700 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



enlarging fleets of trawlers pushed northwards and eastwards 

 as new grounds were discovered. By 1860 the whole of the 

 Dutch coast and the coast of Schleswig was frequented; ten 

 years later the Danish coast was included, and, for the first 

 time, the whole of the Dogger Bank, as well as large areas 

 north and west of it, off the coast of England and Scotland. 

 About 1875 the Great Fisher Bank, which lies about 200 miles 

 east of the Scottish coast, began to be visited, and in 1891 the 

 English trawlers boldly pushed on to Iceland, where enormous 

 catches of fish were obtained. 



During this period, while the fishing-grounds were being 

 vastly extended, great improvements were made in the means 

 of catching the fish and bringing them to market. The trawl- 

 ing vessels gradually increased in numbers, size, speed, and 

 storage capacity ; the trawl-net grew larger and more efficient ; 

 the use of ice for the preservation of the fish enabled distant 

 grounds to be visited, and the deeper waters of the north 

 necessitated the substitution of steam-power for hand-labour 

 in hauling the nets on board ; the " fleeting " system, by which 

 steam-carriers collected the fish each morning and brought 

 them rapidly to market, allowed the fleets of sailing smacks 

 to remain on the grounds constantly fishing for many weeks 

 at a time. Then the industry was revolutionised by the sub- 

 stitution of steam vessels for the sailing smacks, a change 

 which began about 1878 ; and trawling, which was at first a 

 summer occupation owing to the frailty of the boats, and then 

 a winter pursuit, as plenty of wind was required to drag the 

 heavier nets, became independent of the season, and almost of 

 the weather. A further improvement was the introduction in 

 1895 of the otter -trawl instead of the unwieldy beam-trawl, 

 the mouth of the net being kept open by the divergence of two 

 boards, one at each side, on the principle of the kite. This 

 allowed the net to be made very much larger, and also to be 

 used in much deeper water, and commercial trawling is now 

 carried on in depths down to about 200 fathoms. 



There has thus occurred during the last generation or so an 

 enormous development in the extent and efficiency of trawl- 

 fishing. The British fleet since about 1835 has grown from 

 some 200 small vessels, of twenty to twenty-four tons, and 

 using trawls of from twenty to thirty feet beam, to an ag- 

 gregate of 3170 vessels in 1907, of which 1609 were steamers 



