6 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 



deserves to be illustrated by figures stamped with the 

 impress of authority, the fisheries and fishermen of this 

 country deserve that recognition. The British Islands, 

 from a fisherman's point of view, enjoy a singular ad- 

 vantage. There are no other waters in the globe so rich in 

 food-producing fish as those of the North Atlantic Ocean ; 

 and there is no portion of this great ocean so fishful as that 

 part of it which surrounds these Islands. If, however, 

 nature has placed the United Kingdom in a pre-eminently 

 favourable position, the hardy inhabitants of its maritime 

 counties have made the best use of nature's bounty. Their 

 veins, still warm with the bold blood of their Saxon and 

 Danish forefathers, the people of Eastern Britain especially 

 have inherited a love for the sea. Few storms are so 

 severe as to drive them from their occupation. Their well- 

 found boats court dangers which other and larger vessels 

 shun ; and, in the roughest as in the calmest weather, the 

 dish of fish, which these bold men have risked lives and 

 fortunes in catching, is procurable, if it consist of what the 

 trade calls " offal," for a few pence ; if it be composed of 

 what the trade calls "prime," for a few shillings in the 

 London market. 



Yet it must not be supposed that the inhabitants of all 

 the maritime counties of Great Britain or of the United 

 Kingdom furnish fishermen in equal proportions. It is 

 Eastern Scotland and Eastern England which supplies the 

 majority of British fishermen. Cornwall, Devonshire, and 

 the Isle of Man are almost the only other parts of the 

 kingdom which furnish a class of men who make fishing 

 the sole occupation of their lives. In Ireland, indeed, a 

 movement has, for years past, been in progress to develop 

 the Irish fisheries. But the seas of Ireland are swept by 

 Scotch, English, and Manx boats, and, though Irish craft 



