[-326-]
THE SOUTH COAST FISHERMAN.
As a nation it is not to be denied that the flesh-pot has for
us Englishmen attractions superior to those of the fish-kettle. Indeed, if we
make item of the number of shops in London devoted to the sale of the finny
tribe, and compare the result with the figures that go to show the number of
establishments given over to the retailing of beeves and rnuttons, it will be
found that our relative liking for fish and flesh is as nearly as possible on a
par with that of Jack Falstaff for sack and bread. It would be a long way from
fair, however, to measure the matter by this standard, and declare it settled.
It is not the upper nor the middle classes who are the chief fish eaters amongst
us. So to speak, it is not one fish in twenty that, as an article of diet, is
promoted above the bottom round of the social ladder. Of course there are
exceptions. The lofty salmon or the aristocratic turbot may disdain as their
agent a person less respectable than a West-end Groves or a City Sweeting; but
the honest plaice and the generous mackerel have no such absurd scruples. They
are the fish of the poor - their meat, their bread and as such are blest in
their mighty increase. Nobody out of their own circle (except diligent
inquirers, whose business it is) can form anything like an adequate idea of the
tremendous importance of a plentiful supply of Billingsgate produce amongst the
wretchedly poor. Let any person feeling an interest in the matter station
himself as early [-327-] as five o'clock in the
morning in the neighbourhood of the Monument in Thames Street, and note who are
the Billingsgate-bound traders that come that way. For one tradesman's cart he
will be able to count ten hand-barrows, piled with empty fish baskets and
spangled with glittering fish-scales, propelled by lusty costermongers eager to
secure good marketing. If there are fifty tons of fish in the market, not more
than a fifth of that quantity wil1 find purchasers amongst fishmongers of the
shop-keeping class, the great bulk will be bought by the fish- hawkers and
street stall-keepers. It has always seemed to me that the subject of fish in
plenty does not meet with the consideration it demands, there always appearing
an inclination to regard the produce of the sea rather as supplementary on our
estimated food supply than as one of its prime pillars. The newspapers furnish
us daily with the market price of butter, and bacon, and corn, and bread, and
pork, and butchers' meat. We are enlightened as to how wool and tallow sells,
and should jute or indigo grow dull, we are promptly apprized of the melancholy
fact; but beyond some rare and brief notification to the effect that salmon is
plentiful and lobsters scarce, the town is kept in utter ignorance of the doings
of its busiest market of all.
Fish abounding at Billingsgate means for that day food,
cheap, wholesome, and plentiful, for tens of thousands, who otherwise would go
hungry or sparsely fed on what for their health's sake were better left
untouched. The worst of it is that the market supply of fish is so very
uncertain - as uncertain as the wind, in fact. No thrifty housekeeper of
Poverty's regions dare say, " To-morrow we will have soles or plaice at
dinner." With the scores of industrious hawkers of the commodity who wheel
their barrows Billingsgate-ward, " Will there be fish to buy" is a
riddle that may not be solved until the market is reached. There may be a
"glut" as it is termed, or there may be a "clean market,"
leaving the disappointed [-328-] barrow-man no
alternative but to fag home again with his unladen vehicle. We who have a choice
of flesh or fish can have but an inadequate idea of what this return of
empty barrows portends. Over Cow Cross, and Bethnal Green, and St. Luke's, and
Lower Lambeth, is spread a gloom that the brightest sun is impotent to
dissipate, nor can it be wondered at when it is known that empty barrows is a
term synonymous with "empty bellies." With sixpence in her hand, the
mother of half-a dozen growing boys and girls - some of them out at work, and
with a steadfast eye to that pivot of their round of labour, dinner-time - may
purchase three or four, and not unfrequently five pounds of thoroughly fresh and
wholesome fish, albeit a little coarse, and which with a few vegetables
furnishes a nutritious meal, hot and comforting; but of how much use is poor
mother's sixpence when dearth of fish compels her steps towards the butchers' or
the "cag-mag" shops (i.e., shops where heads, tripes, and
such-like shamble offal is retailed) of Poverty Market? Not that she will be
affrighted by the tremendously high prices that the butchers will demand for his
goods. It is a fact, seemingly curious, but not at all so when the matter is
fairly considered, that the causes which operate to double the price of
butchers' meat in decent neighbourhoods have no effect on the dealings of the
men of flesh whose odious shops crowd Brick Lane or Whitecross Street, except
perhaps that it enables them to ticket their limp and bloodless joints and
finders of meat at a somewhat lower figure than in ordinary. They can afford so
to do. Murrain among sheep flocks and plague amongst cattle mean fat fields for
the harvesting of this class of butcher; but, alas lit means no better than
death in the pot to poor mother above mentioned and her famished brood. Truly it
would be a most excellent thing if something could be done to promote the catch
of fish Perhaps if the fish consumer and the fisherman were brought to have a
more intimate knowledge of each other the matter would have a better chance of
being considered.
