224 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



out on to the Dogger as I could, because it was on the 

 Bank that the best fish was to be caught. We got away 

 finely and nothing happened to bother us till we were as 

 far as The Cemetery and had shot our gear and were 

 towing it at two or three knots an hour. Then I got 

 uneasy, for there was something queer and uncanny in 

 the weather, something that I couldn't account for and 

 didn't understand at all. North Sea smacksmen work 

 mostly by instinct and the lead. There are barometers 

 and chronometers and such-like fantastic gear for the 

 big liners, but the old school of fishermen were brought 

 up to use their wits, and to understand the weather 

 became part of their nature. As a rule, the smacksman 

 didn't own a chart. Give him the lead and a lump of 

 tallow and let him heave it overboard, and he could tell 

 you exactly, from the stuff he brought up, which part of 

 the Dogger he was on, just as you know which street 

 you're in by looking at the name of it on a lamp-post or 

 a wall. 



" In winter-time you expect bad weather on the 

 Dogger, and you get it ; for that matter, you sometimes 

 get it all the year round, and I've known a snowstorm 

 out there even in summer-time. 



" It was the beginning of March, and there was a 

 strange dulness both in the sky and on the water while 

 we were trawling. There was something mysterious 

 about it all, and I grew more uneasy when I noticed 

 what a wonderful lot of sea was rolling up to the edge of 

 the Bank, and how little wind there was with it. That 

 absence of wind and the immense height and fierceness 

 of the sea will always remain in my memory as the 

 chief features of the great March gale. 



