8 THE HERRING FISHERY, 



Cutter goes number is known, by applying to the cutter. At the out- 



ttefleetf side fishing stations she goes to sea every night along with 



the fishing fleet, not returning till the fleet is in harbour, 



and if any boat gets disabled she takes her in tow. 



Improvement The fishing gradually improved under the Fishery Board, 



Board. but it was not until about 1840 that a new epoch in the 



history of the herring fishing came about, when a Mr. 



Improved Paterson patented a machine for making nets. He opened 

 nets. 



business at Musselburgh, and it was not long before he had a 



great many machines at work. The demand for these nets 

 was very great, and has gone on steadily increasing. There 

 are now a great number of these net factories over our 

 land and our colonies, and other parts of the world are 

 Difference supplied with these far-famed nets. The machine nets are 



between hand h f j th n th d b the hand and con _ 



and machine- J 



made nets. sequently fished better. Instead of two hundred meshes, as 



arge ' before, they were increased to three hundred meshes deep, 



and in two or three years the trains increased in some cases 



to twenty pieces, each piece a hundred yards long and 



Better boats, three hundred meshes deep. By this time there had been 



JSqSeT* 8 a S reat improvement on the boats. There was the 

 " wherry," a good large-sized boat with a place for the crew 

 to sleep in, but rather clumsy on the whole. The fisher- 

 men began to see that these boats were, although better 

 than their predecessors, still unsuitable, and that they 

 required something faster and abler. So they applied to 



Superior boat Mr. Fife, boat-builder, Fairlie, father of the present Mr. 



from Fairlie. Fife> yac ht-builder there, who built a number of beautifully 

 modelled fishing boats, some of them being 39 feet keel, 

 12 feet beam, and from 6 to 7 feet depth of hold. A 

 plan was also invented for lowering the mast when the nets 



lowering sail, were shot, allowing them to be hauled much more easily. 

 These boats sailed very fast, and suited our waters well ; 



