fishermen continue casting their nets overboard, until their fleet of say, fifty, nets, attached to one another, and extending in a direct line for a length of two thousand yards, are shot, the whole hanging perpendicularly in the water, and suspended from a rope, to which is fastened skin or metallic buoys floating on the surface of the water. When the whole of the nets belonging to the boats engaged at a large station are set, the sea for a stretch of many miles is one complete network, from which the herrings can scarcely escape; and the work falling upon the fishermen nightly in shooting and hauling their nets may be guessed from the fact that the netting used by the Scotch fishermen, if stretched in a direct line, would extend ten thousand miles, or something like three times across the Atlantic.
Having got the nets safely into the deep, the mast is lowered, the light hoisted, and everything put into its proper place for the night; and as the craft drifts slowly along with the wind or tide, surrounded by hundreds of other fishing-boats, not a sound is heard save the occasional whistle of a steamer slowly threading its way through the floating hamlet, or the shrill cry of the expectant seabirds. On board the boats, the crews have retired to rest, with the exception of one or two left to act as the watch, but who, when their conversation runs dry, invariably seek change in the arms of Morpheus, and trust to providence to fulfil the duties which they had undertaken. Once or twice during the night the skipper causes a net or two to be pulled up; and if the prospects of a successful fishing are good, the position occupied is retained; but if no herrings are in the nets, it is not uncommon for the crew to remove to another spot, in hopes of meeting in with better luck, where the labour of shooting the nets has again to be undergone.
As the morning breaks, the crews bestir themselves, and at an early hour the work of hauling commences, which being accomplished sooner or later, according to the weight of fish secured, all canvas is set upon the craft; and as she speeds steadily through the sea, causing the wavelets rippling at the bow to sparkle brilliantly in the morning sun, the crew, all unconscious of the glorious panorama spread before them, actively engage in shaking the herrings out of the nets and otherwise preparing for discharging their catch on reaching the harbour. As the net hangs like a curtain in the water, herring in their progress get their heads into the meshes, whence they cannot retreat, and are thus held captive till the nets are hauled on board and the fish shaken into the hold. On many occasions the herrings strike so densely that almost a whole complement of nets sink to the bottom, which often entails a loss upon a single crew of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds; while at other times the craft are so deeply laden with the precious freight, that they run the harbour for a distance of perhaps forty miles, with the water occasionally playing upon their decks, and only saved from foundering by the extreme calmness of the weather. In many seasons, the fishing proves a complete blank for a protracted period; and as the whole community in the fishing-towns is entirely dependent upon the success of the industry, such occasions throw the spirits of everybody below zero, and the usual bustle and smiling faces give place to solemn countenances; and curers, coopers, and others stand in groups on the piers and at the street corners discussing the fishermen’s chances and prophesying the result of next week’s fishing.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XXVI.
No human eye ever again beheld Wilberforce Whitaker, alive or dead. The torrent that had washed down the gap in the narrow horsepath tore away with it in the course of that evening’s rain a great mass of tottering earth that had long trembled on the edge of the precipice; and when next day the governor’s servants went down in awed silence to hunt among the débris for the mangled body, they found nothing but a soaked hat on the road behind, and a broken riding-whip close to the huge rent that yawned across the path by the crumbling ledge of newly fallen clay. Louis Delgado alone could tell of what had happened; and in Louis Delgado’s opinion, Dr Whitaker’s crushed and shapeless body must be lying below under ten thousand tons of landslip rubbish. ‘I see de gentleman haltin’ on de brink ob de hole,’ he said a hundred times over to his gossips next day, ‘and I tink I hear him call aloud someting as him go ober de tip ob de big precipice. But it doan’t sound to me ezackly as if him scared and shoutin’; ’pears more as if him singing to hisself a kind ob mounful miserable psalm-tune.’