CHAPTER III 



THE HERRING FISHERY 



Section I. — The Dutch Fishery. 



The herring fishing off the coast of Scania 

 continued till the early part of the sixteenth 

 century, when the fish, which had failed several 

 times in the fifteenth century, left the coast for 

 good and frequented the Scottish coast, the 

 Irish seas and the shores of the Low Countries. 

 There it was that a Dutchman discovered that 

 improved method of curing, preserving and 

 barrelling the herring which changed the course 

 of European history.^ Beuckels, Beuckelzon, 

 or Beuckelsen, was born, according to some, in 

 1347, according to others in 1387, and his 

 discovery, in the opinion of so great an autho- 

 rity as McCulloch, contributed more than any- 

 thing else to the growth of the mercantile 

 power and wealth of Holland. The eating of 

 butcher's meat being prohibited during two 

 days every week, and for forty days before 

 Lent, the new method was of the greatest 

 importance to the whole Christian world. The 

 Emperor Charles V. bore public witness to this 



* The salted or preserved herrings to which reference is made in 

 the early documents already quoted were merely herrings packed in 

 or sprinkled with salt to keep the fish from decomposition. Peacock, 

 in tiie " Misfortunes of Elphin," humorously describes his exiled 

 prince as " the first Briton who caught fish on a large scale and 

 •alted them for other purposes than home consumption." 



