WAGES AND PROFITS 171 



although that was a very high price. I n the following year, 

 at Dover, mackerel were selling at sixty for a shilling ! 



Mr. Henry Knott, a Grimsby smack-owner, gave 

 details of the weight and value of fish taken by one of 

 his craft in each of the five consecutive years, 1860 to 

 1864. During that period 86 tons of prime sold for ^23 

 a ton, and 357 tons of offal for 2 a ton, the total price 

 realised for the 443 tons being ,2702, an average of 

 6 a ton. The price per pound of the prime was 2jd. 

 and that of the offal not quite a farthing. 



A master of a fishing- vessel trading for the London 

 market told Yarrell that eight men, fishing under his 

 orders off the Dogger Bank, in 25 fathoms, took 

 eighty score of cod in a day. These were brought 

 to Gravesend in stout cutter-rigged vessels of 80 or 

 100 tons, called store-boats, built for the traffic, with a 

 large well in which the fish were kept alive, and of these 

 a portion was sent up to Billingsgate with each night 

 tide. The store-boats remained as low as Gravesend, 

 because the water there was sufficiently mixed to keep 

 the fish alive ; they would have been killed if taken 

 higher up. At that period, half a century ago, there 

 were more than 250 well-boats which brought the fish 

 to Billingsgate. These were built at a cost of more 

 than ,275,000, and were manned by more than 2000 

 men and boys. Yarrell estimated that these crews must 

 earn ,140,000 yearly before the capitalists got any profit. 



In his Wages and Earnings of the Working-Classes, 

 published in 1867, Professor Leone Levi stated that 

 the average earnings of a fisherman might be taken at 

 2os. a week, and 6s. for a boy ; but in many cases the 

 fishermen had other employments, and when they were 



