A Perilous Catch

by Mike Smylie

  Vaever’s invention, which became known as the snurrevod (snurre being the rotating action around the anchor and boat and vod meaning net), spread to the east coast by 1870, to the northern fishing stations eight years later, Esbjerg by 1890, to the Bohusland coast of Sweden in 1894 and to Britain in 1920. This development was largely responsible for the 1880s boom in the Danish fisheries. Inshore fishing extended into deeper water and a fish manufacturing base grew up quickly around northern Denmark.

  In Frederikshavn, originally the small fishing village of Fladstrand which gained a municipal charter in 1818 and changed its name and was the major fishing harbour for both the Kattegat and Skagerrak, the fishermen were one of the first to adopt the new method. However, as offshore fishing developed, it was soon clear that it was possible to fish the snurrevod in the open sea for which they brought in large so-called cutters. By the late 1870s these were 40–60 ton ketch-rigged fully decked vessels, some of which had been bought from England’s east coast at a time the first steam trawlers were being introduced there. Others were built locally, modelled on similar lines, when the first shipwright called Buhl had commenced building. Many of these new vessels had wet wells incorporated into their hulls. Such a vessel was the N.I. Laursen, FN136, rigged as a gaff ketch.

  Of course, it didn’t take long for the other principal ports of Denmark to adopt the seine-net, which became known as anchor seining for obvious reasons. Esbjerg, which had its first harbour works started in 1869, had similar-sized cutters working from there by 1888 and within six years the method had spread to the west coast of Sweden. Larger boats used a small 20ft seine boat – a snurrevodjolle – with which to work the net out and around in a circle, before it was brought back to the cutter. A typical seine boat was modelled on traditional double-ended small boat lines and around 1903 the first engine to be fitted into a fishing boat was installed in one of these. The first engine was a Mollerup 2hp unit and the long-term effects of the petrol/paraffin internal combustion engine arrived. It didn’t take long to catch on.

  The Frederikshavn men built smaller cutters, oak on oak, with motors which obviated the need to use the snurrevodjolle to set the net, the first carvel-built example of which was the cutter Gorm, substantially smaller at just under 10m in overall length. A smaller rig was retained, and these boats had greater effectiveness and were easier to manoeuvre and became known as the haj-cutters, literally ‘shark cutters’. Most of these retained the wet well and carried ice from the new ice houses. Shark cutters arrived in Esbjerg in 1910. However, some of the larger 50ft cutters – generally referred to as kotters today by many – continued being built, especially around Frederikshavn and other parts of northern Denmark, some of which have survived today and have been put back to a full sailing rig. Jens Vaever died in 1914 after being honoured by his countrymen.

  After the First World War, the Danes began fishing the western side of the North Sea and consequently landed their catches into English ports. Some Grimsby fishermen observed them at work on the Dogger Bank and the same men then observed their gear in harbour and began using the same method upon their steam trawlers and drifters. In Scotland the first time the fishermen used the method was in 1921 and six years later the first Scottish seine-net vessel built specifically for the seine-net, the Marigold, was launched on fifie lines from the yard of William Wood & Sons in Lossiemouth.16 In 1921 some 25,000 hundredweight of fish were landed using the seine-net while by 1955 this had risen to 1,500,000 cwt, such was the impact of this method on the Scottish fleet.17

  Crewed by four men and a boy, the Marigold proved a successful boat. With a 36hp Gardner semi-diesel engine it was economical, whereas the steam drifters that fished, although superb for the job they were designed for, used tons of coal and just were not suitable. Marigold was similar to a motorised fifie but with a slightly sloping sternpost which shortened the keel, upon the length of which harbour dues were paid, and made the building into the sternpost of a propeller aperture relatively easy and efficient.

