Fishing for a seasonal shoal
Herring has been one of the most important fish in European history. Huge shoals move through the North Sea at certain times of year, and the fish can be preserved by salting, smoking or pickling, which made them a food that could be stored and sold far from the coast. For centuries, fleets of sailing boats followed the shoals, and their design reflected the demands of the fishery: they had to be seaworthy, able to carry heavy nets and, above all, to get the catch ashore while it was fresh.
This article deals with sailing herring boats, meaning the drifters and luggers that fished under sail. The steam drifters that replaced them in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are a later chapter.
The drift net
The method is what defines a drifter. A drift net is a long wall of netting, hung vertically in the water from a floating line, and a string of nets could be many hundreds of metres long. The boat would shoot the nets in the evening, let them drift with the tide and the boat attached to the end, and wait. The herring swim into the mesh and become caught by the gills, and in the early morning the crew hauled in the net and shook out the fish. The boat itself would drift along with the nets, hence the name.
This work was done at night, since herring rise toward the surface in the dark, and hauling the nets was heavy, wet labour for a crew that might number from several men to a dozen or more, depending on the boat and the period.
The Dutch busses
The Dutch were famous for their herring fishery in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Their large herring ships, often called busses, were bluff, broad vessels with several masts that could stay at sea for weeks, gutting and salting the fish aboard. Dutch tradition attributes the method of gutting and curing herring at sea to a 14th-century fisherman, with the name Willem Beuckelszoon often given, but historians debate the details and the date. What is clear is that the Dutch trade in cured herring was a major part of the economy and a source of strong competition with neighbours. Its link to broader commercial networks recalls the story of Hanseatic Baltic trade, since salted fish was a staple of northern European commerce.
British and Irish boats
In Britain, many herring boats were small, decked or open vessels based in fishing ports along the east and west coasts. Different regions developed their own types, and many of them were variations on the lugger, with one or more masts carrying lugsails, a rig well adapted to quick handling in busy waters. Cornish and Manx boats are among the best known, and the details of lug rigs are explored in the story of the Cornish luggers. The Isle of Man’s fishing luggers, known as nickeys and nobbies, are among the types associated with herring and mackerel.
In Scotland, two types stand out. The fifie, named after the county of Fife, had a nearly upright stem and stern post and was a fast and seaworthy boat, generally carrying two masts with lugsails. Later in the 19th century came the zulu, a hybrid type with an upright stem and a raking stern, often credited to a designer at Lossiemouth around the late 1870s. The zulu was larger and carried a bigger spread of sail. Both types were built in considerable numbers, and the Scottish east coast fleet of the later 19th century was among the largest in the world.
The East Anglian ports of Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth also hosted large herring fleets that followed the shoals down the coast each autumn. The herring season at Yarmouth drew boats and workers from all over the region, and the ties between the fleets formed part of the North Sea herring trade.
Landing and curing
Catching the fish was only half the work. At the quayside the catch was counted, often in a traditional measure such as the cran, and sold to curers who processed it. Teams of women, called herring girls in Scotland and elsewhere, gutted and packed fish into barrels with salt at speed, travelling from port to port along with the fleet. Salted and smoked herring, including kippers and red herring, went to markets across Europe and beyond. These trades supplied shipboard provisions as well as civilian tables, since barrels of salted fish were a common ration on long voyages.
Steam and decline
From the later 19th century, steam power began to change the fishery. Steam drifters, with engines and a funnel but still shooting drift nets, could go out and return regardless of wind, reach the grounds faster and take fish to market more quickly. By the early 20th century, steam drifters made up a large share of the herring fleets in Britain, and the sailing boats declined steadily, with the change helped by the availability of iron shipbuilding and engine technology.
The herring fishery itself later declined as a result of heavy fishing and changing markets, and in the 20th century herring stocks in parts of the North Sea collapsed, leading to restrictions. Today a few historic sailing drifters survive in museums and in private ownership, and they give an impression of the boats that once filled the harbours of the North Sea.