534 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



buildings erected. In 1756 it possessed thirty busses and six 

 "yagers" to carry the pickled herrings to Hamburg and 

 Bremen, the masters of the busses being Dutch or Danish, 

 and the crews chiefly from Orkney, the fishing being carried 

 on at the Shetlands and down the coast to Yarmouth. Finan- 

 cial and other difficulties were encountered, some of the vessels 

 being taken by French privateers, and all the remaining busses 

 and effects were sold in 1772 for 6391. Half a century later, 

 the relics of some of the discarded busses were dug out of the 

 mud at Southwold. 



The Act above referred to was the parent of many others 

 designed to encourage the fisheries, chiefly by providing 

 bounties; but probably more effective than such measures in 

 stimulating the native industry was the decay which overtook 

 the fisheries of the Dutch. This decay was no doubt due to 

 several causes, but among the chief must be reckoned the 

 frequent maritime wars of the eighteenth century in which 

 the United Provinces were engaged. Their herring -busses 

 were often captured or destroyed, sometimes in large numbers 

 at a time, as in 1703, when a French squadron fell upon them 

 at Shetland and burned many of them variously stated at 

 from 150 to 400. 1 Not infrequently their herring fishery was 

 entirely suspended, it might be for a series of years, owing to 

 the inability of the States-General to protect the fishing vessels 

 from the French or the British cruisers ; and such interruptions 

 told seriously upon a business which depended so largely on 

 the export trade of the cured herrings. From these repeated 

 blows the Dutch fisheries never recovered, and the fleets of 

 busses gradually dwindled. In 1703, 500 of them fished 

 at the Shetlands and southwards along the coast; half a 

 century afterwards there were but little over 200; and in 

 the later years of the century the number sank as low as 

 120, which scarcely exceeded the vessels from Denmark, Prussia 

 (Emden), and Belgium. Thus the part of the pretension to the 

 sovereignty of the sea which related to the fisheries along the 

 British coasts was gradually solved, the British fisheries, now 

 the greatest in the world, rising on the ruins of the Dutch. 



1 Gifford, Historical Description of the Zetland Isles ; Edmondston, A View of 

 the Ancient and Present State of the Shetland Isles ; Europische Mcrcurius, 1703, 

 ii. 107. 