  Anchor-dragging was the form of the seine-net used by the Danes. The Scots then developed their own variation called ‘fly-dragging’ which didn’t involve the use of an anchor but they towed and hauled the net at the same time and found they caught more round fish such as cod and haddock. They also found it quicker to shift grounds.18

  Over on the west coast of Scotland, ring-netting continued throughout the war years, although with severally depleted crews after many men had gone off to fight. Many of those that did remain fishing had made themselves comfortably off for the foreseeable future and numerous boats that had been lying idle throughout the war were in a sorry state. When men were demobbed, they came back to their villages to find no work available in the fisheries because of the lack of boats. The 1919 season was also a poor one which didn’t suggest to many that they should invest in new boats. The Fishery Board then produced a plan of a ‘model Lochfyne motor skiff’ and invited tenders, indicating that the cost would be £1,100, a huge increase over the price of a skiff before the war.19

  However, fisherman Robert Robertson of Campbeltown, described as one of the most innovative fishermen in Scotland and the first to install an engine into a Lochfyne skiff in 1907, ordered two new boats from the renowned boatbuilder James Miller & Sons of St Monans on the east coast, in 1921. The first of these, Falcon, arrived in Campbeltown the following year, seconded soon after by Frigate Bird. Based on craft Robertson had seen in Norway, and drawn up by Glasgow naval architect W.G. McBride, the boats were 50ft overall, had canoe sterns, were entirely decked over, incorporating wheelhouses and Gleniffer 18.22hp paraffin engines. They were a complete contrast from the sailing skiffs and, again, the other fishermen were sceptical. However, the boats performed well and soon became the accepted design for the Clyde and surrounding areas, albeit with some developments.

  Meanwhile across the North Sea, the last development in the Danish anchor seiner was the adoption of the cruiser stern which appeared some time before the outbreak of war in 1939, and the subsequent invasion of the country by the Nazis. Although the canoe stern and variations of the cruiser stern appeared in the 1920s, the anchor seiners appear to have been content with their counter sterns until, presumably, engine power increased and the cruiser stern was deemed a better option. Thus the typical Danish seiner arrived, a boat that impressed the Grimsby men so much that they, too, adopted similar vessels and called them ‘snibbies’.

  In the 1930s the cruiser stern was also adopted by many of the seine-net boats in Scotland. The J. & G. Forbes-built Cutty Sark seems to have been the first in 1928 though she was an all-round boat, drifting, ring-netting, seine-netting and long-lining. Another of the first of these boats, Harvester BF132, was built by W.G. Stephens of Macduff and launched in 1935. She was 52ft in length, had a sloping keel, a straight vertical stem and rounded forefoot.20 This type of vessel, bigger versions of which had been built for a number of years for the herring fishery, became the forerunner of what became widely known as the Scottish motor fishing vessel and was adopted by fishermen all over Britain.

  However, once again, dark clouds were blowing in from Germany, and many were forecasting black days ahead, not just for British fishermen, but for Europe as a whole.

  Notes

  1 Mike Smylie, Herring – A History of the Silver Darlings, Stroud, 2004.

  2 Christopher Unsworth, The British Herring Industry, Stroud, 2013.

  3 Neal Green, Fisheries of the North Sea, London, 1918, gives slightly different figures.

  4 Arthur M. Samuel, The Herring; its Effect on the History of Britain, London, 1918.

  5 Douglas d’Enno, Fishermen against the Kaiser, vol. 1, Barnsley, 2010.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Robb Robinson, The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery, Exeter, 1996.

