92 DEEP-SEA FISHING. 



number of the smacks ; and the addition of new and 

 larger vessels at some of the stations during the last 

 few years has far exceeded anything that could have 

 been anticipated. This large increase in the number of 

 trawlers has not been in consequence of any discovery 

 of new fishing grounds, but is due to the greater de- 

 mand for fish ; and this appears likely to increase 

 rather than to diminish. Trawl-fishing is a fairly 

 profitable business when managed by practical men ; 

 and as the master and men are not paid fixed wages, 

 except in the London vessels, but have their shares in 

 the proceeds of the fishing, it is their interest to work 

 only where they know they can find plenty of fish. 

 This they do regularly on the old grounds ; and no 

 greater fluctuation in the supply of fish from them by 

 each vessel has been observed recently than in former 

 times. 



In order to show how much may be done on any 

 particular trawling ground, we may say a few words 

 about the condition of the fishery at Brixham; and a 

 knowledge of the facts may possibly reassure those who 

 think the supply of sea fish is rapidly diminishing and 

 the fishermen as rapidly being ruined. Brixham has 

 long been famous as a fishing town ; it is essentially a 

 trawling station, and has been so beyond the memory 

 of anyone now living there. We may safely say that 

 trawling has been carried on from that town for at 

 least a hundred years ; and although the trawl-smacks 

 were much smaller thirty or forty years ago than at 

 the present time, the fishing has always been in the 

 deep water a few miles from the land except in very 

 bad weather, when some of the vessels would work 

 inside the headland ; and the smacks em23loyed in it 

 were intended to face any kind of weather. The 



