LEE ROUND, OF LIKE AND LABOUR. 37, 
and the owner not unusually acts as master—if he does not 
a brother or a son, or some other relative, usually does. 
The “boy” is almost always related to some one on board 
the boat. 
These boats, in the seasons, go to Plymouth, the York- 
shire coasts, and the Bay of Dublin. They never go far 
enough from shore to make it necessary that their masters 
should know the science of navigation. Nothing is required 
in a master but a knowledge of reading (so that he may 
learn up the lights and work a chart) and good practical 
seamanship ; and of boats on these voyages it may also be 
remarked that no one has ever been lost through want’ of 
these qualifications. The crews of these boats are never 
shipped at wages ; they work on share. Each man has the 
privilege of bringing on board a certain number of nets 
{a “net” is a length of net varying in the different fishing 
villages), and the earnings of the boat after paying her 
going expenses are divided. A certain share goes for the 
boat, another share for the nets, and another for the crew. 
The division of these earnings takes place at entirely 
uncertain periods, according to the catches of fish, but it 
occurs at intervals during the fishing seasons, with a wind- 
up at the end of each. 
Mr. Thomas Couch in a history of Polperro, gives some 
interesting particulars of the Cornwall pilchard catchers, 
and describes them as a hardy race of men, often leading a 
life of toil and privation, and as a body not deserving of 
the hard things which have been said about them. Their 
gains, despite occasional spells of hard work, never reach 
any considerable sum, whilst they are at all times precarious ; 
and were it not for the produce of their gardens, and their 
store of salted pilchards, their fate in severe and stormy 
winters would be one almost of starvation. The fishers 
