120 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
The greater size of steam trawlers, the improvements in the apparatus 
of capture, and the increased use of ice in preserving the catch, have resulted in 
extending trawling operations not only to all the available waters in western 
Europe, but to those of Iceland, northern Europe, and even to the coast of 
Africa. The increased receipts have been especially noticeable from Iceland, 
Faroe, and the Bay of Biscay. Throughout the whole of this region the area 
within a depth of roo fathoms is now exploited, and the fishermen of several 
nationalities meet there on a common footing; but the regulations of the con- 
vention of 1882 apply to no other region than the North Sea. 
Not a regulation of the fisheries themselves, but having an important 
bearing thereon, is the abolition of the liquor traffic among the fishing vessels 
in the North Sea. Trading boats from England, Germany, and the Netherlands 
were especially fitted out two or three decades ago for traffic among the fishing 
fleet, supplying the cheapest of liquors, tobacco, and obscene cards and literature. 
Dreadful evils resulted from this ‘‘bumboat” trade. The question of its regula- 
tion or abolishment was discussed at The Hague conference in 1881 which 
resulted in the North Sea convention of 1882, but without effect. After numerous 
unsuccessful attempts at regulation, an international convention was entered 
into on November 16, 1887, by representatives of the signatory powers of the 
1882 convention, binding them to effect such legislation as would entirely 
prohibit the sale, exchange, or barter of spirituous liquors—that is, liquids “‘ ob- 
tained by distillation and containing more than 5 per centum of alcohol ’”— 
and would establish a system of licensing bumboats for traffic with persons on 
board or belonging to fishing vessels of those nationalities in the North Sea 
outside territorial waters. 
Failure on the part of France to ratify the convention nullified its con- 
clusions.* However, on February 14, 1893, the other signatory powers, viz, 
Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, entered into 
a protocol by which they agreed to bring the convention into force so far as 
their own boats and subjects were concerned, when such boats or subjects are 
outside territorial waters and within the limits of the North Sea, as defined by 
article 4 of the 1882 convention. Each licensed boat is required to exhibit, from 
the head of the principal mast, a white flag 2 meters square, bearing in the 
center the letter ‘“‘S” in black, 1 meter high and 2 decimeters wide. Acts of 
legislature passed by each of these powers came into force on May 23, 1894. 
Since that date traffic in liquor by their subjects in the North Sea has been 
illegal, and in the same waters provisions and other articles for use by fishermen 
aJt is but just to add that this nonaction on the part of France was not due to sympathy with the 
traffic, for it has not been represented that boats of that nation have ever engaged therein. It was 
because of the opinion that the regulations were contrary to the fundamental principles of the freedom 
of commerce and the view that the municipal laws of the offending nations would suffice to end the 
traffic. 