  8 Walter Wood, North Sea Fishers and Fighters, London, 1911.

  9 John Dyson, Business in Great Waters, London, 1977.

  10 Robinson, op. cit., 1996.

 
11 Christopher Unsworth, The British Herring Industry, Stroud, 2013.

  12 Hervey Benham, The Stowboaters, Colchester, 1977.

  13 L.W. Hawkins, Early Motor Fishing Boats, Norwich, 1984.

  14 Mike Smylie, Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain & Ireland, Shrewsbury, 1999.

  15 Hawkins, op. cit., 1984.

  16 Mike Smylie, Traditional Fishing Boats of Europe, Stroud, 2013.

  17 A. Ritchie, The Scottish Seine Net Fishery 1921–1957 (Marine Research No. 3), HMSO, 1960.

  18 David Thomson, The Seine Net, London, 1969.

  19 Angus Martin, The Ring-Net Fishermen, Edinburgh, 1981.

  20 Gloria Wilson, Scottish Fishing Craft, London, 1965.

  12

  WORLD WAR TO COD WAR

  To compete with the steam drifters, larger motor herring drifters were introduced with the building of one in Findochty in 1928, though it wasn’t until the 1930s that these 80-odd-ft boats gained favour among the fishermen. J. & G. Forbes of Sandhaven, just outside Fraserburgh, built several. The Efficient started life there in 1931. She was a traditional herring drifter of the era, built of larch on oak with a straight stem, deep heel and cruiser stern. Her new owners were the Ritchie family of Rosehearty and she spent her first years drift-netting for herring alongside the steam drifters, some motor boats and the last of the sailing fifies and Zulus. Registered as FR242, and engined with a Petter Atomic diesel of 160hp, the unit was so advanced that her skipper was photographed standing alongside the engine and the resultant photograph being used in their advertising blurb.

  William Stevenson & Sons of Newlyn bought the boat from the Ritchie family in 1937 when they realised the herring wasn’t making enough to cover the boat, and she was taken to Cornwall to line and drift out of Newlyn. She even went to the Great Autumnal Herring Fishery off East Anglia for two years. In 1938 she was converted for trawling and fished until the outbreak of war in the closing months of the next year.

  Efficient was then requisitioned in late 1940. It is thought that, after the German occupation of Norway in April of that year, she initially worked in ferrying men from Norway to Leith in Scotland. Boats had been sailing over from Norway since the spring of 1940, in what became known as the North Sea Traffic. Most of the Norwegians aboard their own boats were seeking to join the free Norwegian army that was being made ready to battle to liberate the country of the invaders. Over the period from the invasion to the end of 1941, 247 boats had sailed the North Sea, though the next year there were only seventeen due to the German awareness of the problem. The Germans increased their surveillance on the coast, scuttled or blew up some of the boats and threatened reprisals against those leaving. But sometimes escaped prisoners of war were also being channelled through Norway and picked up by boats. These were often British vessels until the surveillance was improved.

  The Efficient on the stocks on her launch day in 1931 at the yard of J. & G. Forbes of Sandhaven. (Courtesy of Billy Stevenson)

  Against this background, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up the so-called Shetland Bus in which Norwegian skippers were given boats to sail back to Norway with agents whose job was to make contact with the resistance and to supply them with weapons, equipment and training where necessary. This was the beginning of the military phase of the North Sea Traffic and was run from Lerwick in Shetland, later from Lunna Voe and eventually from Scalloway in 1942. Losses were heavy for the Shetland Bus that year with seven boats lost, thirty-three men killed and the whole of the operation virtually shut down by the Germans. Tactics then changed in 1943 with the arrival of three submarine chasing boats – fast and armed – into Scalloway and these boats undertook missions in landing agents and taking off refugees. Not one boat or life was lost between their inception and the end of the German occupation.1

  Among other exploits of various secretive missions, the Efficient ferried George VI while he was visiting the Scottish isles. Little else is known of her wartime work which appears to remain among many of the secrets still held from public knowledge from that period. One wonders what on earth she can have been involved in!

  When war was declared in September 1939, most of the British distant-water fleet was either in port or on its way home, having been recalled a few days earlier when war seemed imminent.2 The home fleet, too, stayed in port. Requisitioning of vessels began almost immediately. So what else did these fishing boats get up to during the Second World War? The answer is that most were requisitioned and ordered to join the trawler section of the Royal Naval Patrol Service, what had previously been known as the Royal Naval Reserve. Prior to the war, during the summer of 1939 when war seemed a distinct possibility, the Admiralty purchased sixty-seven vessels capable of trawling and ordered twenty more. These boats were to undertake minesweeping duties. Requisitioned boats were hired by a system known as Charter-Party, under which the government agreed to compensate owners for the loss of the vessel if it was sunk by enemy action. The Compensation (Defence) Act of 1939 stated how much a trawler or drifter was due if lost and, of course, this was a low rate, especially for the older drifters. For the newer motor boats the rate could be negotiated. At the same time the Fishery Board for Scotland was disbanded and all the Herring Industries powers suspended. The future of the herring was black indeed.

