88 
PILCHARD. 
bow of the boat, to be shifted to the quarter when the nets 
are hauled,- and the whole thus stretched out is left to float 
with or across the tide without the sails being set, except in 
very calm weather, when a little headway is necessary, in 
order to keep the nets from becoming folded together. Within 
a few years an improvement has been made in the arrange- 
ment of the nets, by which they have been rendered more 
effective, and also those hazards avoided to which they had 
been exposed by becoming entangled in the keels and rudders 
of ships. It consists in diminishing the number and size of 
the corks along the head line, and in placing cords of the 
length of two or three fathoms at proper distances, with a 
stout buov of cork attached to each. By this means the nets 
are sunk beyond the reach of ships, and to a depth sufficient 
to reach the fish as they swim below, even when none are 
otherwise to be discovered. This method of reaching the fish, 
at whatever depth they swim, has long been in use on the 
coast of Norway in the taking of Herrings. 
The other mode of conducting the fishery for Pilchards is 
by seans, for the fitting out of which two principal boats are 
provided, each of which is about forty feet in length and ten 
feet wide at the beam. The first of these is termed the sean 
boat, and is furnished with a sean that is about two hundred 
and twenty fathoms in length and twelve in depth; but these 
proportions are varied in different districts; and the whole is 
buoyed up along the head-rope with corks, and weighed down 
at the bottom with leads. The second boat is the volyer or 
follower, which carries a sean of from a hundred to a hundred 
and twenty fathoms in length, and eighteen at its greatest 
depth. In form, as well as in extent, this, which is termed 
the tuck sean, is different from the former, or stop sean, its 
middle portion being shaped into a hollow, or bunt, as best 
fitted to the use for which it is designed. A third boat, 
much smaller than the others, is called the lurker. The crew 
of a sean consists of eighteen men, with commonly a boy, 
and of these seven are assigned to each of the larger boats, 
while the remaining four, including the master seaner, belong 
to the lurker. On some parts of the coast another individual 
of no small importance is termed the huer, and on his skill 
in discovering the presence of the school, and the direction 
