660 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [18] 



arriving at Billingsgate the fish, on tbe opening of the market at 5 a. 

 m., is taken out of the hold, carried ashore, and sold box by box ; that 

 the amount realized by Hewett & Co. for wet trawl fish sold at Billings 

 gate during the last seven years amounts collectively to £1,210,400 ; 

 that in the trade wet trawl lish are divided into two classes, piime and 

 offal; that the prime consists of turbots, brill, soles, John Dorey, and 

 red mullet ; and offal of plaice, haddock, cod, skate, roker, whiting, 

 sturgeon, hake, dabs, thornback, and gurnard; that a very large pro- 

 portion of the offal brought to market hj Hewett & Co. could not have 

 been sent by rail, as it would not have fetched the rate charged for car- 

 riage; that if there was no water-carriage for fish to market nothing 

 but the prime and the best of the offal would be sent to London at all." 

 The evidence of Mr. Hewett is deserving of special attention, because 

 it is to him and to his father that Billingsgate is indebted for many 

 valuable suggestions and improvements of the conduct of its trade. 

 His father was the first to bring fish by water from the fleet in the Xorth 

 Sea direct to Billingsgate, and for this purpose he caused a line of fast- 

 sailing carrier cutters to be built in 1843. Up to that time, and for 

 many years previously, it was the custom to laud considerable quanti- 

 ties of fish at Yarmouth, which were sent up to London by rail, whde 

 other lots were brought by river to Gravesend and despatched thence 

 to Billingsgate by hatch-boat. From 1843 to 1864 the swift-sailing cut- 

 ters worked with great success, but in the latter year they were " run 

 off the road," not by the railways but by steam carriers which were then 

 started. The first ten sailing carriers were built and put on by the 

 elder Hewett in 1843 and 1844 ; the first six steamers by the younger 

 Hewett in 1864 and 1865. There are now not less than twenty -one 

 steam carriers running to London. They belong to several companies, 

 each of them distinct from the others, and thej' work in connection 

 with five large fleets in the Iforth Sea. Xor ought we to omit mention- 

 ing that the bulk of the fish came to Billingsgate packed in baskets 

 until 1856, w^hen boxes were for the first time tried by Hewett & Co. 

 Four years later baskets had entirely died out, and in 1860 all trawl 

 fish came to market, as they do now, in boxes containing from ninety 

 to a hundred pounds apiece. 



Enough has been said to show what weight atiaches to Mr. Robert 

 Hewett's testimony, when he affirms, "^ as the result of many years expe- 

 rience," that double the quantity of fish now sold in London could read- 

 ily be disposed of if there were but proper accommodations at the river- 

 side to receive it. It is well known, he adds, by all who deal exten- 

 sively in the coarser kinds of fish, that however large the supply the 

 demand more than keeps pace with it, and that the price is never low- 

 ered. There can, in fact, be no doubt that if, as ho anticipates, Mr. 

 Hewett and his company can pour three or four hundred tons of roker 

 every day into the metropolis through Shadwell market they will be 

 conferring a benefit upon the poor of which it would be imjjossible to 

 overstate the magnitude. Roker — by which all fish of the ray fam- 



