SMACKS AND TRAWLS 65 



and 6 gutting, knives, half a dozen small brushes for 

 cleaning fish, 3 files for sharpening hooks, a sharpen- 

 ing stone, a dozen tomboys, a dozen reels, and 3 cod- 

 prickers. These are the details given by O. T. Olsen. 



Many special committees have been appointed by 

 Parliament to go into the whole question of deep-sea 

 fishing, and these inquiries have put on record a vast 

 amount of evidence with regard to deep-sea fisheries, 

 particularly those of the North Sea. Nothing can be 

 more astonishing than the difference in the points of 

 view expressed by men whose lives had been spent in 

 that particular industry. One smacksman, for instance, 

 would declare positively that the use of the trawl would 

 inevitably result in the utter depletion of the fishing- 

 grounds ; while another witness, with equal honesty, 

 would express the conviction that the trawl could do 

 no harm whatever, and that to fish the sea bare was an 

 impossibility. 



When the trawl was first introduced it was bitterly 

 condemned by the old-time fishermen who had de- 

 pended on the line and the old-fashioned nets, and 

 whose methods differed but slightly from the systems 

 pursued in the time of Peter, the patron saint of fisher- 

 men. The first Parliamentary Commission had before 

 it a number of fishermen whose work had been carried 

 out entirely on the Dogger and other North Sea banks. 

 One of them, who was avowedly hostile to the beam- 

 trawl, said he was certain that, thirty years previously, 

 double the quantity of fish could be obtained that was 

 available at the time he spoke, but that gradually the 

 supply had fallen away. He predicted that some day, 

 if trawling were allowed, England would cry out for 

 5 



