60 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



excessively laborious, because there is still much manual 

 labour involved in the management of the primitive 

 apparatus. No one who has not actually shared in it 

 can understand what that labour meant. The Aurania, 

 in which I made my first trip to the Dogger, was one 

 of the finest smacks ever built, and one of the most 

 thoroughly well equipped in every way. She was 

 practically new, and was put into commission just before 

 the almost incredible revolution of the North Sea fishing 

 as an industry ; yet, even with the help of steam and in 

 good spring weather, the work of getting the trawl on 

 board, in which 1 shared on several occasions, was a 

 heavy and disheartening undertaking, especially when, 

 as sometimes happened, the catch was so meagre as to 

 be scarcely worth the trouble of ferrying to the carrier. 

 The Aurania long since vanished from the unequal fight 

 with steam, and, for anything I know, she may be still 

 afloat as a little coaster or broken up for firewood. 



The beam-trawl was fitted to the earliest steamboats, 

 the old paddle-craft from the Tyne and the north-east 

 coast generally, which were the pioneers of steam-trawl- 

 ing, and these old trawls were the link between the 

 original gear and the skilful scientific apparatus which is 

 now universally employed in deep-sea fishing. 



The first great change that was made in the method 

 of trawling was the abolition of the beam. To-day there 

 is little difference between the net which is used and that 

 which was originally employed, but there has been a vast 

 alteration in the complete apparatus and the system of 

 shooting, hauling, and trawling. The change has been 

 so great that it is essential to go into some detail with 

 regard to it. 



