FIELDS AND HARVESTERS 37 



in them, and certain portions of the Dogger and other 

 banks would not show sand or shell, or smooth or rough 

 ground, according to the charts ; but would reveal an 

 almost solid moving dark or silver mass. 



That famous submarine plateau which is called the 

 Dogger Bank lies in the middle of the North Sea. To 

 the ordinary mind there is nothing to distinguish this par- 

 ticular stretch of water from the surrounding sea ; but the 

 trawler man knows it as the Londoner knows his Charing 

 Cross. 



The Dogger, indeed, is the Charing Cross of the 

 North Sea, for it is there that nearly all things fishing 

 meet, and from which all operations start. The fleets are 

 constantly on or near the Dogger ; the steam-carriers 

 surge up London River from the Dogger, and it is back 

 to or near the Dogger that they mostly go when they are 

 clear of Billingsgate and Gravesend. Just as the gold- 

 fields of Africa and Australia have been the lodestars of 

 countless adventurers and courageous spirits, so the Dogger 

 Bank has been the object of armies who have left the 

 North Sea shores in various sorts of craft. Rich hauls of 

 gold have been taken by sinking shafts ; hauls of silver 

 fish, as precious, have been made from the prolific waters 

 of the Bank. There is this difference between the two 

 that, whilst the mines have been gutted and laid bare, 

 the sandy plateau has remained fertile, and myriads of 

 fish have appeared to take the places of the unnumbered 

 hosts which have been scooped by the relentless trawls. 



Day and night throughout the year, ceaselessly, except 

 when prevented by bad weather from working, the steam- 

 trawlers are at work on the Dogger, gathering its harvest, 

 and so it is with all the other fishing-banks of the North Sea. 



