FISHING STATIONS— ENGLAND. 231 



The history of Harwich as a fishing station is some- 

 what remarkable, for it exhibits a rise to a position of 

 the first importance in connection with a particular kind 

 of fishery, and then a gradual decline to insignificance ; 

 not because of its particular trade ceasing to exist, but 

 from its transfer to other ports. As a station for the 

 North Sea cod fishery, Harwich has now entirely lost 

 its importance, and there is but little prospect of its ever 

 regaining the name it once deservedly possessed. To 

 Harwich is due the introduction of welled-smacks,^ by 

 means of which the London markets have been for the 

 last hundred and fifty years supplied with " live cod " ; 

 and the vessels were at one time also largely used by the 

 Barking men in the trawl-fishery ; but their emj^loy- 

 ment for this purpose has been given up as the greater 

 cost of such vessels is not generally met by any cor- 

 responding advantage. 



In Mr. Groom's statement, previously referred to,^ it 

 is said that " In the year 1712, at Harwich, a seaport in 

 Essex, welled-smacks were first constructed, suitable for 

 fishing in the North Sea for cod-fish, &c. ; and between 

 that year and 1715 three vessels ofthat description were 

 built, but very inferior to those which were afterwards 

 constructed. In the year 1720 the number had in- 

 creased to 12, and in 1735 to 30. Of that number Mr, 

 Nathaniel Saunders (the progenitor of the three genera- 

 - tions of the celebrated fish factors and salesmen at Bil- 

 lingsgate) had six, and with four of these, which were 

 very superior to the other two, he visited the coast of 

 Scotland in the course of his fishing expeditions, and was 

 at that time the chief medium for conveying goods to 



' After the Dutch method, accordha^; to Mr. Robert Fraser in his Review of 

 the Doni'-stic Fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 5 (1818). 

 2 Pacre 226. 



