18 THE GREAT FISHERIES 



plaice, catfish, and halibut ; raided the cod off Trondjhem ; 

 rounded North Cape, and raided the plaice and haddock and 

 cod of the Barents Sea ; felt out westward and fished the 

 Rockall Bank and other banks between Iceland and Scotland, 

 for haddock, ling, and cod. Their catch was about 134,000 ^ tons 

 in 1913. An Iceland voyage averages about 68 tons in x\pril. 



4. TJiG South-Western Deep-Sea Squadron. These men first 

 learnt at the beginning of this century to trawl for the hake at 

 200 fathoms and over on the very edge of the coast banks. To 

 haul their gear meant to wind up two miles of stout wire cable 

 on their great winches. Thus equipped, they pioneered the 

 hake and bream and skate fisheries right away (along the slopes 

 running down to the abyss) from the south coast of Ireland 

 through the Bay of Biscay to the southward. They only 

 stopped their southward exploration because coral on the 

 bottom makes trawhng impossible south of the Canaries. 

 They have clamoured to know whether marketable fish lived 

 at 300 fathoms and lower on the slopes of the abyss. ^ ' If they 

 are there,' they say, ' we will catch them.' They feel up to 

 Rockall and the westward of Scotland also, where they overlap 

 the Northern Squadron. In 1913, English ^ vessels caught 

 75,000 tons. 



5. The Western Squadron consists of smaller vessels who catch 

 the soles, skates, and cod and^ plaice on the shallows between 

 Ireland and the west coast of Wales and England, as their 

 ' opposite numbers ' on the south-east work the shallows of the 

 North Sea. In 1913 English vessels caught 14,000 tons. 



It is true that there is much overlapping of function among the 

 * staff officers ' — the owners who direct these squadrons — and 

 (to a lesser extent) among the executive officers who command 

 their ships. But fishing, Hke most other crafts worth knowing, 

 is a specialist's job. The first-class trawl skipper is a self-trained 

 marine topographer who must know the sea-bed and the waters 

 which cover it, and a great deal about the animals and plants 

 which have their being on his hunting grounds. So most men 

 speciaHze. A captain bound for Iceland, for instance, from 

 the Humber will seldom shoot a trawl in the North Sea. And 

 there leaps to the mind the case of an aged skipper who had 

 asked for a ship and had been given a httle North Sea trawler 

 to fish during the war. He was told to take her into the North 

 Sea, and refused — ' I'm an Iceland man, I am.' So ho went to 



* The Scottish statistics do not show the distribution of the Scottish trawlers 

 over these areas, so, for comparative purposes, the English catches only can 

 be entered. 



' Hjort has answered this question. Sec p. 112. 



