38 SEA FISH OF TRINIDAD 
to Trinidad. The cost without insurance would be about 
£450, covering wages for 1 master, 1 mate, 1 cook-steward, 
3 seamen, 2 engineers, and 3 firemen, with their food, all 
deck and engine-room stores, nautical instruments and 
charts, and coals, with port charges at ports of call, and also 
return faresifany. The insurance would vary from £5. 5s. to 
£7.7s., roughly £100, according to the time of the year for 
bringing her out. An experienced trawling captain could 
be engaged for about £20 a month, an experienced fish- 
curer for about half that amount, and arrangements could 
probably be made to get them out as part of the crew to save 
their food and wages out, but the trawler captain would not 
do for taking the steamer out. I think it would be advisable, 
at all events for the inauguration of the industry, to have 
two experienced hands, one for the trawl and the other for 
the curing. 
As I consider fishing with a beam-trawl would in all 
probability be the most successful mode of supplying the 
Trinidad market, for the benefit of those who are at present 
making a precarious living as toilers of the sea, I here ap- 
pend a short description of one as used in British waters, for 
which I am indebted to the Encyclopeedia Britannica. 
“The beam-trawl may be simply described as a triangular 
flat, purse-shaped net, with the mouthextended by a horizontal 
wooden beam, which is raised a short distance from the 
ground by means of two iron frames or heads, one at each 
end, the upper part of the mouth being fastened to the beam, 
and the under portion dragging on the ground as the net is 
towed over the bottom. The beam of course, varies in 
length according to the size of the net, and depends to some 
extent also on the length and power of the vessel which has 
to workit. Inthe larger ‘smacks’ or trawl boats, the beam 
ranges from 36 ft. to 50 ft. in length, and there is hardly any- 
thing less than this now used by the deep-sea trawlers. 
When the trawl is being hoisted in, the first part of the 
apparatus taken on board is the large heavy beam, and this 
is very commonly done when the vessel is rolling and pitch- 
ing about in a sea-way. It is therefore necessary for the 
sake of safety that the beam should be secured as soon as 