[-329-] "What does the
fish-eater know of the fish-catcher?" As I ask myself the question I am
indulging in a pipe of Bristol birdseye, and reclining on the deck of the
fishing-smack "Happy Return," William Fludyer master. I am a
privileged person. I have known William through calm and storm now approaching
three weeks. I have put off to sea with him as the sun went down, and through
the night watched the outcasting and indrawing of his nets; with him at midnight
far out on the ocean I have drank tea out of a pint basin of yellow delf and
eaten of fish that may be said to have leapt from their briny home into Mr.
Fludyer's frying-pan. I am quite at home on board the "Happy Return,"
and my host so little regards my presence, that he does not allow it in the
least to interfere with his afternoon's employment of reseating a pair of heavy
blanket trousers, his needle being a sail-needle, and his thread tarred twine.
"What does the fish-eater know of the
fish-catcher?" I repeat to myself, regarding honest William Fludyer, with
his brown-tanned suit and his brown-tanned face and hands, and his weather-worn
sou'-wester slouched at an easy incline on the back of his gray head.
"Here's better luck to-morrow," exclaims Joe Sprouts, condoling over a
pot of beer with a brother barrow-man on a dearth of fish ; but neither has a
thought beyond Billingsgate. Just so with the poor fish consumer. With the
bakehouse drudge he is quite familiar. He has drank with him, talked with him of
the hardships of the trade to which he is bound. It is no news to him that the
baker is toiling in his dusty den when other folks are abed and asleep. In all
probability his circle of acquaintance embraces butchers' men, and brewers' and
grocers' men; but concerning the man on whose energy and perseverance he is
dependent for the very next comforting meal he shall eat, he is as ignorant as
of the manners and customs of the Fans and Ashebas of savage Africa. And this
despite that grand essential of modern civilization and [-330-]
advancement the railway, which makes of the hundred miles that parts our
fishing town from Whitecross-street but a matter of three hours' journey. The
consumer and the fish are brought closer together, but the consumer and the
fisherman are as strange as they were a hundred years ago, which shows, if there
were need to show it, that human skill and ingenuity are matters totally
distinct from human kindliness and sympathy, and that it is possible to attain
high perfection as locomotive engineers, and yet remain but indifferent
Christians - to transport from this port to that our precious carcasses and our
worldly goods at the rate of fifty miles an hour, without advancing so much as a
step towards that goal which, as no right-minded man for a moment doubts, should
be the sole aim and desire of our existence.
