THE INADEQUACY OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 713 



tant not only to the British trawlers but to the Germans and 

 the French, were first visited in 1891, and those in the neigh- 



' o 



bourhood of the Faroe Islands a little later. The oper- 

 ations of the trawlers were at first limited to the south-east 

 coast, but the catches were so enormous, and the enterprise 

 so profitable, that large and seaworthy vessels were specially 

 built for this fishing, which became one of the most im- 



O' 



portant for the English markets. 1 Then the grounds in 

 the Bay of Biscay and those on the coasts of Spain and 

 Portugal began to be frequented, mostly from about the year 

 1902; and in the next year the operations of the trawlers 

 were extended farther south to the coast of Morocco, as far at 

 least as Agadir (20 deg. N. latitude), and even in some cases 

 to the coast of Mauritania in French West Africa. The vessels 

 fishing in these southern regions, many of them being fitted 

 with refrigerating rooms, land a considerable proportion of 

 their fish in Portugal and elsewhere. A year or two later, 

 in 1905, the enterprising English trawlers opened up new 

 grounds far away to the north-east in Barents Sea, at the very 

 borders of the perpetual ice of the Arctic regions, and increas- 

 ing numbers make the long double voyage of some 3500 miles 

 thither every summer, and bring back from the neighbourhood 

 of Cape Kanin great quantities of plaice for the English markets. 

 Thus the great enterprise and energy of British trawlers, 

 supported by large capital, have enabled them to exploit the 

 available grounds from far beyond the Arctic circle almost to 

 the tropics, and it is from those distant regions that an increas- 

 ing proportion of the fish supply is being drawn. 2 The influx 

 of alien vessels, the most powerful and efficient fishing machines 

 in existence, along these foreign coasts is not, as was naturally 

 to be expected, viewed with satisfaction by the native fisher- 

 men. They see the fishing-grounds which they had so long 



1 The quantity brought to England from Iceland and Faroe in 1907 was nearly 

 117,000 tons, or nearly 26 per cent of the total quantity of bottom fishes landed. 

 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries Annual Report on Sea Fisheries for 1907. 

 Schmidt, Fiskeriundersfa/elser vcd Island og Fwrferne i Sommcren, 1903, p. 132. 



" A sidelight is thrown upon the risks as well as the enterprise of their labours 

 by the fact that in 1908 a trawler's crew, on the one hand, fishing on the coast of 

 Africa, fell into the hands of the Moors ; while another, whose vessel was wrecked 

 near the White Sea, were saved from starvation by the kindness of Russian Lap- 

 landers, who killed reindeer for their sustenance. 



