214 SEA FISHERIES 



jostling labourers wash, scrub, and pack the fish, and 

 load it on the railway trucks. From time to time a 

 locomotive whistles : a train is made up and pulls out of 

 the market." Sometimes men armed with long sharp 

 knives go by almost at a run, working at the closely- 

 packed rows of cod, plunging their knives into each fish, 

 and snatching the livers from the slippery bodies. 



The fish has now been sent in all directions : 700, 

 800, often 1,200 tons of fresh fish, occupying 200, 250, 

 or 400 waggons. Meanwhile the trawlers, who will put 

 to sea on the following tide, have lost no time ; they have 

 filled the holds of their vessels with ice, the bunkers with 

 coal, seen to their spare stores, and replenished their 

 stock of victuals. The Grimsby Ice Factory, the chief 

 concern of the kind in the port, is situated on the quay 

 of the Fish Dock. It makes about 350 tons of ice 

 every day. The trawlers are supplied with coal from 

 hulks and lighters. Grimsby harbour, unfortunately, 

 which was built by a Frenchman and is of compara- 

 tively recent construction, is already too small, and it is 

 hardly possible to enlarge it, as it is built far out and 

 in deep water. 



Ill 



I have given so much space to Grimsby that I must 

 speak more briefly of the other principal ports. 



Hull is less modern than Grimsby. The Fish Dock is 

 a vast basin, divided into two unequal parts. The first 

 and the larger receives the trawlers. 1 The market-shed 

 occupies the whole of one side. It is much smaller 

 than that of Grimsby, and is provided with only two 

 lines of rails. The other side is devoted to coal stores 

 and ice factories. The second portion of the basin is 



1 Of which there are nearly 450. 



