THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 145 



These vessels until recent years have been principally 

 employed in two distinct trades, viz., catching herring to 

 be smoked, and catching fish to be sold fresh, cod and 

 haddock included. The former fishery was generally 

 exercised off Yarmouth, in the so-called " Deepwater," 

 and the latter all over the North Sea, on the Dogger bank 

 especially. The name of "neeringhe van den Versche" or 

 " trade of the fresh," is generally applied to the latter 

 fishery only, although herring salted preparatory to smoking 

 is frequently, though improperly, styled "fresh herring'' 

 Both the trades now alluded to were under the Republic 

 exercised only in flat and square smacks called pinken or 

 bomschniten (bum-boats) the model of which can have 

 undergone no considerable variations, as they were and 

 are bound from villages having no ports, and therefore 

 must be built so as to bear going ashore and remaining 

 on dry land at low tide, without prejudice to their soundness. 

 The Zuider Zee fisheries, which have a history of their own, 

 may also be comprised under the general term of coast 

 fishery. This chapter will therefore treat of three subjects 

 essentially different, viz., the fisheries for smoke-herring 

 and fresh fish in the North Sea, and Zuiderzee fishery. 



Bum-boats were, in the Republican period, owned at the 

 North Sea coast villages of ter Heide, Scheveningen, 

 Katwijk, Noordwijk, Zandvoort, Wijk op Zee, and Egmond. 

 Vessels of the kind never \vent as far north as the coast of 

 Scotland in those times, and consequently had no share 

 in the earlier herring fishery. They went for herring only 

 to " Deepwater," off Yarmouth, in autumn and in the latter 

 weeks of summer ; and although herring caught then and 

 there was successfully cured in keeled vessels, and bum-boat 

 fisheries were at first not prohibited from curing it likewise, 

 they have long abstained from the practice, probably on 



