Living Silver 



ent at all the jobs she is expected to do. Almost any other kind of 

 ship is designed specifically for one job, for carrying cargoes or for 

 towing other vessels, for lying static among the big waters or for 

 racing from port to port. But a trawler must be capable of doing 

 half a dozen specific jobs and she is, therefore, seldom better than 

 a most inadequate compromise between conflicting demands. In 

 the first place, she must sail, and as quickly as possible; for her 

 catch must be back to market before it has had time to decay ; and 

 must sometimes travel two thousand miles before it can be sold. 

 Then again, speed is economic since lack of it means that she 

 spends more time in going backwards and forwards between the 

 grounds, and to and fro over them, than she spends in fishing. And 

 all the time she is travelling. All the time she is using fuel, coal 

 or oil, money. And a trawler must be able to tow. She must be 

 like a tug, able to make an even course through a high swell. She 

 must have stability. She must also have strength in the beam, be 

 able to sit out long hours in a thwart sea, like a lightship. Then 

 too, she must be capable of carrying a cargo. And that cargo must 

 be easy to load ; for the loading will not be done in the stillness of 

 a dock backwater but, more probably, in the swell that follows a 

 full gale ; at least , in the open sea . On top of all this , she has a crew, 

 much larger than that of a cargo vessel of similar tonnage, and that 

 crew must be accommodated : so the trawler must be like a pas- 

 senger vessel. How then could there be a perfect trawler? 



There were certainly none in Aberdeen when Jan first visited 

 the fish-market. Occasionally a streamlined Icelandic vessel 

 would unload, or an oil-burning Norwegian, or one of the new 

 Belgian trawlers. They too had their disadvantages but they still 

 set a standard of design that should have shamed the owners of the 

 home fleet. Most of it was over forty years old and had long since 

 been reduced to units of scraggy rust as obsolete as the Caroon, 

 uncomfortable, dangerous, inefficient ships that threatened con- 

 tinually to ruin their owners and drown their crews. They were 

 known as scratchers and they sailed out once or twice a week to 

 the near and middle waters of the North Sea, going as far as the 



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