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The Smacksmen of the North Sea

Labour Recruitment and Exploitation in British Deep-Sea Fishing, 1850–90

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

John Rule
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The modern history of British deep-sea fishing begins with the railway expansion of the mid-nineteenth century. Rapid transport and the increasing use of ice as a preservative made it possible for fresh sea fish to enter the diets of the inhabitants of inland towns. Fresh sea fish was regarded as almost a luxury food before the railway age, yet by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it had become a major protein source for the working classes of the industrial towns, and the fried-fish shop had become a working-class institution. The sea-fishing industry underwent a vast market-induced expansion. The census of 1841 enumerated only 24,000 males as being employed in fishing. By 1881 there were 58,000. If the inland consumer ever gave thought to the fishermen who supplied his table, he probably conjured up a picture of a weather-beaten village fisherman going daily to the fishing grounds to return in the evening to his waiting wife and children, bringing the silver harvest of the sea. While he had been at sea his family had busied themselves baiting lines, making and mending nets, and, in the case of the fish wives, performing their traditional function of selling the catch. Such a picture may have been broadly true of the fishing villages of Scotland, Cornwall, Northumberland or the South coast, but a feature of the second half of the nineteenth century was the creation of a new kind of fisherman who crewed the sailing trawlers of the North Sea. The expansion of the market has coincided with the discovery of the rich beds of the North Sea, and to such an extent did the North Sea trawling ports come to dominate the fishing industry that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Hull and Grimsby were together receiving as much fish as all the remaining ports of England and Wales put together. Those who toiled on the grey North Sea were known as the “smacksmen”, and it is the extreme nature of their occupation which is the subject of this study.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , December 1976 , pp. 383 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1976

References

page 384 note 1 Quoted by Ansell, A., “Trawling”, in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature (1884), VII, p. 323.Google Scholar For a general discussion of the rise of the British sea fisheries in the nineteenth century see Rule, J. G., “The British Fisherman 1840–1914”, in: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 27 (1973).Google Scholar This essay suggests some of the distinctions which should be drawn between the conditions of trawlermen and those of other fishermen.

page 385 note 1 R. H. Ballantyne, The Young Trawler (1884), Appendix, p. 425; Runciman, J., A Dream of the North Sea (1889), pp. 146, 292Google Scholar; Levi, Leone, “The Economic Condition of Fishermen”, in; Fisheries Exhibition Literature, IV, p. 152.Google Scholar

page 385 note 2 Statistics of vessels lost in the March gale of 1883 give an indication of the crew size:

Source: March, E. J., Sailing Trawlers (1953), pp. 130–31.Google Scholar

page 386 note 1 Wood, W., North Sea Fishers and Fighters (1911), p. 75Google Scholar; Gordon, A., What Cheer 0? (1890), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; Ballantyne, op. cit., p. 96.

page 386 note 2 Wood, op. cit., p. 75; Sir Lechmere, E., “A Cruise of a Brixham Trawler”, in: C. Gregory, Brixham in Devonia (Torquay, n.d.), pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

page 387 note 1 Gordon, op. cit., pp. 131–33; Wood, op. cit., pp. 57–58; Mather, E. J., Nor'ard of the Dogger (1888), pp. 114–16.Google Scholar

page 388 note 1 Wood, op. cit., pp. 59, 61; SirGrenfell, Wilfred, The Harvest of the Sea (1905), p. 21Google Scholar; Runciman, op. cit., pp. 290–91, 268.

page 389 note 1 March, op. cit., p. 118; Wood, op. cit., pp. 71–72.

page 389 note 2 SirGrenfell, Wilfred, A Labrador Doctor (1920), pp. 65–66Google Scholar; Mather, op. cit., p. 17; Duke, of Edinburgh, “Notes on the Sea Fisheries and Fishing Population of the United Kingdom”, in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature, IV, pp. 43–46Google Scholar; S. Walpole, “Official Report”, ibid., XIII, p. 121.

page 390 note 1 Gillet, E., History of Grimsby (1969), pp. 249, 258Google Scholar; Bertram, J., “The Unappreciated Fisherfolk”, in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature, II, p. 231Google Scholar; Bos-well, D., Sea Fishing Apprentices of Grimsby (1974), p. 43.Google Scholar

page 390 note 2 Calculations based on data provided in Boswell, op. cit., p. 43.

page 390 note 3 Report of the Board of Trade Inquiry into Relations between the Owners, Masters, and Crews of Fishing Vessels etc. [Parliamentary Papers, 1882, XVII], p. vii, § 21.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Report.