The spectacle of William Fludyer (who by this time has set
the finishing stitch in the stern of his unmentionables) leisurely busying
himself about his little ship as she lies high and dry on the beach, is
wonderfully refreshing to a London-worried, work-jaded mind. Not pungently
refreshing, but soothingly so, as healthful sleep is. Marvellously alike are the
individuals of the tribe of which William is a type. Similarity in breeding,
feeding, and occupation may account for this peculiar family likeness in a
considerable degree, but not entirely. Lying at rest in the shadow of the great
cliffs, and at anchor off the shore, may be counted at least a hundred sail of
fishing craft, little and big, and men of the Fludyer mould man them all. In
height, in bulk, in the roundness and enormous breadth of shoulders, are the
fishermen alike ; in slow and solemn gait - even in the practice of walking,
when ashore, with their hands closely locked behind them. Deliberate in speech
and cautious in answering a question, one is a counterpart of the other, as well
as in the childishly reliant expression of their eyes - oh so very different
from the painfully shrewd, suspicious eyes of poor men who battle for their
bread in great cities. As a shore animal the fisherman is awkward, not to say
clumsy. He is [-331-] quite behind the times, and
his distaste for modern fashion and social usage is unmistakable. He sticks to
his own end of the town, which is known as the fishing end, and rarely ventures
towards the quarters of the genteel inhabitants. When he does it is in company
of a friend invariably (the voluminous nether garments of gray blanketing, and
the berry-brown smocks of the slow pair, contrasting oddly with the spruce and
dapper genteel ones), and they appear to wear a bewildered aspect, and to
advance with hesitation and uncertainty, and with nervous glances to the right
and left, as though but recently stranded on that foreign shore, and, being as
yet not well assured of the pacific disposition of the inhabitants, prepared to
take to their heels at the first alarming symptoms. lie no more fits the town
than the town fits him, but he is not a dolt for all that. In his own sphere he
is a most excellent and worthy fellow, and with an amount of real virtue and
manliness in him that we keen and polished blades of the town would do not amiss
to emulate. One must know these fishermen to discover their many inestimable
qualities - most commendable of all is their utter unselfishness. As they are
alike in shape and build and feature, so might they be brothers of one family
from the cheerful help they afford each other. It is good to see them at the
getting off of a vessel in a rough sea such as prevailed just lately. For a week
and more a sou'-west wind had blown, and such a surf beat the beach as made it
perilous to attempt the launch of any one of the long line of craft that lay in
shelter. At last, starved out, the crew of a mackerel smack resolved to run the
risk, relying on the co-operation of their friends to set the smack afloat. Nor
did their friends fail them. Turning out of their huts, they swarmed down on to
the strand in the heavy pelting rain, and tackling the craft with a will,
opposed their united strength against the fiercely-breaking waves that over and
over again carried her back. The men conquered at last, but not until half their
number at least were drenched through and [-332-] through,
nor could they be otherwise when without hesitation they walked into the sea
high as their waist and shoulders. I am glad to be able to mention that success
crowned the efforts of the bold mackerel fishers. By dawn of next morning their
smack was seen off the shore, and row-boats putting off to her (the sea was
raging still, and she dare not approach the beach), mackerel to the number of three
thousand were brought into the market as her catch. This astonishing
instance of luck at once fired several other smack masters previously "of
half a mind," and with the same amount of hazard and labour, and
neighbourly help, they too were launched as their fortunate sister of the
previous day had been; but, alas for the uncertainty of ventures by sea All
night the mackerel getters toiled, but come the morning the best news they had
for the boatmen who put off eager to relieve them of their freight was that two
of the boats had taken each but three score ten of fish, and the others none at
all the result of which was that the luckiest of the venturers received about
ninepence a head for their pains.
My present purpose, however, is not to gossip of individual
acts of daring and enterprise engaged in by my berry-brown friends, but to
endeavour to give the reader some idea of the habits, ways, and means of the
little-known fisherman, the faraway individual on whose pluck and perseverance
Billingsgate Market depends for its daily replenishing, and tens of thousands of
our London poor for their only meal of wholesome food.
Passing a cheap print-shop the other day, I there saw,
amongst other pictorial fictions, one apropos of our present subject - to wit, a
representation of "The Fisherman's Return." Therein was depicted a
neat little cottage on the brow of a sloping beach, with roses and honeysuckle
twining and climbing to the chimney pots, and a trim little garden in front
containing every known and several unknown flowers, in full bloom; and at the
end of the garden a bower. Standing on the beautifully hearthstoned steps of the
cottage was the hand-[-333-]somest of damsels, with
her black hair in ringlets and a rose at her bosom; with winning smiles and
outstretched arms she was welcoming her approaching fisherman husband, who, with
curly whiskers and rosy cheeks, was seen gaily entering at the garden gate with
a crimson net over his shoulder containing several very fine gold-fish -
doubtless the catch of the preceding night, and intended for immediate cooking,
that they might serve as a morning repast for the fisherman and his bride in the
cosy bower before mentioned.
