570 FISHING NETS, WITH SPECIAL KEFERENCE TO THE OTTER-TKAWL. 



of all trawls. Its introduction is of so recent a date that changes and 

 experiments are still being made — on the boards, the size and shape 

 of the net, ground-rope, and so on, so that it seems as if the final form 

 had not yet been attained. 



The principle of this trawl, as is well known, is that of the kite, 

 the net representing the " tail," the boards the body of the kite, and 

 the warp the string. When a current of air strikes on the kite it 

 tends to drive the kite as a whole away from the string, but the lower 

 portion, being the larger, tends to go away from the string more than 

 the upper. Hence the head of the kite tends to incline towards the 

 string, and consequently the kite, as a whole, moves upward until 

 it has reached such an angle to the direction of the wind that the 

 forces acting above and below the line of the string are in equilibrium. 

 The otter-boards act in a similar fashion when drawn through the 

 water. 



Though the principle of the otter-board had been long known, and 

 in use for carrying out a line from the beach or the side of a boat, 

 it was not until between 1860 and 1870 that experiments were made 

 with it on trawls. The earliest mention I can find is that made by 

 Holdsworth {loc. cit.) in 1874, and the invention is there ascribed 

 to a Mr. Musgrave. From other evidence it appears, however, that 

 Musgrave merely introduced the otter-trawl to the notice of Irish 

 fishermen, and that Mr. Hearder, an electrician and inventor of 

 considerable repute, was really the inventor. 



One can see from the figure given by Holdsworth that the original 

 otter-trawl invented by Hearder differed from the modern trawls in 

 that the ground-rope was very little behind the head-rope. The boards, 

 however, were fixed up in a similar fashion to those later patented 

 by Scott. These trawls were much used by amateurs, especially from 

 steam yachts, but it was not till some years later that professional 

 fishermen adopted them. 



According to Spillmann,* the captain of an English steam trawler 

 was the first to experiment with them in 1885, but he does not seem 

 to have met with success. In 1886 one Thurlow took out a patent for 

 a peculiar kind of board resting on a small trolley, but this also does 

 not seem to have worked well. In the Mittheilungcn for 1888, p. 153, 

 a figure is given of an otter-board which is fixed up essentially the 

 same as those now used. It was employed by the Danish sailing craft 

 from Frederikshaven when fishing on the west coast of Jutland. If 

 the wind was suitable they fastened these otter-boards to their long 

 drag-seines (or plaice-seines, see ante), and towed the net over the 

 ground (" snurrevaaden "). As the fishing seems to have been success- 



* Mitt. Deut. Seefisch. Vereins, August, 1896, p. 153. 



