THE MACKEEEL 183 



rather disconcertingly, at the end of the ' eighties ' the mackerel 

 began to turn up with the herrings in September. About the 

 same time large quantities of autumn mackerel began to appear 

 off the Cornish coast, and the east-coast drifters for a year or 

 two made very successful voyages after them. Then in 1904 

 and 1905 the fishery in Cornwall failed completely. From that 

 time on very few east-coast drifters steamed westwards after 

 mackerel at the end of the herring season, more especially after 

 the French (our best customers) had placed a heavy duty on 

 British mackerel exported to France. In 1906, without the 

 least w^arning, mackerel suddenly turned up on their old haunts 

 off Norfolk in May and June, and all hands turned out to catch 

 them. In 1908 the glut of November mackerel was so great 

 that in the middle of the herring harvest certain boat-owners 

 fitted out with mackerel-nets in place of herring-nets, and one 

 drifter caught 50,000 fish one night, while another made £450 

 in four nights ; in several cases the drift-nets sank to the 

 bottom with the weight of mackerel. 



In the meantime the industrial revolution in the fisheries 

 had come about, and the trawder fleet had changed from sail to 

 steam. So events had proved that whatever might be the cause 

 of the disappearance of the mackerel it was not, after all, due 

 to the operations of beam-trawlers or otter-trawlers. And to 

 this day causes of these caprices (so-called) — although one may 

 be perfectly certain that the impulse which guides the leaders 

 of the herring shoals is 7iot ' caprice ' — remain unknown. It 

 can be taken for granted that the mackerel come shorewards in 

 the spring with the object of spawning. They appear off the 

 coast of Kerry very early in spring ; a few weeks later they are 

 off the south-west of the Scillys, and by the beginning of May — 

 as we have seen — they are spawning on one part or another of 

 the British coast. But why do they suddenly cease to visit 

 a particular region ? Or, as suddenly, return to it ? Nobody 

 know^s. Yet it is important that fishermen should be told. For 

 with coals and nets and stores at their present prices it is 

 a desperate venture to dispatch a fleet of modern drifters on 

 a long voyage after mackerel — say from Yarmouth to the 

 Scillys — in the full knowledge that they may find no fish ; or on 

 the other hand may run into a glut so enormous that the 

 railways cannot suddenly improvise transport to deal with it ; 

 and only accurate knowledge of the conditions which attract 

 or repel the shoals can ever turn mackerel-fishing from a rather 

 blind gamble into a reasonable speculation. 



Meanwhile old fishermen on the east coast have noted that 

 rough weather with a good breeze which would send herrings 



