GEN. SCOMBER. THE COMMON MACKEREL. 191 



ments to great exertions. A few particulars, from 

 various sources, may not be uninteresting. In May 

 1807, the first Brighton boat-load of Mackerel sold- 

 at Billingsgate for forty guineas per hundred, seven 

 shillings each, reckoning six score to the hundred, 

 the highest price ever known at that market. The 

 next boat-load produced about thirteen guineas per 

 hundred. Mackerel, on the contrary, were so plen- 

 tiful at Dover in 1808, that sixty were sold for 

 one shilling. At Brighton, in June of the same 

 year, the shoal of Mackerel was so great, that 

 one of the boats had the meshes of her nets so 

 completely occupied by them, that it was impos- 

 sible to drag them in ; the fish and nets, therefore, 

 in the end, sank together, the fishermen thereby 

 sustaining a loss of nearly 60, exclusive of what 

 the cargo, could it have been got into the boat, 

 would have produced. The success of the fishing, 

 in 1821, was beyond all precedent. The value of 

 the catch of sixteen boats from Lowestoffe, on the 

 30th of June, amounted to 5252 ; and it is sup- 

 posed that there was not less an amount than 

 14,000 altogether realized by the curers and men 

 concerned in the fishery off the Suffolk coast. In 

 March 1833, on a Sunday, four Hastings boats 

 brought on shore 1 0,800 Mackerel, and on the next 

 day two boats brought 7000. Early in the month 

 of February, 1834, one boat's crew from Hastings 

 cleared 100 by the fish caught in one night ; and 

 a large quantity of very fine Mackerel appeared m 

 the London market in the second week of the same 



