The Smacksmen of the North Sea

JOHN RULE THE SMACKSMEN OF THE NORTH SEA LABOUR RECRUITMENT AND EXPLOITATION IN BRITISH DEEP-SEA FISHING, 1850-90 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 dis- covery 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. The major ports from which the sailing smacks fished were in order of importance: Grimsby, Hull, Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The smacks from these four ports all fished the North Sea all the year around. There Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 30 Sep 2021 at 00:37:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000005319 384 JOHN RULE were several older fishing ports, notably Brixham and Ramsgate, from which smacks fished the North Sea at times, but more usually fished in the English Channel. In this study it is the smacksmen sailing from the Humber ports and from Yarmouth who are the central concern. They were not only by far more numerous, but were the only ones who can be properly called North Sea fishermen. The most important innovation consequent upon the mid-nineteenth-century market expansion was the introduction at the major ports of the "fleeting" system. In the interests of productive efficiency and the maximum return on capital invested in boats and gear, the smacksmen had to adapt to a new labour pattern, which brought them considerable social and environmental deprivation, and clearly distinguished their pattern of life and labour from that of the traditional village fisherman. When a boat fishes on its own, stores its own catch and returns to port when its hold is full, it is described as "single boating". Such a system has considerable drawbacks from the owner's point of view. Vessels are only being productive when they are actually at sea and engaged in catching fish. Journeys to and from port to unload fish are an unproductive use of time. Following the lead of Hewitts of Yarmouth, the large owners at the major trawling stations developed the fleeting system, under which the smacks went to sea in fleets numbering perhaps a hundred or more sail under the overall direction of an "admiral". These fleets remained at sea for eight weeks transferring their catches to carrier vessels who plied between the fleets and the ports. For the crews this meant eight weeks at a time at sea with only a week or so ashore between trips. The North Sea smacksman could spend more than forty weeks of the year in the harsh, deprived conditions of the trawling fleets. That fleeting was a system which suited the owners at the cost of a real deteriotation in the quality of life of the crews was recognized by the Board of Trade inquiry into the industry in 1882: "We are of opinion that the 'single boating' system, whilst ensuring to the men less hardship, and probably conducing to instruct them in a more perfect knowledge of their business, is also productive of a great waste of fish. The fleeting system, on the contrary, is calculated to secure a more regular and continuous supply in a fresher state."1 Traditionally the village fisherman was a shore-based worker making trips to sea. The 1 Quoted by A. Ansell, "Trawling", in: Fisheries Exhibition Literature (1884), VII, p. 323. For a general discussion of the rise of the British sea fisheries in the nineteenth century see J. G. Rule, "The British Fisherman 1840-1914", in: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 27 (1973). This essay suggests some of the distinctions which should be drawn between the conditions of trawlermen and those of other fishermen. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 30 Sep 2021 at 00:37:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000005319 THE SMACKSMEN OF THE NORTH SEA 385 smacksman was sea-based, his spells ashore being mere breaks in a life which was almost totally lived at sea. For the most part the North Sea smacksmen toiled out of sight and out of mind of the shore-based population. Those few who sought them out, or who chanced upon them, were agreed on one thing: they could imagine no harder life than that of the deep-sea fisherman. One ex- perienced observer thought there was no form of seafaring life compar- able in "severity, exposure, hardship, and stern peril". Another thought them the "forlorn hope of the great Army of Labour", and described their lot as one of: "Suffering - monotonous, ceaseless suffering; gallant endurance; sordid filth; unnamed agonies; gnawing, petty pains; cold - and the chance of death." Leone Levi, an authority on the condition of labour, compared their lot unfavourably with that of the miner.1 The trawling smacks were ketch-rigged vessels, generally 60 to 70 feet in length and of about 50 to 60 tons in weight, although towards the end of the sailing era larger vessels were being built. They were manned by small crews, normally five men and boys in those sailing from the Humber ports and six in those sailing from Yarmouth.2 Designed with function in mind, they were kept small in the interests of speed and manoeuvrability. Of the little space available much was of necessity taken up in stowing the gear and storing the catch. The crew had to live, from boy-cook to skipper, in a single cabin usually about ten feet wide and from 12 to 17 feet long. Walter Wood's description of the cabin as a "dog-hole" seems apt. A writer who sailed on a smack in the 1880's wrote of a "smokey, stifling, grimy cabin" containing a cooking stove, a miniature pantry and a few wooden shelves for beds. The cabin was barely high enough to permit standing upright. Often the cabin would be wet or flooded for weeks on end, while for long spells in rough weather such would be the movement of the ship that it would be impos- 1 R. H. Ballantyne, The Young Trawler (1884), Appendix, p. 425; J. Runciman, A Dream of the North Sea (1889), pp. 146, 292; Leone Levi, "The Economic Condition of Fishermen", in; Fisheries Exhibition Literature, IV, p. 152. 2 Statistics of vessels lost in the March gale of 1883 give an indication of the crew size: Port Vessels Crew size lost 4 5 6 7 not given Hull 27 1 25 Grimsby 8 7 1 Yarmouth 5 1 3 Lowestoft 2 1 1 Source: E. J. March, Sailing Trawlers (1953), pp. 130-31. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 30 Sep 2021 at 00:37:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000005319 386 JOHN RULE sible to prepare hot food or drinks. Often the crew, once on the fishing grounds, gave up sleeping in the bunks: "Yer see, surs, when we comes below after a hard set-to above, with maybe, a stiff squall and a strong shower, its too much trouble to unship our togs, an' besides, one niver knows when skipper or night watch may sing out, 'All hands on deck!' Yer see, surs, sleep isn't worth while if ye've got to turn out an turn in, now off, an now on, with these here heavy sea-togs, an' so we just lies down at the handiest spot on the cabin floor, with a pair of sea-boots, a blanket, or a bit o' board for a pillow."1 A wooden ladder with half a dozen steep steps formed the usual means of entering and leaving the cabin.

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