■ N I V c n. i3 1 I ' 

 THE SEA FISHERIES OF IRELAN-D^^L^^;^ " 373 



to the other causes of prosperity, herrings visited the coast at this time in 

 immense numbers. 



After two or three premonitory symptoms the awful crash of the great 

 famine came in 1846. The potato crop failed. Thousands of people died 

 of starvation and disease resulting from it. Thousands more emigrated, 

 and, during the ten following years, the population dropped from over eight 

 millions to less than six millions. 



In those dark days the Dungarvan fishermen who went to America 

 introduced there the system of long line fishing which has ever since been 

 practised on the New England and Newfoundland fishing banks. 



In the reports of the Fishery Commissioners for the years after the 

 famine we note the decline of the fishing fleets. The old order of things 

 had changed, and until the new came in we see the vain efforts of philan- 

 thropic people and of the Government to better matters. These efforts 

 were futile, because a great tide in the affairs of men was setting against 

 them and there was no stemming it. 



While these tragedies, profoundly affecting the Irish people, were being 

 enacted, problems of an entirely different class were being worked out 

 elsewhere. Folks of those days might have found it hard to imagine that 

 matters, mostly scientific, could have any practical bearing on the Irish 

 fisheries, and yet it was out of such experiments and discoveries that the 

 new developments were to arise. George Stevenson, in these days, was 

 trying to adapt steam to railways ; while Bell and Symington were planning 

 the first steamers. The electric telegraph followed in due course, and the 

 latter half of the nineteenth century saw fresh sea fish delivered everywhere 

 — fish packed in ice was sold in towns and localities where nothing but salt 

 or smoked fish was seen before. It saw special fish trains, special steamers 

 — steam on land and steam on sea — used in the carrying as well as in the 

 catching — ice factories driven by steam, and the wants of millions provided 

 for and arranged by telegraph. 



With all these facilities the demand for fresh fish increased by rapid 

 bounds, and the Irish fisheries, for a time lost to sight, were once more 

 looked to for a supply. Irish herrings were sought for by fishing boats, 

 and in some years not in vain ; but the herring was not on the coast in the 

 quantities of former days. Herrings are fickle fish : they come for years 

 and go for years, and are not always forthcoming where the best reception 

 has been prepared. One year, however, while fishing for herring, the 

 Manx men at Kinsale reported that there was an abundance of mackerel — - 

 fine plump mackerel — on those south coasts, 2j^ lbs. weight. The herring 

 nets were cast aside, ice provided instead of salt, fast steamers engaged, 

 many others built for the service, and in three years from the first venture 

 " the great Spring Mackerel Fishery " was established. Boat-building 

 then boomed in the Isle of Man ; boats from Arklow, County Down, Cam- 

 pelton, Lowestoft, Cornwall, and France flocked to Kinsale, so that on one 

 day as many as 700 splendid first-class boats, which, with nets, would be 

 worth over £^00 a piece, have been seen in that harbour. As the years 

 passed the boats began to work more to westward. Owing to the 

 munificence of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, acting under the advice of the 

 late Father Davis, the Cape Clear fishermen got mackerel boats, and Balti- 

 more became a centre to which some of the buyers moved on. Then part 

 of the fleet wandered on and made Berehaven a centre, then Valentia, 

 Smerwick, Fenit, and the Shannon were reached. Smerwick and the 