page 391 note 1 Alward, G.L., The Sea Fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland (Grimsby, 1932), p. 206.Google Scholar

page 392 note 1 Goffman, E., Asylums (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 392 note 2 Ibid., p. 18. J. Tunstall discusses the value of Goffman's concept for the understanding of present-day fishermen in the introduction to the 1969 edition of his important study The Fishermen.

page 393 note 1 See for example the tone of the literature of the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. For a comment on the proletarian identification of present-day Hull skippers see Tunstall's above introduction.

page 393 note 2 Mather, op. cit., p. 52.

page 394 note 1 Gordon, op. cit., pp. 34–35.

page 394 note 2 Ibid., p. 41; Mather, op. cit., p. 29.

page 395 note 1 Tunstall, op. cit., pp. 26–27; Report, p. x, § 33.

page 395 note 2 Gillet, op. cit., p. 262.

page 395 note 3 Report, p. 54, § 2155.

page 396 note 1 Ibid., p. 12, § 480, 492, 494; p. 25, § 1053.

page 396 note 2 Ibid., pp. 22–24, § 857–1008.

page 397 note 1 Ibid., p. 96, § 3759–60; p. 78, § 3041; Gregory, op. cit., p. 13; Grenfell, Harvest of the Sea, pp. 15–16.

page 397 note 2 Tunstall, op. cit., p. 25; Mather, op. cit., p. 42.

page 397 note 3 Report, p. 38, § 1576; p. 44, § 1784.

page 398 note 1 Ibid., p. 61, § 2379; p. 53, § 2114.

page 398 note 2 Gregory, op. cit., p. 13; Report, p. 50, § 1905; p. 12, § 492–95; p. 26, § 1057–58; Adams, W. M., “A Popular History of Fisheries and Fishermen”, in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature, I, p. 539.Google Scholar

page 399 note 1 Statistics derived from Report, Appendix 30, p. 204, and Appendix 47, p. 235; G. L. Alward, op. cit., p. 206; Boswell, op. cit., p. 67.

page 400 note 1 Report, p. 2, § 24; p. 53, § 2100; p. 50, § 1930–31.

page 400 note 2 Ibid., p. 182; Bertram, op. cit., p. 232; Report, p. 28, § 1191.

page 400 note 3 Walpole, S., “The British Fish Trade”, in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature, I, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 401 note 1 Report, p. 51, § 2259.

page 401 note 2 Ibid., p. 9, § 326.

page 401 note 3 Gillet, op. cit, p. 261.

page 402 note 1 Statistics from Report, p. 80, § 3095 (Yarmouth); Appendix 6, p. 174 (Hull); Appendix 9, p. 180 (Grimsby).

page 402 note 2 Report, p. 50, § 1937; p. xiii, § 46.

page 403 note 1 Ibid., Appendix 37, p. 218; p. 19, § 729–30, 696.

page 403 note 2 Ibid., p. 12, § 523.

page 404 note 1 Ibid., p. xii, § 45; p. 3, § 61; p. 78, § 3027; p. 42, § 1745–47.

page 404 note 2 Figures from Gillet, op. cit., pp. 302, 261.

page 405 note 1 Report, p. viii, § 18; p. 32, § 1342.

page 406 note 1 Ibid., p. 67; p. 1, § 10.

page 406 note 2 Grenfell, Harvest of the Sea, pp. 52–54.

page 407 note 1 Figures from March, op. cit., pp. 40–41, 157, 160; Report, p. 58, § 2303; Gillet, op. cit., p. 247.

page 407 note 2 Ibid., p. 259.

page 408 note 1 Mather, op. cit., p. 43.

page 408 note 2 Ibid., p. 370.

page 408 note 3 unciman, op. cit., pp. 274–75. For Grenfell see his autobiography, A Labrador Doctor, and a recent biography, J. Lennox Kerr, Wilfred Grenfell (1959).

page 409 note 1 Gordon, op. cit., pp. 163–64.

page 409 note 2 Runciman, op. cit., p. 278; Mather, op. cit., pp. 210–22.

page 409 note 1 Runciman, op. cit., pp. 99–101; Ballantyne, op. cit., pp. 267–68; Mather, op. cit., p. 332.

page 409 note 2 Mather, op. cit., p. 95; Gordon, op. cit., pp. 149, 165.

page 411 note 1 Gillet, op. cit.,, pp. 267–68. Only at Grimsby does there seem to have been a strongly articulated opposition to winter fleeting, although there was certainly some expression of resentment at Hull. At Yarmouth fleeting all the year around seems to have been usual.