FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME 



and endurance were to be recorded in official archives 

 but not made known in public. In some of the fine 

 and big modern fishing vessels there were corres- 

 ponding engine-rooms, but there were many engine- 

 rooms in which in hot or bad weather the staff had 

 persistently uncomfortable times, when heavy rolls 

 and pitches made the very body ache in the attempts 

 to keep a footing and to escape being hurled into the 

 moving machinery or against the red-hot furnace. 

 Battened down in a steam trawler, whose notorious 

 sea-shipping propensities earned for her the title of 

 a " washer," the little engine-room staff had the 

 added misery of poisoned air to breathe. 



This engine-room life was mercilessly wearing 

 and tormenting, and only necessity enabled human 

 beings to live it ; but it was the very sternness 

 of the existence which enabled the men trained in 

 that school to bear and survive the hardships and 

 dangers of the sweeping and patrolling which they 

 subsequently undertook. 



So that the wonderful work of the mine-sweepers 

 and fishermen and many of the patrollers may be 

 understood it is necessary to describe the vessels in 

 which that work was done, especially at the begin- 

 ning of the war, when the craft actually employed 

 in fishing were taken over for use by the naval 

 authorities and there had not been time to produce 

 the special improvements which subsequently helped 

 the fishermen so greatly in various ways. 



The principal fishing vessels were divided into 

 two classes, steam trawlers and steam drifters, 



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