OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 369 
or six baskets being as much as a coble could use, and [ can well 
remember as a boy having often to throw out the ballast to enable 
the coble to carry the fish, which often amounted to several cart- 
loads, while now thirty baskets of line may be shot 100 miles off, 
for not a third the quantity of fish. On one occasion last winter 
while fishing with the ‘ Fingal’ we shot twenty-four baskets of line 
100 miles off the land, amounting to over 3000 hooks, each baited 
with a whole herring, and only caught eleven fish! Many other 
steam line-boats can give similar cases. Since the commencement 
of steam-trawling, this fishing has been abandoned by cobles, 
owing to the fish having become extinct on the inshore grounds, 
and to the impossibility of allowing lines to remain at sea overnight. 
“ At this time there were sailing-trawlers belonging to Hull and 
Grimsby, fishing on the Dogger Bank, and occasionally landing 
a catch of fish at Sunderland ; and several sailing-trawlers were built 
and owned in Sunderland, and worked on the same grounds, and in 
the same manner as the Grimsby trawlers. 
“These vessels did no appreciable harm to the inshore fishing- 
grounds, as they seldom if ever fished within fifty miles of the land. 
‘“« About twenty-five years ago, in the summer, owing to that year 
being exceptionally hot, and prevailing calms preventing them 
reaching their fishing-grounds, two of them, the ‘ Henry Fenwick’ 
and the ‘Fearnot,’ were towed about the inshore grounds by the 
steam-tug ‘Heatherbell,’ and I remember having made several 
trips in them. ‘The mode of working was as follows : 
“The ‘ Heatherbell’ would go to sea about noon, and join the 
two vessels from five to ten miles off the land, take them in tow, 
when they would shoot their trawls and be towed at an easy speed 
all night. The trawls would be hauled up at about midnight, and 
again about 6 a.m.; the ‘ Heatherbell’ would then go to shore 
with their fish in baskets, and after it was sold, go off again with 
the empty baskets to repeat the same operation. This might have 
continued during the months of July and August, and as it was an 
exceptional occasion, and almost all the line-fishermen were engaged 
in the herring fishery, no opposition was offered by them at that time 
to this proceeding, and the practice was never again repeated to my 
knowledge. 
“‘ Many years afterwards, towage being slack owing to the increased 
development of screw steamers, several of the paddle-tugs, both on 
the Tyne and Wear, were fitted with trawls, and worked as trawlers 
on the inshore fishing-grounds. 
“ At first they caught a prodigious quantity of fish, and their tem- 
porary success was so great that every one was induced to embark in 
the enterprise. Old tug-boats completely played out, unseaworthy, 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. lI, NO. V (EXTRA NUMBER). 350 
