134 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



fishermen amounted to 1000. 1 The only other fisheries on 

 the east coast were a small one for mackerel, which employed 

 40 boats at Yarmouth in the spring ; a sprat fishery with bag- 

 nets ; while some small trawlers worked in the bays and 

 estuaries. On the east coast of Scotland there was no native 

 herring fishery except in the firths. 



Compared with the great trade of the Dutch, the exports 

 of fish from this country were insignificant and trifling in 

 view of the quantity imported : in London alone no less 

 than 12,000 was paid to the Hollanders for barrelled fish 

 and Holland lings between the Christmas of 1613 and 18th 

 February 1614. Scotland still sent tolerably large quantities 

 of salmon, herrings, and salt fish to France, Spain, and else- 

 where ; but the exports from England were almost quite confined 

 to red-herrings from Yarmouth and pilchards from Cornwall, 

 both sent to the Mediterranean, and very commonly in Dutch 

 bottoms. 2 The English had no share whatever in the trade in 

 pickled herrings or in pickled cod ; they were indeed ignorant 

 of the method of curing the latter. 



From the foregoing it is not difficult to realise the feeling of 

 irritation against the Dutch which began to gather in the 

 breasts of the English people. They witnessed with envy 

 the great fleets of alien fishing vessels which darkened their 

 coasts every season and reaped a rich harvest in waters which 

 they regarded as their own. "No king upon the earth," 

 said Gentleman, "did yet ever see such a Fleet of his own 

 subjects at any time, and yet this Fleet is there and then yearly 

 to be seen. A most worthy sight it were, if they were my 

 own countrymen ! " Statesmen and economists saw in the 

 extension of the Dutch fisheries a menace to the power and 

 wealth of the nation. The fisheries formed a valuable nursery 

 of seamen to man the mercantile marine and the royal navy ; it 

 was chiefly from this point of view that the political lent 

 and the fishery Acts of the previous reign were designed. 

 Another consideration began to excite even more attention. 

 The trade in fish was looked upon as forming the basis of 

 commerce and national wealth. The Dutch boasted that the 

 herring fishery was their " gold-mine " ; that " the herring 



1 Manship, op. cit., 97, 120. The work was written between 1612 and 1619. 



2 Gentleman, op. cit., 36; Swinden, History of Great Yarmouth, 465; State 

 Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112, 114. 



