194 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



careers at large and resists all efforts at capture or 

 reformation. He knows that heavy punishment is the 

 result of being caught trawling in forbidden waters, yet 

 stolen fish is sweet, and he will often shoot his net within 

 the three miles' limit and risk all consequences. Big 

 fines, confiscation of gear, even arrest of the vessel 

 herself, may be the penalty for poaching ; but the fisher 

 takes the risk of all. Sometimes he is caught in the 

 very commission of his sin. A gunboat sees him, and 

 swings up at her top speed just in time to land him 

 or at least, if she is a warship of his own nation, to warn 

 him in bluff sailor-speech to begone. It may be that a 

 British naval officer, being at heart a sportsman himself, 

 and knowing something of the hardships of those who 

 win a living from the sullen North Sea, may range 

 alongside in time to learn of some felonious act. Very 

 well but even a Tory squire ashore will occasionally 

 give a poacher the benefit of a doubt, or go so far as to 

 say that a prisoner may not be guilty, but he must not 

 do it again. 



Little or no mercy, however, is shown by foreign 

 Powers towards British fishermen arrested in their 

 territorial waters, and this is particularly the case with 

 Germany. A British master was charged with fishing 

 in German waters, and his advocate reported that the 

 Appeal Court at Leipzig had pronounced the presence of 

 a foreign fishing-boat in German waters with the in- 

 tention of fishing to be an offence equivalent to that of 

 actual fishing, and that consequently British fishing- 

 boats, when, for any reason whatever, within the 

 territorial limits of Germany, should be most careful to 

 avoid everything which could raise any suspicion of their 