Truth compels me to declare, although with regret, that the
said picture slightly exaggerates the domestic felicity of the common fisherman,
who has no more idea of neatness and comfort as a house-dweller than a merman
might have. Such as they are, the cottages and the huts are crowded
higgledy-piggledy amongst the tall black wooden edifices that serve as
store-houses for sails and cordage, and the various craft that are there drawn
up high and dry for repair. They are by no means sightly specimens of
architecture. Some are shabby little hovels, as much under as above ground, and
with three steps down into them ; others are more imposing in their hideousness,
being three stories high-one story piled above the other in the most reckless
and tumble-down fashion, with a street door for the basement lodgers, and a
ladder with a rope rail for the convenience of those who live above. All the
huts and hovels are of wood, which, as a rule, is pitched over, but occasionally
painted red or blue, while as much as may be seen of the interior of the
fisherman's home is scarcely calculated favourably to impress the observer as
regards the thrift and tidiness of fishermen's wives. The prevailing odour of
fish is rank and abominable, and is in some degree accounted for by the fact
that, decorating almost every window and doorway, are suspended from threads, as
London children at play may be seen to suspend pea-shells, various tiny fish of
the "dab" and flounder breed. So dried they serve as a cheap relish
with [-334-] bread or potatoes, or are sold in the
streets by the children at the rate of a penny a score. Ill-drained,
ill-ventilated, and smoky, the fisher's village is not a pretty place, and it is
a relief to thread one's way through the alleys the stranded craft make and
return to the clear broad beach, and the pleasant spectacle of the fishermen
overhauling their seemingly endless nets, piling them in great brown heaps, or
spreading them to dry, or busy as bees squatting in a ring mending rents and
tears, and "taking up " dropped meshes.
The fishing craft affecting this coast mainly consists of two
kinds-mackerel boats and trawlers, the latter being much more numerous than the
former. The mackerel smacks are neater-looking vessels than the trawlers, amid
larger, their tonnage varying from fourteen to twenty tons, while the carrying
powers of the trawler average about ten tons. The difference between a mackerel
smack and a trawler is that the one plies only for the particular fish from
which it derives its name, and the other accepts all fish that approaches its
nets, which, in their capacity, are vastly inferior to those of the mackerel
getters. Plaice and soles form the staple of the trawler's catch ; but not
unfrequently in the mixed collection that is shot down on to the beach before
the "auctioneer" may be seen gurnet, amid whiting, and sea bream, and
all manner of flat fish, from dabs to mighty turbot. The mackerel boats seldom
commence operations until they are ten or twelve miles from the shore, deep
water making no difference with them, since their nets, "paid out"
over the vessel's side, are held suspended at a proper depth by a sufficient
number of cork floats about the size of a breakfast saucer; the trawler is
compelled to fish in shallower water, since he drags the floor of the ocean for
his game. Forming a sort of collar, at the mouth of the net is a heavy cable
called the ground cable, and this drags the oozy bottom and rouses the flat fish
there reposing and drives them into the meshes of the great bag-like net. Moon-[-335-]light
nights are unfavourable for fishing; a clear, dark night, with a moderate breeze
blowing, is the best time.
A trawler carries usually three men and a boy, and a mackerel
smack from four to six men, according to her tonnage amid the season of the
year. The magnitude of the nets of the latter, however, and the serious
pecuniary loss involved in their miscarriage, forbid a mackerel boat putting to
sea short-handed. Considering the constant peril that attaches to fishing and
the moderate gains of its not invariably successful pursuit, it is astonishing
how much is hazarded in the tools of the craft. An ordinary mackerel boat
carries net measuring twelve hundred fathoms, or over a mile and a quarter in
length, and about sixteen feet in width - sufficient to shroud the shop windows
on one side of the way from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. Such a net would be
worth at least a hundred pounds, and besides this the rope and cordage necessary
to its proper management cannot be bought for less than fifty pounds more.
