CHAPTER II 



THE HERRING IN HISTORY 



As it has been said that the foundations of 

 Amsterdam were laid on herring bones, so 

 in one sense, the Civil War owed its origin to 

 the Yarmouth fisheries, for it was to protect 

 them and the coast trade generally that the 

 expedient of levying " ship money " was hit 

 upon. Nor was the danger an idle one. The 

 Dunkirkers had been scouring the coast for 

 some years, and on one occasion had actually 

 landed at Tunstead, while the North Sea 

 fishing fleet did not dare to sail without an 

 armed convoy. 



Out of the English herring fishery, again, 

 grew the mercantile marine and ultimately, 

 through Cromwell's Navigation laws, the British 

 Navy. It is therefore no uninteresting task 

 to trace the herring through history, and to note 

 the events, social and political, connected with 

 it, with an eye kept wryly on the seventeenth 

 century disputes about the Dominion of the 

 Sea. An understanding of those disputes will 

 help us to grasp in some respects the meaning 

 of the expression ** Freedom of the Seas," as 

 used by the Germans during the present war. 



About the year 240 Solinus described the 



