26 THE SEA FISHERIES 



crew's cabin, the steam being carried under the deck to a capstan 

 fitted near the main hatch abaft the mainmast. 



The grounds fished were Liverpool Bay (in summer), off the Isle of 

 Man, all along the Welsh coast in Carnarvon and Cardigan Bays 

 and the Bristol Channel (Tenby grounds). Occasionally visits were 

 made to Donegal Bay, and the grounds between the Calf of Man and 

 the Irish coast were also fished. The mainstay of the fleet were 

 soles and plaice, though cod and ray were at times important. 



Almost all the men were natives of Hoylake. Each boat earned 

 four men and a boy, and the earnings were divided into six and a 

 half shares. 



Attempts have been made from time to time to compare the re- 

 lative efficiency of the sailing and steam trawler. 



In a paper on the impoverishment of the sea, Garstang, in 1900, ^ 

 took the first-class sailing trawler as the unit of catching power. 

 For some time after the introduction of steam trawling, the vessels 

 employed were small, of low engine power and the beam trawl was 

 used. The catching power of these early steam trawlers with the 

 beam trawl was estimated at from three to six times that of the 

 smack.* Garstang estimated that during the period 1883-5 the 

 steam trawler caught about four times as much fish as the smack. 

 After 1885 the steam trawlers increased rapidly in size and effi- 

 ciency, and the introduction of the otter trawl in 1895 marked a 

 great step forward, so that the older comparisons were no longer 

 admissible. Garstang gives a table showing the relative efficiency 

 of the steamer as compared with the smack advanced from four- 

 fold in 1884 to eightfold in 1898.' In 1901 Fulton* compared the 

 relative efficiency of the beam and otter trawls as used from 

 steamers, and found that the latter was 1-37 times as efficient as 

 the former. Similar experiments were carried out by the Marine 

 Biological Association on the Huxley with the general result that 

 the otter trawl caught 47 per cent more than the beam trawl. ^ 



More recently Miss Lee* has made a comparison of the catching 

 power of various types of fishing boats. She compares small steam 

 trawlers with the Lowestoft smacks, Lowestoft small steam trawlers 



1 Journal of the Marine Biological Association, Vol. VI, N.S., p. 44. 



' Report Select Committee on Sea Fisheries, 1893. See answers to questions, 

 351, 1165 and 4119. 



8 Op. cit., p. 48. 



* Annual Report Scottish Fishery Board, Vol. XX, Part III. 



^ " North Sea Fisheries." First Report Southern Area, 1902-3, Cd. 2670. — iQpS- 



^ " Comparative notes on various trawler catches in the North Sea, including 

 some steam trawler records for 1903 and 1905," by Rosa M. Lee, M.B.A. Inter- 

 national Investigations, Fourth Report, Southern Area, Cd. 6125, London, 1912, 

 p. 291. Also " Review of Commercial Trawler Statistics Relating to Plaice," by 

 Rosa M. Lee, Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, Fishery Investigations, Sea 

 Fisheries, Vol. II, No. 5, London, 1915. 



