35G BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
sea may be, 1 and the necessary number of men, generally three, jump j 
in, and their mates on board hand them down the boxes, which when 
full weigh about one hundred-weight each. Sometimes there are very 
few boxes to go, or in certain cases none at all; at other times there j 
may be as many as fifteen or twenty, or, in the event of the smack hav- 
ing been unable to send any for a day or two previously, there may , 
occasionally be more, but this is not very usual. The boat is then . 
towed behind the smack with a painter of about 10 fathoms in length, 
and the smack makes sail either ahead or astern of the steamer, or 
sometimes round and round until she has got it into such a position that 
they are likely to be able to reach by themselves, when she lets go and 
they make their own way with oars. The whole of this proceeding is 
little short of wonderful ; in fact, it is impossible for any one to under- 
stand what these men can do with their boats without seeing it. A 
common, awkward-looking row-boat is first pushed over the gunwale 
into a heavy sea, and almost before the fact of its having got safely in 
without being swamped is realized, a man has somehow swarmed over 
the side and got on board, a turn of the painter is taken round a belay - 
ing-pin on deck, two other men follow the first, and the crew hand in 
the fish, the sea all the time rising and falling to a height of 18 feet or 
15 feet, and not one of those engaged appearing to take the slightest 
notice of it or in any way betraying the smallest consciousness that 
there is a sea at all. Then the towing with a long rope, which I have 
never seeu before, is most remarkable, and the effect of a number of 
vessels running down to gether towards the carrier, each every now and 
again on the crest of one wave while its boat is on the crest of the next 
and the long painter is taut in the mid-air between, is something quite 
beyond one’s ordinary experience, and forms a rather interesting study. 
The quietness, too, with which they knock about among each other in 
a heavy sea is somewhat instructive, no special lookout or symptom of 
anxiety being anywhere apparent, and yet all giving each other clear 
berths and no collisions happening. Verily, great is the confidence in- 
spired by real knowledge and constant practice. And now the boats 
approach the carrying vessel, the men in them sing out, ‘Let go!’ 
those on board reply, ‘All gone!’ and then the rowing begins, and up 
and down they go on seas so heavy that every now and then they are 
lost to sight for an uncomfortable length of time. At last they ap- 
proach the vessel, and though to an unaccustomed eye it might be sup- 
1 “ This work,” writes the Duke of Edinburgh, “ is carried ou in almost all states 
of weather, such is the importance attached to the immediate dispatch of the fish that 
the men never seem to think of the possibility of danger to themselves. I have heard 
of a trawler’s boat, with its cargo and crew, being actually lifted by a sea to the deck j 
of a carrier and there left. 
“In the excitement and struggles of a large number of these tiny boats, each of 
which is striving for the first place, or in the subsequent endeavors to reach their own 
vessels, accidents are necessarily of frequent occurrence, too often attended by loss of 
life.” T m 
