INDUSTRIES 



to September, and greatest during the months of 

 October to February, the variation depending 

 not so much on the quantity of cockles present 

 on the beds as on the difficulties of transport of 

 the shellfish during the warm summer months, 

 and on the demand for other luxuries during 

 that period. There is no ' potting ' industry in 

 the case of cockles and mussels, and the absence 

 of this — which is regrettable in many ways — 

 causes the cockle industry to be less steady than 

 if its products could be put on the market in a 

 preserved form. 



Cockles are fished for in three ways. In 

 Morecambe Bay they are chiefly taken by the 

 ' craam,' which is a kind of long fork of three 

 prongs which are bent down at right angles and 

 are fixed to a stout shaft of wood. The cockier 

 carries this instrument in his right hand and a 

 basket in his left. The shellfish are scooped up 

 out of the sand with the ' craam ' and thrown 

 into the basket, and when the latter is full the 

 cockles are washed and riddled so as to reject all 

 those under a certain size. A cockling party 

 usually consists of several people, often members 

 of one family — men, women and children — who 

 go on the sands as soon as the tide ebbs 

 sufficiently, accompanied whenever possible by a 

 horse and cart. During one tide, that is while 

 the sands are bare, each person may gather from 

 one to three hundredweight of cockles, the 

 amount depending on the abundance of the 

 animals. The price obtained for the shellfish 

 depends on the demand, &c., but 2$. will repre- 

 sent an average earning per hundredweight, and 

 this quantity of cockles when retailed will 

 realize about 6f. On this area an instrument 

 called the 'Jumbo' is often employed. The 

 ' Jumbo ' is a large frame of wood with a heavy 

 sole which is rocked to and fro on the sands : 

 the action of this apparatus is to force the cockles 

 up out of the sand on to the surface, when they 

 are gathered up. The ' Jumbo ' is an illegal 

 instrument during part of the year. Further 

 south a rake is employed, and the cockier stands 

 on the sands and rakes the animals up out of the 

 surface layer and then gathers them up. 



Cockling on Lancashire sands is arduous work 

 and great hardships are often experienced, as on 

 account of the shifting of the cockle beds from 

 place to place the fishermen often have to 

 traverse great distances in order to reach the 

 cockle beds, and work on the sands during the 

 cold months of the year is — at the least — a very 

 trying occupation. During the winter of 1895 

 great damage was done to the cockle beds 

 hy the frost, and in Morecambe Bay much 

 difficulty was experienced in obtaining a liveli- 

 hood.' In that year the total number of tons of 



' See Pall Mall Magazine for Sept. 1898. The 

 article referred to gives an admirable account of the 

 cockle fishery at Cark. 



cockles sent away from Cark was only 743 — 

 five years previously over 3,000 tons were sent 

 away from the same station. The frost and the 

 gulls are the worst enemies of the cockle. The 

 birds are said to be very destructive, but it is 

 possible that the damage done in this way has 

 been greatly exaggerated. 



Musselling. — The mussel is nearly as im- 

 portant to Lancashire fishermen as the cockle, 

 though in the absence of reliable and definite 

 statistics it is difficult to compare the exact 

 value of the two shellfish to the county. Very 

 extensive mussel beds exist in various parts of 

 the county, notably at Morecambe and at Hey- 

 sham ; in this latter district there are many 

 square miles of mussel beds which yield a rich 

 harvest to Morecambe fishermen. Similar mussel 

 beds exist all along the Lancashire coast, and at 

 the present time the Wallasey mussel bed is 

 yielding sometimes 200 cwt. per day. Mussels 

 are fished for in various ways : usually they are 

 simply gathered from the beds by hand, but 

 when the latter are covered by the tide the 

 shellfish are taken from the bottom by long 

 rakes which are used from rowing boats. In 

 some years from two to three thousand tons 

 of these shellfish are sent away from Morecambe 

 alone. During the last two or three years a 

 remarkable development of the mussel industry 

 has taken place at Morecambe, transplantation 

 operations being now regularly carried on in 

 this neighbourhood. Here as elsewhere the 

 mussel beds are found along the foreshore 

 forming ' skears,' which extend from below 

 low water -mark to near the high water- 

 mark of ordinary tides. As a rule the higher 

 up the beach the shellfish are found the smaller 

 they are, so that in some localities the animals 

 may be too small to be marketable. It oc- 

 curred to the Morecambe fishermen some years 

 ago that it might be possible to remove these 

 permanently stunted shellfish to other localities 

 where they can obtain more abundant food, and 

 in this way increase their growth to a profitable 

 size. This was first done some three years ago 

 at the initiative of the Morecambe Fishermen's 

 Association, and, assisted by Mr. T. Baxter, the 

 representative of Morecambe on the Sea Fisheries 

 Committee, and Mr. R. A. Dawson, who was 

 then Superintendent of Fisheries, a grant of 

 money was obtained from the committee to pro- 

 vide for the expenses of the transplantation 

 operations, which consisted in removing the 

 stunted mussels from the unfavourable locali- 

 ties and redepositing them in deep water. After 

 a suitable time had elapsed the transplanted 

 mussels were fished, when it was found that a 

 remarkable growth had taken place. It has 

 been calculated that during the years 1904-5 

 the value of these transplanted mussels amounted 

 to about j^2,000 — that is the mussels in their 

 original habitat were worth nothing, but by 



411 



