PRIME AND OFFAL 105 



and that was whelks, or buckles, as the Scotch people 

 call them. Long experience showed not only that the 

 cod greatly favoured this particular shellfish, but also 

 that the whelks were tough enough to keep to the 

 hooks. So great was the demand for whelks that the 

 collection of them was an established business giving 

 employment to a large number of small boats and 

 people. Trawlers themselves would from time to time 

 be able to supply considerable quantities of whelks, but 

 frequently the supply would run short and the codmen 

 suffer proportionately. The fondness of many of the 

 poorer classes in the country for the shellfish would also 

 interfere considerably with the supply available for bait. 



Very great quantities of whelks were needed by 

 codmen for each voyage. In the height of the season 

 one vessel would take to sea with her forty wash of 

 whelks, a wash being equal to twenty-one quarts. More 

 than eight hundred quarts of whelks, therefore, would be 

 needed as bait, and the breaking of the shells, extraction 

 of the little animals, and hooking them was in itself a 

 protracted and laborious business. Great care was 

 taken to keep the whelks in good condition. They 

 were placed in net-bags and kept alive in the smack's 

 well until they were required for use. With attractive 

 bait like this, enormous numbers of cod were caught by 

 the liners. 



Frank Buckland recorded, in his genial and careful 

 manner, a talk he had with a North Sea skipper at 

 Grimsby, apparently in the early Seventies. His 

 informant had been master of the Hurricane, a fine 

 smack, and he had knocked about the Dogger and 

 other banks for two-and-forty years. The catch of one 