Every fishing vessel, with few exceptions, is worked on the
"share" system. Say it is a mackerel boat. The master or captain is
seldom the proprietor, that person being generally some chandler or retired
shipper, residing in the town. He provides the smack and fishing gear, minus the
nets, and for that he charges one share. Say there are a thousand fathoms of net
aboard, and the owner provides five hundred ; for these he claims five more
shares - a contribution of each hundred fathoms of net entitling the lender to
one share. As a rule the captain has nets of his own to lend the boat, and if
the complement cannot so be made up, there are always outsiders willing to loan
nets on the recognized terms. Let us say that the boat carries a thousand
fathoms of net of somebody's; there go ten shares, and the owner's share makes
eleven. Then the master and his crew are entitled each to a share for their
services, which probably brings up the number of shares against the ship's
earnings to sixteen. Let us suppose, then, [-336-] that
after a night's fishing the smack returns to land with a catch of five hundred
mackerel - which may be set down as rather over than under the average take -
and that the auction price realized for the same when the fish are turned out on
the beach is thirteen shillings per hundred. This shows three pounds five for
the night's work; but this sum will be further reduced by fully fifteen
shillings when the cost of the men's food, &c., and the boat's insurance is
settled for, leaving fifty shillings to be divided into sixteen parts, which
will give three and threepence per share; and every working fisherman having but
one share allotted to him as an equivalent for his services in the venture,
three and threepence is all his wages for a long night's labour out at sea. The
master, with two hundred fathoms of net to lend, takes ten shillings for his
night's work, and the owner gets the lion's share. Property in fishing vessels
cannot be so bad a speculation in these hard times. Should the smack be lost,
the "club" into which the insurance money is paid reimburses the owner
to the extent of one-half his loss - the insurance money, as has already been
shown, being paid, not out of the owner's individual profits, but out of the
gross stock before a division takes place. Moreover, the crew get nothing for
keeping the owner's nets in repair, and it is seldom that in overhauling a mile
and a quarter of the tender meshes a few ugly rents are not discovered,
providing ample afternoon employment for the crew after they have, in a few
hours, slept off the fatigue of the previous night. It must be borne in mind,
moreover, that about three and threepence per venture is the average earnings of
the mackerel fisherman when he is at work, but sometimes he lies idle,
owing to rough winds, or, what is to him equally disastrous, no winds at all for
days together, and at these times he earns nothing. As an example of this, I may
quote the case of my friend William Fludyer, a sea captain in a small way.
"Now, what do you reckon your weekly earnings to be, take the year
through?" I inquired of him one
[-337-] day,
Mrs. Fludyer being present. "Hey! all the year through? or'nary times and
other? Well, I should say-mind ye, I don't know 'zactly - but I should say not
much over a pound, hey, old lass?" Mrs. Fludyer deigned no verbal
response, but looking up from her occupation of flaying whiting, she gave her
William a look that plainly expressed her distrust of his arithmetic.
"But that to me seems very little," I remarked.
"It wouldn't be as much as he says if it wasn't for the
bit o' net, sir, observed Mrs. Fludyer ; "there's lots of the chaps
hereabout that don't earn much more'n half."
"Ah, and with four or five youngsters," put in Mr.
Flndyer, who had none.
"But how do they contrive to live?"
"Lor' a mussy knows, master," returned William
Fludyer, radiant, and as though he derived immense satisfaction from his
inability to explain away the seeming mystery. "Lor' a mussy knows; they do
live, and grow up to strapping chaps and wenches. It's the sea air, I s'pose."
"Don't be a heathen, William," remonstratively
exclaimed Mrs. Fludyer, who possessed a pair of arms brawnier than though
perhaps of not so stringy a texture as her husband s "he don't mean it,
only he's sort o' shamed to say."
"Well, it's summat as upholds 'em, or else they wouldn't
be upheld; thou'st no 'casion to pick me up so sha-arp, old lass," returned
William, looking an apology at his "missus."
