MACKEREL. 141 



season is one of great bustle and activity. The frequent 

 departures and arrivals of boats at this time form a lively 

 contrast to the more ordinary routine of other periods ; the 

 high price obtained for the early cargoes, and the large return 

 gained generally from the enormous numbers of this fish 

 sometimes captured in a single night, being the inducement 

 to great exertions. A few particulars from various sources 

 may not be uninteresting. 



In May 1807, the first Brighton boat-load of Mackerel 

 sold at Billingsgate for forty guineas per hundred, seven 

 shillings each, reckoning six score to a hundred ; the highest 

 price ever known at that market. The next boat-load pro- 

 duced but thirteen guineas per hundred. Mackerel were so 

 plentiful at Dover in 1808, that they were sold sixty for a 

 shilling. At Brighton, in June of the same year, the shoal 

 of Mackerel was so great, that one of the boats had the 

 meshes of her nets so completely occupied by them, that it 

 was impossible to drag them in ; the fish and nets, therefore, 

 in the end, sunk together ; the fishermen thereby sustaining 

 a loss of nearly 60/., exclusive of what the cargo, could it 

 have been got into the boat, would have produced. The 

 success of the fishery in 1821 was beyond all precedent. 

 The value of the catch of sixteen boats from Lowestoffe, on the 

 30th of June, amounted to 52527. ; and it is supposed that 

 there was no less an amount than 14-,000/. altogether realized 

 by the owners and men concerned in the fishery of the Suf- 

 folk coast.* In March 1833, on a Sunday, four Hastings 1 

 boats brought on shore ten thousand eight hundred Mackerel ; 

 and the next day, two boats brought seven thousand fish. 

 Early in the month of February 1834, one boat's crew from 



* In an interesting and useful sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth 

 and its neighbourhood, by C. and J. Paget, it is stated at page 16, that, in 

 1823, one hundred and forty-two lasts of Mackerel were taken theie. A last is 

 ten thousand. 



