When Ben's uncle was a smack-boy the trawlers, after they had caught as many fish as they could carry in a deep well in their boat, used to sail away as fast as they could to Billingsgate Market, or to some place where people would buy their fish and send it by railway to London; but now the old fisherman said they had much bigger vessels, and would stay out sometimes for four or five weeks tossing about in the North Sea, or, as it is sometimes called, the German Ocean, and dragging the great trawl-nets night and day.
"Not much time to play, Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you to keep out the cold."
"But you don't keep the fish long on board, do you, uncle?" asked Ben.
"No, no, my lad. A fast-sailing boat that we call a cutter comes and goes from shore to the fleet of trawlers, and takes the fish off; backwards and forwards it goes, and away goes the fish directly it's sold—up to London, or elsewhere, where there's millions of mouths waiting for it. Ah! I well remember when the smack-boys, or the fisher-boys, would have to help to take the fish off in a boat to the cutter on a dark night, and many a time the poor fellows would get capsized, and afterwards go down in that cold North Sea. Hard work, my lad, hard fare; and in danger half the time. Things are better now, perhaps; but we're out longer a good deal, and there's a big fleet that belongs to a company that keeps the men and the boys out for weeks at a time, and fetches all that they catch, so that by the time they get ashore the poor fellows are pretty near worn out. Of course the cutter takes out food for 'em, but it can't take 'em out warmth and dry clothes, and snug beds, and every year there is some of the vessels lost, and perhaps all on board lost too."
"Well," says Ben, looking very solemn; "there's some that get lost on land too. They fall ill or get a bad cough, or have some sort of accident with machinery or something, you know, uncle; but we're obliged to work all the same."
"Well said, my boy Ben," said the fisherman. "The thing is to do our duty, whatever it may be, and to pray that we may be made able to do it. Some of our smack-boys go to school when they're at home, and there's a mission-room where they go to hear and to read the Bible, and have teas and singing, and various treats, and some fun too sometimes. Yes, things are better than they used to be in my young days."
It was a long journey to Yarmouth, but Ben greatly enjoyed it, and when he and his uncle got there they went at once to have a look at the sea.
Such a great broad expanse of soft yellowish sandy beach, where the great waves came rolling in! such a long pier where people were fishing with hooks and lines, and sometimes catching a codling or a whiting! "I'll go and have a try at that by-and by," said Ben; "but what are those great wooden towers that look like a sort of big puzzle stuck up on end?"
"They're the look-out towers, Ben. Now, do you see that cutter over yonder, coming into shore with its big sail like a sea-bird's wing? Keep your eye on it for a minute, and then look at the top of that tower, and you'll see that there are men there that have got their eyes and their telescopes on it too. Now do you see these carts coming along, and do you see those black barges floating ready to pull out when the cutter comes near in shore? The cutter will unload a rare lot of fish. The men on the look-out tower saw her coming, and signalled to the barges and the carts to be ready. That shipload of fish will be off by a special train to-night, Ben; and if you were in London you might, if you could afford it, have some of it."
"But where's the herrings—the Yarmouth bloaters, you know?" asked Ben.