Modern Yarmouth. 33 



found to answer. The use of ice is now thoroughly under- 

 stood on board these smacks, and a brisk shore industry is 

 carried on while there is ice upon the adjacent broads ; 

 though Norway ice, brought to Yarmouth ice-houses in 

 white Norwegian ships, is preferred. 



The soles and other favourite flat-fish seem to be getting 

 scarcer and scarcer every year, and competent judges attri- 

 bute the declension to the wholesale destruction of small 

 fry on the spawning-grounds near the Dutch coast. A 

 Gorleston smack-owner told Mr. Buckland that he saw 

 hundreds of vessels trawling in the great fish nursery of the 

 North Sea, which, twenty miles in width, extends from the 

 German coast to the Texel, and destroying every night at 

 least a hundred tons of small fish. From the North Fore- 

 land far into the North Sea there are numerous fishing banks 

 well defined on the smacksman's charts, and productive of 

 the finest soles, which are found there (the water being 

 deep) in the coldest weather in immense numbers. The 

 Dutch trawlers are great sinners against fisherman's law. 



The Dutch smacks being of smaller draught than ours, 

 the fishing is conducted too near the shore whenever it may 

 be done with impunity. The Germans, by the effective 

 argument of an ever-present gun-boat, take care of their 

 coast fisheries by allowing no trawling inside nine fathoms 

 of water. At any rate, the spawning-grounds ought to be 

 protected; and Mr. Frank Buckland will have done excellent 

 service by the forcible manner in which he has called the 

 attention of the Government to evils that English, Germans, 

 and Dutch alike are peculiarly interested in remedying. 



The smacksman toils hard for his living, amidst perils of 

 which we, who are snugly housed ashore, little wot. The 

 operation most dreaded by him is the conveyance of the 

 packages of fish from his smack to the carrier cutter. The 



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