FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME 



torn and bleeding hands that never had the chance 

 to heal, the laborious work of getting the trawl up, 

 cleaning, packing and ferrying the fish, would be 

 done. 



At the end of such a life a man might be a smack- 

 owning skipper ; sometimes he was, but more often 

 he found a haven in the workhouse. There were 

 such men who, having gone first to sea as miserable 

 little apprentices, could look back on half-a-century 

 and more afloat, and say that in each of those fifty 

 years there had not been more than five or six full 

 weeks ashore. It was an inhuman, soulless exist- 

 ence, fit companion to the slaves of the pit and the 

 factory, survivals of the " good old times " which, 

 when the truth was known about them, were so 

 abominably bad, except in the cases of the favoured 

 few. 



One most important individual was present with 

 every sailing or steam fleet, and that was the 

 thoroughly experienced skipper who, because of his 

 wide knowledge of fishes and the fishing areas, was 

 appointed to the direction of an assemblage of ves- 

 sels and bore the title of Admiral of the Fleet. He 

 had control of his fleet, and at his bidding fifty sail 

 or forty steam — more or less as the case might be — 

 would leave one ground and make for another ; in 

 obedience to his signals trawls would be shot or 

 hauled, fish would be boarded, or, if bad weather 

 prevailed, the boats would not be launched — but it 

 had to be very bad weather indeed for the admiral 

 to refuse to allow the men to ferry the fish to the 

 carrier. 



22 