And it may be here remarked that, untaught as they are the
fishermen as a body, as regards abstinence from swearing and all improper
language, as well as in observance of the Sabbath day, furnish an example that
might be advantageously followed by dwellers in cities. Perfect is the repose
that reigns at the fishing end of the town on the seventh day. It must be
confessed that the last-mentioned excellent practice has superstition for one of
its pillars. "We do no manner of work on [-338-] Sundays,"
said Mr. Fludyer, "if we can possibly help it. It ain't found to answer,
besides not being right. It's just what the Bible says - everything wants a rest
o' Sundays. We do, the sea do, the fishes do. You go a-stirring up the water
Sundays and week-days alike, and you'll pretty soon find what it will come to.
The nets want a rest, and they'll have it, else they'll go rotten." It may
have been my duty to have pointed out to the benighted fisherman that his belief
was altogether monstrous and absurd, and exerted myself to convince him that he
had mistaken his Bible, or misconstrued somebody else's reading of it; but where
would have been the profit? Already he was possessed of the grain, albeit in the
husk, and all that I might have preached would not have enriched him, while it
might have made him uncomfortable.
I discovered to my satisfaction that the sea has more terrors
for those who live a hundred miles away from it than for the men who pass the
greater part of their lives on it and fish their daily bread out of it.
"It's safer than the shore, that's my opinion," pronounced Mr.
Fludyer, when questioned on the subject, "though, mind you, I never
downright liked it, or, rather, as I may say, it don't like me. I was fourteen
when I was prenticed to it, and you'd hardly believe, sir, that through eight
years I never once put to sea without being sick; hey, ain't that true,
missus?" "Ay, sir, that it is," responded Mrs. Fludyer;
"many and many's the time I've seen him retch and shudder at smell of his
great boots as he was pulling em on before he went down to boat."
"Well, well, I'm not the only one, I'll go bail," said Mr. Fludyer,
seemingly not best pleased by the fulness of his wife's revelation; "what I
was going to say is this, that though I never took what one might call kind to
the sea, I thought then, and now I'm downright sure, that it's safer being there
than ashore." "I'd be glad to hear how you make that out," I
remarked. " I'll tell you how I make it out, sir. I have been a fisherman
now three-and-[-339-]thirty years, and never got a
hurt; and how many landsmen of my age can say as much?" "Never
got a scar, you mean, William," interposed Mrs. Fludyer; "bless the
man, he's had hurts enough." "How?" Mr. Fludyer asked,
innocently. "Why, how many times have you been washed overboard?" "Pooh!
how many times have you washed up plates and dishes, old lass?" returned
Mr. Fludyer, impatient that his good lady should think such trifles worth
mentioning. "And twice you was run into and foundered!" pursued Mrs.
Fludyer. "That hurt the owner a blarmed sight more'n it hurt me,"
chuckled he. "And once the lightning struck you, surely you don't
forget that, William!" "And didn't it strike the
markethouse ashore here same night?" retorted William; "didn't it rive
the big pollard same night up here on old Wheeler's land? Didn't it kill the
miller's horse same night as it stood in its stable? Don't tell me, old lass.
It's three to one more dangerous ashore than at sea. I wonder you like to talk
the other way after t'other night." "That was accident."
"Accident! yes I one of your shore accidents that was. Never had such a
fright, sir, all the years I've been at sea. Tell you how it was. I'd been out
three nights, and was glad to get ashore and lay me down abed for an hour or so.
Old lass she goes to market. 'Don't you touch they things a-drying round the
fire,' says she; 'they won't hurt till I come back.' I just heerd her say it,
and that was all, I was so dead set. Well, I falls off, and presently got a kind
of dream into my head that I was being drowned, and had to fight for my life if
I wanted to save it, and so I woke choking and throwing up my arms, and there
was the room full of smoke, and a blarmed old flannel petticoat hanging before
the fire, all a-glowing red, and the chair smouldering down to its stumps.
Wasn't that a 'scape? Pooh! Don't talk to me about the perils o' the sea."