121 



Irish fishermen and others were debarred from the pri- 

 vileges of the English settlers, and those great fisheries 

 remained practically dormant until some twenty-five years 

 ago. 



Then a few Manx boats were sent over to Kinsale to 

 " try " the ground, and the success of the experiment will 

 be seen as I detail the entire working of the mackerel 

 fishery on that coast, of the herring fishery there, and all the 

 minutice of the particular points I have elected to write 

 on, under the title of my paper. 



The reasons why I have selected the fisheries of the 

 South of Ireland will be manifest when I state that I have 

 been for many years a director of the South of Ireland (now 

 Kinsale) Fishing Company, Limited. And apart from this, 

 I shall show by statistics that the fisheries of this coast 

 are of such extent and importance, that a diagnosis of their 

 operations and a few practical observations on improve- 

 ments which can be made in the methods in use for the 

 capture and transmission of fish, and on harbour accom- 

 modation there, will be of as great utility, for the purposes 

 of this paper, as a general history of the fisheries of the 

 United Kingdom. 



In the year 1880 not counting Frenchmen the number 

 of boats engaged in the Kinsale Fishery was 722 ; in 1881, 

 652; and in 1882, 693. In size these boats averaged 

 27 tons each, and every boat carried at least 44 pieces of 

 netting of 100 yards long, or 4400 yards of net making 

 in all somewhat over 1200 miles of netting for the fleet ; 

 or, in other words, the largest amount of netting in use in 

 the world, so far as we can ascertain, at any one fishery, 

 unless we regard the herring fisheries of Peterhead, Wick 

 and Fraserburgh, &c., as one fishery extending as they 

 do, over an enormous extent of seaboard. 



