88 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



of fish, which came under the heading of " Wrangems" 

 or " stacker," which is another term for perquisites. I 

 have repeatedly seen men and boys bearing these 

 trophies, and many an agreeable little bargain has been 

 struck between the conveyers of the fish and house- 

 holders ashore. The custom, however, is almost a thing 

 of the past. Owners find the cost of running modern 

 trawlers so heavy that they cannot afford to allow any 

 fish to be removed from their vessels except for legiti- 

 mate and regular sale in the market. The easy-going 

 ways of the past are vanishing, or have gone with the 

 lazy brown sails and creaking spars ; many a quiet, old- 

 world haven has been converted into a bustling fish 

 port, and the observer may, in some of these places, 

 witness sights and hear language which are not what 

 one expects to come across in such romantic neighbour- 

 hoods. In one of the quaintest of north-east coast 

 havens I have heard a blustering bully of an overseer in 

 a fish-market use expressions which would have caused 

 his expulsion from Billingsgate. The words were 

 directed, too, to men who were accustomed to put off 

 in their cobles in bad weather, and who would be ex- 

 pected to retaliate at once on such a person. Their 

 fathers, contemporaries of Wrangem, would have given 

 him an early opportunity of cooling himself in the 

 harbour. 



I am sorry to have to say that on many recent visits 

 to the east coast I have been struck by the astonishing 

 change that has come over some of the longshore men, 

 not the deep-sea fishers. This summer, in some of the 

 most inaccessible places, I talked with, and saw, many 

 men and boys who a few years ago would have been 



