SCO TCH FISHERIES. 163 



are the only occupation of the people; and this is 

 generally the case at the fishing stations. It would be 

 necessary to charter steam-tugs for the fishing season, 

 and very often to keep them idle ; and the expense of 

 providing tugs sufficient to be of material use in towing 

 some hundreds of large boats to and from the fishing 

 grounds, would necessarily be very great. 



The system has been tried, however, at three or four 

 places, but only on a small scale ; and I fear there is 

 very little chance of its being carried out to the extent 

 it might be, unless the expenses can be materially 

 diminished. 



The question of applying steam power directly to 

 the fishing boats has also been considered, but that 

 would involve even greater expense. The experiment 

 has been tried with deep-sea trawlers, and the system 

 seemed particularly applicable to that mode of fishing, 

 in which a certain regular speed is desirable; but 

 although, as I can testify from personal observation, 

 the work was done well under steam, and there was 

 a great saving of time and labour in various ways, the 

 expenses were found to be too heavy to make steam 

 trawling anything but a loss. At the present time, 

 steam in connection with fishing is profitably employed 

 in the carriers which collect the fish from the fleets of 

 North Sea trawlers and bring it to market, as I have 

 previously mentioned; but in no other way does it 

 appear that it can be yet systematically used with 

 advantage and profit. 



The importance which has been attained by Peter- 

 head and Frazerburgh in recent years, both as fishing 



M 2 



