NORTH SEA FISHERS AND 

 FIGHTERS 



CHAPTER I 



PIRATES AND PILLAGERS 



" THEY are sea- wolves that live on the pillage of the 

 world," declared a Roman poet of the first of English- 

 men who crossed the wild North Sea and conquered 

 Britain. Fighters led by ruthless war-lords sailed from 

 Jutland in 449 and landed in the Isle of Thanet, hard 

 by the pitiless Goodwins. They were pirates and bar- 

 barians, fit sons of the savage seas on whose borders they 

 were born and bred, and the toilers of which to-day are 

 the bravest of the brave. 



Those fierce invaders knew nothing of God or Christ. 

 They were heathens who worshipped many deities, 

 first of whom was Woden, the god of war ; and amongst 

 whose brothers were the god of storms, the god of 

 thunder, and the god of death. They fell relentlessly 

 upon the Britons, and by the end of the century they and 

 their successors were masters of the east and south coast 

 from Norfolk to Hampshire. Ship after ship came to the 

 eastern shores of England from the other side of the 



