March 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



FISHING VESSELS AND BOATS. 363 



giving the appearance at a short distance of a gigantic spider walking 

 on the sea. Amongst the Viti or Fiji group, as well as in the Tonga 

 Islands, the canoes are much longer, reaching to sixty and occasionally 

 eighty feet ; some elaborately carved, evincing the skill and patience of 

 the natives, when we consider that their tools were only sharp stones or 

 pieces of shell. Their war canoes are preserved from the sun and 

 weather under beautiful roofs supported on elegant pointed arches. In 

 New Zealand the raised stem and stern of the canoes is often adorned 

 ■with large tufts of feathers. At Taiti, in the Society Islands, and Hawaii, 

 in the Sandwich Islands, large double canoes were used ; in the latter 

 group, Captain Cook, in the year 1778, saw a canoe 110 feet long in the 

 fleet of King Otu, but all these have disappeared, and coarse fishing 

 canoes are the only native boats to be now seen. 



On the north-western coast of America the baidar, or umiak, made 

 of skins, is entirely covered up, except a hole in the centre, where the 

 native sits and dexterously plies his double paddle, and this form pre- 

 vails as far as the coast of Labrador and Greenland. A specimen of a 

 Greenland fishing-canoe, fitted complete, was exhibited by the Danish 

 Government. In Guayaquil and along the coast of Peru, the balsa or 

 large raft, made of a peculiarly light wood, is in use ; and where the 

 surf is very heavy, as at Arica and elsewhere, two large inflated skins, 

 placed side by side, and united by a light platform between them, carry 

 the passenger with safety to the beach. Prince Edward Island, in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, exhibited a specimen of the North American 

 Indian bark canoe. 



The models of fishing boats were not near so numerous in the last 

 Exhibition as those sent to the Exhibition of 1851 ; still, there were some 

 from the ports in the United Kingdom, from Norway, and other coun- 

 tries which deserve notice, and which we shall have occasion to refer to 

 a little later. The value and importance of the fisheries to every mari- 

 time country, not only in a commercial point of viev, but as supplying 

 the poor with cheap and nutritious food, and as a means of raising up a 

 body of intelligent seamen conversant with the set of the tides, and 

 inured to every hardship, ready to man life-boats and carry succour to a 

 stranded vessel in case of need, is of such interest to all seafaring nations, 

 that a brief notice of the more important European aud trans-Atlantic 

 coast fisheries, with a description of the best forms of fishing vessels and 

 boats in use, might well form a suitable preface to our Report. But the 

 means are not available, and we are reluctantly compelled to limit our 

 notice to the fisheries of the coasts of the United Kingdom and the 

 surrounding seas, as the trawling grounds frequented by the Penzance, 

 Plymouth, and Torbay fishermen, in the western part of the Channel, 

 the Dogger Bank and North Sea fisheries, the herring fishery on the 

 coast of Scotland, the Nymph Bank, off Waterford, and the recently- 

 discovered Rockall Bank, off the north-west coast of Ireland. 



The fishing vessels and boats of Penzance, Plymouth, Torbay, and 



