APPENDIX J: HOLLAND _ 62 — 



and Ymuiden, exercised the long-line-fishery in the winter- and spring months. As a rule, 

 they brought their fish in fresh condition to the Ymuiden market. 



3. The trawl-fishery is a very old Dutch industry also. The name used for this net 

 in the oldest placard (1653) in which mention is made of this fishery is "corde". It is 

 described there as a net kept open by a beam and burdened with stones or lead, which is 

 dragged along the bottom of the water behind a fishing vessel. The name "corde" is an 

 equivalent for the now common word "Schrobnet", which is used for the first time in a 

 placard of 1676. In that year, all such proceedings as were reputed obnoxious to the pre- 

 servation of certain fishes, were prohibited (plaice nets (driftnets) were made upon a chip 

 of the size of a full eight and twenty: nets composed of narrower meshes and trawl- 

 nets ("schrobnetten")were both prohibited by the said placard). An exception to this law 

 was made next year, in favour of those who fished for shrimps within the sand-bars with 

 a so-called "ligte sayingh" or "corde", a net probably of about the same pattern as the 

 shrimp-trawl of present days. 



The placard against the trawl has been of no great use to all probability; the pro- 

 hibition was very ill observed. In 1689, it was given up again, chiefly because of the 

 impossibility of enforcing it. Since that time, no new law against trawling in Dutch waters 

 has been in use before 1820, when a statute of this nature was once more set up; this 

 time also, without being of great use. 



From what has been told on the lack of statistics, with regard to the more important 

 branches of Dutch fishery, it will be easily understood that, of the fresh fishery with trawls 

 no statistical accounts at all have been kept. Much more than the other branches, the 

 trawl-fishery in Holland always has been a small industry in which no capital was invested, 

 of which no book-keeping took place, about which no statistics were collected. It has 

 been of some importance in the 17 "^ and 18*'' century, but it suffered even more than the 

 other branches from the wars and the political difficulties occasioned by them. The 

 catholic provinces of the Austrian Netherlands were one of the principal markets for fresh 

 fish and when this market was virtually closed by the protective duties of 1725, the Dutch 

 fresh-fish industry was the principal sufferer. In the course of the IS*' century, this trade 

 went down more and more. That it was quite insignificiant towards the end of the Repub- 

 lic, may also be deduced from the fact, that of all the several branches of North Sea 

 fishery, it is the only one which never was encouraged by a bounty! 



There is hardly any talk on the Dutch trawling- industry in the Dutch fishery-litera- 

 ture. It always has been an industry not cared for by the government and despised by 

 the ship-owners and fishermen of the other branches. Till of late, the patrons of the ves- 

 sels exercising this branch of the trade were, to a large extent at least, owners of their 

 vessels. These vessels were mostly small boats of 20—30 tons, with the exception of the 

 herring-boats from the coast villages (Scheveningeu, Katwijk a. o.) part of which practised 

 the trawl-fishery during winter and early spring. The small vessels, exercising this fishery, 

 were mostly from Holder, Enkhuiseu, Urk, Volendam and some others ports of the Zuider- 

 see ; they were not built originally for the North Seafishery and they were too small to go 

 far from the coast. They were (and are still) all well-boats, and the fish they land is not 

 only fresh but to a large extent living fish. 



In some ports, in Holder especially, in the second half of the ID"* century, little com- 

 panies of ship-owners tried their luck with the trawling-business. They used the same 



