220 THE TEAWL QUESTION. 



There has been a large amount of exaggeration as to the injury- 

 done to the white-fish fishery by the trawls. Fishermen who 

 have neither the capital nor the enterprise to engage in trawling 

 themselves are sure to abuse those who do ; but the trawl is so 

 formidable as to have induced various French writers to advocate 

 its prohibition. They describe this instrument of the fishery as 

 terrible in its efiects, leaving, when it is used, deep furrows in 

 the bottom of the sea, and crushing alike the fry and the spawn ; 

 but there is a very evident exaggeration in this charge, because 

 as a general rule the beam-trawl cannot be worked with safety 

 except on a sandy or muddy bottom, and, so far as we know, 

 fish prefer to spawn on ground that is slightly rocky or weedy, 

 so that the spawn may have something to adhere to, which it 

 evidently requires in order to escape destruction j and when a 

 quantity of spawn is discerned on a bit of sea- weed or rock, we 

 always find that, from some viscid property of which it is pos- 

 sessed, it adheres^ to its resting-place with great tenacity. The 

 trawl-net, however destructive its agency, cannot, I fear, be dis- 

 pensed with J and, used at proper seasons and at proper places, 

 is the best engine of capture we can have for the kinds of fish 

 which it is employed to secure. The trawl is very largely used 

 by English fishermen, but it is only of late years that the trawlers 

 have come so far north as Sunderland and Berwick, and it is the 

 fishermen of these places who have got up the cry about that 

 net being so injurious to the fisheries. In Scotland there are 

 no resident trawlers, the fisheries being chiefly of the nature of 

 a coasting industry, where the men, as a general rule, only go 

 out to sea for a few hours and then return with their capture. 

 Having been frequently on board of the trawling ships, I may 

 perhaps be allowed to set down a few figures indicative of the 

 power of the great beam-net. 



A trawler, then, is a vessel of about 35 tons burden, and 

 usually carries 7 persons — ^viz. 5 men and 2 apprentices — as a 

 crew to work her.* The trawl-rope is 120 fathoms in length 



* A Barking trawler usually carries 5 men and 3 boys, and costs 

 when in full work £12 per week. A Hull trawler costs much less, and 

 the owner has less risk ; because the crew, from the captain downwards, 

 share in the catch. The Barking men refuse to enter into this arrange- 

 ment, which probably helps to account for the decay of the Barking 

 fishery, for that of Hull is comparatively prosperous. The co-operative 

 system prevails among a few of the fisher people of England. In an 

 accoimt of a Yorkshire fishing-place recently published in Once a Week, 

 the following statistics of the cost of boats, etc., are given ; — 



