VISIT TO THE SOUTH COAST OUTPORTS 155 



" When fishing is actually in progress, the smacks always 

 anchor, for the shoals carry only thirty to sixty fathoms of 

 water, and hempen cables are used instead of iron chains 

 to moor them, as the latter would saw their bows out from 

 the lively pitching they do in these choppy seas. The fishing 

 itself is done from dories, light but strong flat-bottomed 

 boats, each carrying two men, who set their lines or trawls 

 overnight, and examine them next day, removing the fish 

 impaled on the hooks with which the trawl is furnished, and 

 then rebaiting them for another night's service. The ship 

 is therefore like a hen with a flock of chickens, the dories 

 standing in this relation to her, while the trawls radiate from 

 her as spokes from a wheel-hub, being laid outward from 

 her at a distance of one or two miles, the ship serving as 

 a depot for feeding and housing the men and for cleaning 

 and storing their catch. In setting and cleaning his trawls 

 and cleaning his catch the doryman finds abundant occupation, 

 and rarely gets more than a few hours' sleep in a night, some- 

 times none at all. 



" Thus it is that when fogs obscure the water, vigilance 

 is relaxed by the toil-worn look-out, to whom is entrusted 

 the lives of a score of comrades, tiredly sleeping below. 

 Though the fog-horn each vessel carries is sounded regularly, 

 still many a horror is enacted amid this curtain of gloom, 

 when a mighty steamship splits a hapless fisher-boat and, 

 like a marine juggernaut, rushes on over the wreckage and 

 bodies she sends to the bottom by the stroke of her steel- 

 clad prow. Often at night a sudden crash rends the stillness, 

 and a shriek of despair rises from the stricken schooner's 

 crew, a swirl of splintered wood in her wake to mark the 

 eddies for a while, and then vanish, a tomb for fifteen or 

 twenty men. 



