Living Silver 



advanced, whitening into surf as it retired. But every w^ave left 

 something of itself behind, a pound, perhaps, or half a stone of 

 w^ater, congealed into ice on the gunwales, the shrouds, the wheel- 

 house windows. And another wave came and left its deposit of 

 ice, each wave coming from the same direction, each adding bal- 

 last to one side of the ship, until, finally, when even the mast was 

 white as a pillar of salt, the ship became topheavy with ice. It 

 turned turtle and went down. 



On a single day in January of 195^^ two ships with all hands had 

 been lost in this way off the north-west coast of Iceland, but even 

 such calamities could not deter the deep-water fleets. On the 

 following day they were at it again, scooping hundredweights of 

 living silver from their salt and unruly treasury. And the inshore 

 fishermen were no less given to taking risks. After the war, when 

 the North Sea was still a gigantic minefield, they fished it fear- 

 lessly. Most of them had spent the war years aboard minesweepers 

 and they had thus lost the natural terror with which other sea- 

 going people viewed the dangers of a mine at sea. It so happened 

 that many of the best grounds were thick with explosives and, 

 since prices were very high, the more adventurous or foolhardy 

 among the skippers could not resist the temptations offered by a 

 rich catch over dangerous waters. If a mine was dragged aboard, 

 it was dismantled and thrown away. The crew might become 

 restive and leave at the end of such a trip but a skipper who was 

 consistently landing the biggest of marketable shots did not find it 

 difficult to replace such deserters. He sailed again, and returned 

 with an even bigger haul, and again, and again. Till, one day, he 

 disappeared. Nobody could be really certain it was a mine that 

 got him. They could only whisper rumours while the deserters 

 congratulated themselves. 



As time wore on, the minefields were cleared but so too were 

 the fishing grounds. It became more and more difficult for an 

 inshore skipper to make a profit on a North Sea trip. Now, in- 

 deed, he had safety but his pay-packet was no longer satisfactory. 

 All kinds of devices were developed to increase fishing efficiency 



142 



