386 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
thus fishing the week to spend the Sunday at home with 
wife and family, beginning afresh on Monday morning. This is 
the custom prevailing, and likely to continue, among our own men 
at Plymouth and Brixham, and the method, it must be admitted, 
has had beneficial moral effects upon the men and their families, 
the Sabbath rest at home sweetening life's toils in no unmistake- 
able manner. 
The system of fishing in fleets, keeping the men at sea eight 
weeks at a time, which is the general system in the North, though 
many only stay out from one week to a fortnight when fishing 
single -boating, naturally deprives them from the advantage 
of being among their families so often as is enjoyed by our 
local fishermen ; add to this, that during winter time they are 
overtaken by severe gales, with no opportunity of running to 
harbour for shelter, but have to face it out at all hazards. You 
will agree with me, I am sure, that it is at no little privation, 
risk, and danger, that our trawlers are obtaining the food supply 
which is so important to this country, and that their life is by 
no means an enviable one. Not a winter passes but some 
fisherman's home has its bread-winner taken from it. I know 
of no fishing port where so many fishermen's fatherless children 
are to be found as at Hull or Grimsby ; and it is satisfactory 
to know that at present some hundred children are being main- 
tained from the fund created by a portion of the balance from the 
profits of the late International Fishery Exhibition. £10,000 was 
handed over for this purpose. 
, And there is another danger which our trawlers in the North 
have been seriously troubled with, but which is happily be^ 
coming less year by year. The curse of the North Sea has 
been the Dutch "cooper," or floating grog-ship, which used to 
be constantly cruising among the various fleets, and selling 
tobacco and the vilest kinds of spirits. This traffic increased 
to so great an extent that it became a moral pest, and was 
working serious consequences, which had at last to be taken 
into consideration by the British, Dutch, and Belgian govern- 
ments. A convention was entered into for its repression ; but 
it remained almost a dead letter, and did very little in stopping 
this traffic. The Mission to Deep-sea Fishermen has, how T ever, 
nearly cleared the sea of this illicit liquor traffic, besides being a 
very successful agency for the improvement of the moral and 
