TRAWLING 



the new man would be either competent or dead. An 

 Irish crew would be " hail-fellow " with any man who did 

 not look like being sea-sick. The Scotch, North Country, 

 and East Coast fishermen will take the stranger aboard if 

 they are once persuaded that he is prepared to learn a 

 very great deal from them. They do not seek to magnify 

 the danger ; rather the reverse, in fact ; but they do like 

 the landsman to feel that he is being initiated into a 

 mystery that is far too deep for his intellect to grasp all 

 in a hurry. 



A cheery word or two, and a readiness to hand round 

 one's tobacco, or possibly a hint as to a trifling donation 

 at the end of the day, are the only passports necessary 

 to make one shipmates with the South Country fisherman, 

 save and except him of certain parts of Devonshire. To 

 the Clovelly or Brixham fisherman, the man from the 

 next village is a stranger and a foreigner; and, till 

 recently, it were better for that man that he should keep 

 out of the way. Even to-day, unless there is very strong 

 influence at work, the visitor from a distance would stand 

 quite as much chance of being invited aboard the royal 

 yacht as of being allowed to sail with a Brixham trawler. 



Let the reader imagine himself, then, on board one 

 of the Lowestoft or Yarmouth or Hull boats. She is 

 either cutter- or yawl-rigged ; probably the latter, as 

 being safer in the heavy winter seas off the Dogger Bank. 

 Instead of making sail from her moorings, she has most 

 likely been towed out to sea, with others, by a steam-tug. 



As the sun shows signs of rising, the stranger has an 

 opportunity of looking about him and taking in his new 

 c 33 



