THE HERRING FISHING INDUSTRY 67 



early in the morning from the drifters and taken to the 

 curing yard. They are split down the back, close to 

 the backbone, and gutted and thrown into large, open 

 baskets. The basket and its contents (about 50 herrings) 

 are then plunged into a tank of running water, and 

 violently agitated to wash blood and slime from the 

 fish. The fish are then thrown into brine in large tanks 

 about 6 ft. by 5 ft. by 4 ft., until the tank is full. Salt 

 is then sprinkled on the surface, and the fish are left 

 from half to one hour, according to their size. 



They are then hung on kipper speets. A kipper 

 speet differs from a bloater speet. It is a square bar 

 of wood about 3| ft. long, and of 1 in. square cross-sec- 

 tion. It is supported horizontally. The split herrings 

 are opened out and impaled upon hooks at intervals 

 along each side of the speet. Each speet in this way will 

 carry about eight or nine herrings a side. The speets are 

 then stacked on racks in the " loves " of the smoke-house, 

 are smoked over-night, using fires of oak turnings and 

 sawdust, and are packed the next morning in boxes. 



The herring is probably the most abundant food fish 

 known. During the autumn herring fishery of 1920, over 

 1,000,000 crans of herrings were landed at Yarmouth and 

 Lowestoft. If we assume that one cran measure 

 contains 1,000 herrings, we see that over 1,000,000,000 

 herrings were caught in less than 4 months, and this 

 probably represents only a small fraction of the number 

 present on the fishing grounds. In 1913, 1 1 ,762,748 cwts. 

 of herrings, of value 4,412,838, were landed in Great 

 Britain. In the same year, the exports of herrings 

 from the British Isles were as follows 



Fresh herrings . 1,464,296 cwts. worth /1.212.493 

 Cured herrings . 8,797,106 5,333,113 



Total . 10,261,402 /6.545.606 



