Living Silver 



only one dorsal fin where the cod had three, and a single ventral 

 where the cod had two. But both became heraldic animals be- 

 cause both represented the economic basis of a City and a State. 

 Three cities, at least, for the Inner Three of the Hanseatic League 

 were all herring ports, Hamburg, Stradsund and Lubeck. From 

 the thirteenth to the fifteenth century this League was the all- 

 powerful maritime force of Europe, levying dues relentlessly on 

 its members but releasing them from the fear of competition. It 

 was toward the end of this period that the English and the French 

 had fought the Battle of the Herrings, in 1429 was it, or 1430? 

 The English had won. The Duke of Suffolk's men had received 

 their salt herring and been able to go on fighting and winning until 

 the Maid of Arc caught up with them. 



Salt herring. It reminded him again of Poland, of Novograd too, 

 that had been a member of the Hanseatic League and the beginning 

 of Slavic nationalism. And the different shapes a herring could 

 take. Marinetted herring, bloaters, salt and fresh herring, tinned 

 herring in tomato sauce, in natural oil, chickenfeed, superphos- 

 phate, soap, herring fried in oatmeal, pickled hot, barrelled, 

 boxed, cellophane packaged, red, white, shotten and full, soft 

 roes, hard roes, kippers, Rembrandt, Bismark. And always there 

 were more of them. Michael Graham, who was in charge of Eng- 

 lish fisheries research, had just repeated his admonition that the 

 herring was the most underfished species of the Northern hemi- 

 sphere, the hemisphere that caught ninety-eight per cent of the 

 world landings of fish. 



How did these numbers manage to get there in the first place 

 and how could they survive in spite of the depredations of man, 

 of fish, of the herring whales and the dolphins? A cod had been 

 known to lay six million eggs, a herring never more than about 

 thirty thousand. It would seem to follow that there should be 

 two hundred times as many cod as herring even if the herring were 

 not a more timid and vulnerable titbit. Yet the opposite was the 

 case. If the Pacific variety of herring were included there were 

 very probably two hundred herring for every single cod. Yet 



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