SMACKS AND TRAWLS 59 



Sea, not only of fish, but also of undesirable debris, to 

 say nothing of those ghastly catches which are inevitable 

 in such a calling as this the bodies of fishermen. Some- 

 times a single body will be brought up, occasionally a 

 couple would be recovered, and once at least three 

 were found in one trawl. This was in December 1887, 

 when three men were lost out of the boat of the smack 

 Spark. 



The beam-trawl, in the early days of trawling, was 

 entirely man-handled. Shooting the ponderous, clumsy 

 apparatus was easy and simple, for it simply meant that 

 the crew had to get the contrivance overboard without 

 fouling the vessel, and then leave her comfortably to do 

 her work of fishing. But hauling the trawl was a vastly 

 more difficult and laborious undertaking. The whole 

 of the work had to be done by hand, and often enough 

 the crew, working in the blackness of a winter night on 

 the piercing Dogger, would toil incessantly for three 

 hours before the cod-end could be hoisted on deck and 

 the fish released. Then, when even the powerful frames 

 of North Sea smacksmen were exhausted by their labours, 

 the men would have to set to work to clean, gut, and 

 box fish which froze while it was being handled. 



A great and welcome relief came when steam was 

 introduced to work the capstan. Donkey-boilers were 

 installed in many of the smacks, especially the fine new 

 craft which were built just before steam-trawling became 

 universal. Steam proved an enormous help and a 

 welcome blessing, for it abolished the weary tramping 

 hour after hour round a capstan and the incessant 

 struggling with the handspike. But, even with the help 

 of steam, the working of the beam-trawl was, and is, 



