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■Part III. — Tenth Annual Report 
This enormous development in gear, like that in the boats, has been 
specially marked on the East Coast. The West Coast Fisheries have 
remained, relatively speaking, stationary — progress at one place being 
counterbalanced by decadence somewhere else. It has been already seen 
that in 1809, when fishery officers were first appointed, seven of them 
were placed on the West Coast and only three on the East Coast, two of 
them being stationed on the Firth of Forth (Leith and Burntisland), and 
the third at Wick, and this may be taken as typical of the condition of 
the fisheries on the two coasts at that time. I know nothing in the 
history of European fisheries more remarkable than the creation during 
this century of the great fishery on the East Coast of Scotland, along an 
iron-bound, inhospitable, and comparatively harbourless coast, except the 
creation of an even greater fishery, many centuries earlier, among the dreary 
sand-dunes of Holland ; and it speaks volumes for the laborious toil, 
enterprise, and energy of the indomitable race which inhabits it. The 
conditions which assisted in the development of the East Coast Fisheries 
are more complex than might at first sight appear. 
In regard to the statistics referred to, the following examples may be 
given : — In 1858-59 there were 2,634 herring boats belonging to the West 
Coast, 19,810,000 square yards of netting, and 2,987,500 fathoms of lines. 
On the East Coast, at the same period, there were 4,232 herring boats, 
65,493,000 square yards of nets, and 15,074,000 fathoms of lines. In 
1885-89 the number of herring boats on the West Coast averaged 3,338, 
the netting 29,794,000 square yards, and the lines 4,505,000 fathoms. 
On the East Coast, the average for the same period was 4,364 herring boats, 
162,752,000 square yards of netting, and 31,073,000 fathoms of lines. 
TABLE IV. — Showing the Annual Mean Number of Herring Boats (with 
the Netting belonging to each), the Extent of Netting, and Length of 
Lines, possessed by each Hundred Fishermen in Quinquennial Periods 
since 1844. 
Number of 
Area of 
Length of 
Average Area 
Period. 
Herring 
Netting in 
Lines in 
of Netting per 
Boats. 
Square Yards. 
Fathoms. 
Herring Boat. 
1844 
130,598 
14,235 
1845-49 
181,595 
22,578 
1850-54 
196,113 
23,706 
1855-59 
16-4 
206,046 
42,679 
12,548 
1860-64 
18-5 
248,864 
47,694 
13,409 
1865-69 
18-6 
309,712 
54,441 
16.593 
1870-74 
18-2 
316,371 
61,627 
17,328 
1875-79 
17-2 
347,349 
66,141 
20,181 
1880-84 
16-9 
386,312 
66,246 
72,373 
22,894 
1885-89 
15-6 
391,674 
24,999 
1890-91 
14-4 
366,700 
76,869 
25,345 
the lines exceeded 41,121 miles— long enough to engirdle the earth once and nearly 
three-quarters. The mean area of the netting in the period 1885-89 amounted to 
39,783 acres, or over 62 square miles ; suspended in the water, as in fishing, they 
would extend to a distance of over 7000 miles [7293], sufficient to stretch across the 
Atlantic twice, and about twenty times across the North Sea. 