  Most of the boats requisitioned in the Royal Naval Reserve were rust-stained, weather-beaten fishing boats that had been working for many years without much thought to a refit. Some 200 drifters were among those requisitioned. Such was the dilapidated state of some of the boats that they received the nickname ‘Harry Tate’s Navy’. Harry Tate was a music hall entertainer of the 1920s and 1930s who played the clumsy comic who could not understand modern gadgets and used to poke fun at the old boats of the navy. However, by the end of the war it was a worthy mark of courage. Out of the drifters in the ‘kipper patrol’ (as the defence of the British coast, especially the Channel, was termed), 146 were lost on active duty, which, given the state they were said to be in, isn’t that surprising.3

  These boats worked in many theatres of the war, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic to the Far East, mainly in minesweeping and anti-submarine work. Their work in keeping the shipping lanes around Britain was vital for the ships of the Atlantic Convoys that were constantly resupplying the country with arms, equipment, fuel and other necessary supplies. In all, it is said that half the fleet was requisitioned at some time during the conflict. Few of these steamers survive today though the dual purpose trawler/drifter Lydia Eva, a superb example, can today be seen in Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

  On the other hand, some boats did carry on fishing for the good of the country’s food supply. However, fishing during this war was even more restrictive than in the last one. No passengers were allowed to be carried and the use of the radios and echo-sounders was restricted. The fishing grounds too were restricted and fishing was often confined to small areas. The fishing was limited to the Icelandic waters, the Irish Sea, off the west coast of Scotland and around parts of Ireland. Losses to fishing boats were great too as the Germans regarded fishing craft as legitimate targets and they were generally sunk by U-boats, German aircraft and mines. It had been said that the Germans had deliberately attempted to drive all fishing boats from the seas around Britain in the First World War and the general opinion was that was the case once again.4

  Loss of life among the fishing fleets was once again high. In all, the Royal Naval Reserve lost 2,385 personnel and more than 400 trawlers, drifters and whalers. Some 1,243 British fishermen lost their lives, nearly half coming from Grimsby. In 1939 Hull had 191 trawlers and by VE Day, 96 had been lost.5

  Once the war was over, owners were given a lump sum to cover the cost of the refit. Over the ensuing years, with a policy of scrapping drifters, various Acts of Parliament (Herring Act 1944; Inshore Fishing Act 1948; White Fish and Herring Industries Act 1948) made grants and loans available for the replacement of obsolete drifters and the purchase of new motor boats
.

  At the same time Admiralty boats became available. During the war the Admiralty built a series of boats which were designed for use as fishing vessels after the war. These became known as the Admiralty MFVs and came in four different keel sizes: 45ft, 61.5ft, 75ft and 90ft. They were offered to the fishermen under the grant and loan system – some called it the ‘Grunt and Groan Scheme’ and Scottish fishermen took eighty-five by 1948. The herring stocks had recovered during the non-fishing years of the war and now abundant supplies were encouraging fishermen to start drifting once more. In 1950 the Scottish fleet consisted of 5,222 vessels, 3,843 of which were motor boats and 967 still registered as sailing vessels. Of the rest, most were steam trawlers, drifters or liners.6

  We’ve mentioned both steam trawlers and drifters but several steamers were built specifically for lining and worked in the waters around the Northern Isles, Faroe and as far away as Iceland and Greenland waters. These ‘great liners’, as they were called, fished the grounds that the trawlers were unable to trawl over, the rocky deep waters. They set many fleets of lines, each up to 500 fathoms long with up to a 150 hooks fixed to snoods. During the war little great lining took place as single boats were not keen to venture out alone. For a comparison, in 1943 great liners landed 4.1 per cent of the total Scottish white fish catch, while seiners landed 31 per cent and trawlers 56.2 per cent, but within a few years there was a great revival after no fishing for several years. By 1948 there were twenty-two steam liners working out of Aberdeen and the percentage share of fish more than doubled. Two years later steam liners had swollen to thirty-four vessels while there were by this time another six motor liners.