BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 295 
gage in this industry, more or less trawling is carried on near the shore 
on various parts of the coast of the British Isles, by small boats, but 
until recently the Scotch have employed this method comparatively 
little, and even now other means of catching fish are generally preferred 
by the boat fishermen of that country. 
The remarkable development of the beam -trawl fishery of the east 
coast of England during the past forty years, the consequent increase 
in the trawling fleets, and the growth and prosperity of the principal 
fishing ports are, perhaps, without a parallel in the history of the Brit- 
ish fisheries. 
Take Grimsby, for example, which, about 1858, according to Mr. Har- 
rison Mudd, a prominent citizen of that port, had a population of, ap- 
proximately, from 10,000 to 13,000, and had just begun its career as a 
fishing town by sending out a few beam-trawlers; now it has increased 
to upwards of 30,000 inhabitants, and from its docks sail a fleet of 
nearly 800 fishing vessels, more than half of which are beam-trawlers. 
Mr. Edward Jex and other gentlemen say that they can recollect 
when Hull and Lowestoft (some thirty-five or forty years ago) did not 
have more than 25 or 30 sail of trawlers to each port. In 1881 Hull had 
a fleet of 737 and Lowestoft 467 vessels of all classes, the majority of 
which were trawlers. 
“The rapid development of late years,” writes Mr. Ansell, “may be 
traced to the introduction of ice and the spread of our railway system, 
by which the catcher has been enabled to get the fruits of his toil dis- 
tributed to the many thousands dwelling in the inland towns— those 
who seldom or never saw or tasted salt-water fish.” 1 
It may also be added that the introduction of the method of icing fish 
has given the trawlers an opportunity, which they have not been slow 
to improve, to visit distant and untried grounds where fish could be 
taken in much greater abundance than nearer home. 
According to Mr. Ansell the advance of the trawling trade was so 
rapid on the east coast that Hull, which, in 1845, had only 21 vessels, 
aggregating 570 tons, and valued at £6,425, had, in 1882~’83, increased 
its fleet to 417 smacks, besides 9 steam carriers and 6 ice ships, with a 
tonnage of 29,233 tons, and a valuation of £555,000. 
Still more remarkable has been the growth of the beam-trawl fishery 
from Grimsby. It was first introduced, according to Holdsworth, in 
1858, at which time 5 smacks went there from Hull. The rapid strides 
which this fishery has made at that port may be judged from the fact 
that the amount of fish landed there had increased from 4,344 tons in 
1858 to over 73,000 tons in 1881, while we are credibly informed that 
about 100,000 tons were landed in 1882-’83. Though all of these fish 
were not caught in beam-trawls a large percentage were so taken, and 
it is perhaps not too much to assume that the increase in the fisheries 
Papers of the conferences held in connection with the Great International Fisheries 
Exhibition (London, 1883), On Trawling, by Alfred W. Ansell. 
