44 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 



75,000 tons of fish are, however, sent away annually by 

 railway from Hull and Grimsby alone. It is, perhaps, a 

 fair assumption that for every three tons brought away from 

 Grimsby by land, one ton is either carried direct from the 

 smacks to London or sold in the neighbourhood. If this 

 assumption is accurate, some 100,000 tons of fish must be 

 annually caught by the Hull and Grimsby boats. Placing 

 the value of these fish at the ports at rather less than 

 2d. a lb., or i^20 a ton, the smacks of these ports must 

 annually obtain fish worth ;^2,ooo,ooo. It is almost certain 

 that the fish caught by lines and trawls in all the other 

 ports of the kingdom exceed in quantity the fish caught 

 by the trawlers of Hull and Grimsby alone. If it is only 

 equal to the quantity caught by the boats of these two 

 ports the trawl and line fish of the British Islands must be 

 worth ;^ 4,000,000 annually. 



Thus, if the estimates in the foregoing pages be reliable, 

 it is possible to form some idea of the value of the fishing 

 industry of the British Islands. It was shown on an early 

 page of this essay that merely testing it by the value of the 

 capital employed and the number of fishermen engaged, it 

 was probable that the fishery produced from ^^ 9,000,000 to 

 ;^ 10,000,000 a year. It has now been shown specifically 

 that the trawl and line fisheries in all probability yield 

 ;^ 4,000,000, the herring fishery ;^ 2,000,000, the salmon 

 fishery ^800,000, the mackerel fishery ;i^3 50,000, and that 

 the fisheries for pilchards, whitebait, and smelts bring up 

 these totals to at least ^^ 7, 500,000 annually. To these 

 must be added the fisheries for fish, which, strictly speak- 

 ing, are not fish, for crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs, 

 prawns, and shrimps : and for molluscs, such as oysters, 

 mussels, whelks, and winkles. 



It is no easy matter to give any estimate, which is worth 



