202 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



The rupture of the peace of Amiens in the next year 

 stopped these hopeful beginnings. The blow was the 

 heavier, as considerable preparations for sea-fishery had 

 been made in the first months of the year, under the con- 

 tinued stimulus of premiums, which were granted again 

 in 1803, to the amount of fl./oo and fl.5oo, for the next 

 eleven years, for busses and hookers employed in the 

 cured-herring and cod-fisheries. To prevent the utter loss 

 of the capital invested in vessels and equipment by the 

 time war had recommenced, the Committee for the Grand 

 Fishery asked Government to apply for passports from 

 England ; but far from acceding to the petition, the 

 " Staatsbewind >: on June 6th ordered the Committee to 

 prevent the sailing of busses. Several shipowners next 

 applied for permission to sail under the colours of neutral 

 Powers, but were likewise forbidden to carry out their 

 purpose. Coast fishermen were subjected to particularly 

 rigorous measures. Napoleon's grand project of a descent 

 on the British shores was then so far ripened as to make 

 him anxious for the preservation of a store of flat-bottomed 

 vessels in the hands of his ally and subordinate the 

 Batavian Republic ; whence England was, with excellent 

 reasons, peculiarly anxious to capture and destroy Dutch 

 fishing craft from the coast Many smacks were taken in 

 the beginning of the war ; and so great was the terror 

 spread by these events, that an order against the sailing of 

 bum-boats from the side was soon followed by another, 

 purporting that all such boats should be secured out of the 

 enemy's sight behind the downs. It is, and probably was 

 always customary to haul the " pink en " or bum-boats up 

 the beach, close under the outer declivity of the sand- 

 downs, either for repair or during the short interval 

 between the herring and hook-fishery seasons, so high as to 



