March 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



PISHING VESSELS AND BOATS. '367 



about ] 2,000 boats, making a total for the United Kingdom of 33,000 

 boats, manned by 130,000 men and boys, a branch of industry well 

 deserving proper encouragement, as affording an inexhaustible source of 

 abundant and nutritious food. 



It is to be regretted that few models of European fishing boats were 

 exhibited, nor can we obtain any description of the build of the boats, 

 nor any statistics of the fishing ; yet France, Holland, and Sweden must 

 have large fisheries. Norway alone sent models of fishing boats, several 

 well-executed specimens being furnished by the Naval Department. 



The principal herring fishing stations on the west coast of Norway 

 are at or near Stavanger and Bergen, and, for the cod fishery, at the 

 Lofoden Isles. In a country with so extensive a seaboard, and with its 

 numerous deep fiords, having a large part of the population constantly 

 employed on the water, it might be expected that many lives would be 

 annually lost by drowning, but we were not prepared for anything bike 

 the amount of loss that really does occur. It appears from a small 

 periodical named ' Volkevennen,' or ' Friend of the People,' published 

 at Christiania, by Mr. Eilert Sundt, one of the Royal Commissioners for 

 Norway at the International Exhibition, that the average annual loss 

 from drowning for the last ten years, in a population of only a million 

 and a half, exceeded 700, and this chiefly by the upsetting of boats. In 

 the single diocese of Tromso, which is the most northern of the five 

 dioceses into which the country is divided, and has a large extent of 

 sea-coast, the accidents from drowning, on an average of ten years, were 

 206 out of a population of 132,242. 



The cause of this startling fact, which could hardly have been 

 credited but for the authority it rests upon, deserves to be the object of 

 the most careful inquiry and philanthropic interference. Is it that 

 the boats are faulty in form 1 or the fishermen and others are 

 reckless in the use of them ? or that the men, as a general rule, cannot 

 swim ? or that there is a want of a humane society, and of the most effi- 

 cient means for saving life in such accidents, and for restoring anima- 

 tion ? Perhaps all these causes combined, and we would fain hope that 

 not the least of the benefits of the Exhibition of 1862 may be that, having 

 witnessed the various establishments and means specially provided for 

 the saving life from drowning in this country, including the swimming 

 schools set on foot by the Duke of Northumberland in the north of 

 England, those appliances may be extended to the coasts and fiords of 

 Norway. 



In the Australian colonies generally, and especially in Tasmania and 

 at Sydney, there are many well-built boats of good form, and well 

 adapted to the fisheries in those seas ; but the only specimens exhibited 

 were two whale-boats by the Commissioners of Tasmania, the production 

 of the best builders of Hobart Town (Chandler and Miller). These 

 boats are of colonial wood, the harpoons and all the exquisite fishing 

 gear being fitted by colonial workmen. 



