‘Real Natives’

A Study of the History of Oyster Fishing in Harbour for the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority

Dr Ian Friel MA, PhD, FSA

© Ian Friel 2020

Oysters - a once-common food

Poor food for friars ‘Give me then of thy gold, to make our cloister’, Quoth he, ‘for many a mussel and many an oyster ‘When other men have been full well at ease ‘Hath been our food, our cloister for to raise’ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Summoner’s Tale, c 1387-88

A Chichester bet In 1813 a man named Martin from Dell Quay Mill and another named Fogden from Donnington met at Chalkright’s fishmonger shop in South Street, Chichester, to settle a bet as to who could eat the most oysters: ‘in a short time each swallowed four hundred large ones’ until Martin called for a halt. Fogden agreed, as long as Martin paid for the oysters. They then went to the King’s Head for a glass of brandy, followed by an eel pie supper at Martin’s house. Ipswich Journal, 11 December 1813, p 1

The Oyster Season opens: Billingsgate Fishmarket, August 1835: ‘At an early hour a scene of unusual bustle and confusion was apparent. Not less than 5,000 persons were in waiting to be served with the ‘real natives’, while the streets in the vicinity were blocked up with every species of locomotive vehicle to convey the oysters to the various quarters of the metropolis. There were no less than fifty sail of vessels in front of Billingsgate laden with oysters, chiefly from the Kentish coast. At twelve o’clock (noon) the hatches were opened and the rush to obtain the first supply was tremendous. Several persons were knocked overboard in the confusion, but, happily, with no other injury than a wet jacket…’ Kentish Gazette, Tuesday, 11 August 1835, p 4

Poverty… ‘Poverty and oysters always seem to go together’. Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836

… and the proverbial ‘Why then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open’. William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, c 1597

Cover image

Oyster shells lying on the foreshore in the vicinity of the 19th century northern group of oyster ponds.

1 Contents Pages

Introduction 4

Acknowledgments 4

Abbreviations 5

Notes on currency and Census information 5

Image credits 5

The Brief 6

Executive Summary 7

Glossary 11

Archaeological Evidence 12

Medieval and early modern documentary evidence 15

The late 17th and early 18th centuries – a turning-point in the oyster fisheries? 18

The geography and placenames of Chichester Harbour, late 18th century 23 c 1799-1870: an age of crises 25

1870-1939: co-operation and collapse 35

Revival: from the 1950s to the 21st Century 56

A summary of factors relating to the rise and decline of the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries 62

Appendix 1 Data relating to oyster stocks, catches and exports 65

Appendix 2 Data relating to Bosham oyster stocks, catches and exports 69

Appendix 3 Railway shipments of fish, 19th century 73

2

Appendix 4 Emsworth oyster fishery returns, 2006-17 74

Appendix 5 Known origins of oysters brought into the Harbour 75

Appendix 6 Traditional fishing boats and dredging 79

List of Sources Consulted 83

Bibliography 87

Endnotes 89

3 Introduction

The oyster fishery in Chichester Harbour has an incredibly long history, but, with some exceptions, the documentary and archaeological evidence for it is rather patchy before the 19th century. The town of Emsworth, and Emsworth Museum, rightly celebrate the history of its oyster industry, and that history has been very thoroughly explored in works by David J Rudkin and Linda Newell (and retold in an outstanding short film, Emsworth’s Oysters, by Millstream Productions, 2014).1

The story of J D Foster and the disastrous 1902 oyster pollution incident was already well known to me, because, in a bizarre touch of ‘synchronicity’, I played the part of Foster in the 1990 community play All About Us! However, much less well known to me – and I suspect to many other people – is the history of the Bosham oyster fishery. The tale of class conflict and industrial action, when the Bosham dredgermen went on strike for sixteen months between 1889 and 1891, was one of a number of real surprises in the research.

Commercial fishing itself remains one of the most dangerous occupations in the UK, and just because the waters of the Harbour are relatively sheltered, even the oyster fishery was never risk-free. In 1826, for example, a father and son named Hoskins were dredging off Cobnor Point when their boat was hit by what was described as a ‘whirlwind’, and sunk. The father survived, but his ‘fine lad of 16’ did not. Just over twenty years later, in 1847, a Nutbourne fisherman named William Mash set out to dredge for oysters in the Thorney Channel one day, and failed to return home. The next day, a mast was spotted sticking out of the water in the Channel, to the south of Thorney Church. It was supposed that the boat had been carrying too much sail, capsizing in a sudden gust of wind, and that poor Mash had been trapped in the gear and gone down with the boat.2 Fish and shellfish can sometimes come at appallingly high prices for fishermen and their families.

Ian Friel March 2020

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority and its Research Manager, Kathryn Nelson, for commissioning this study. Record offices, libraries and museums have provided key sources for the research on this project, and I would like the thank the following institutions and their staff: - Record Office, Chichester - The Novium Museum, Chichester (particularly Amy Roberts, its Collections Officer), with especial thanks for permission to use an image in their collection - Chichester Library, and the fabulous reserve collection of West Sussex Libraries - Emsworth Museum (particularly Dr Margaret Rogers, Vice Chairman, and Philip A Magrath, Curator) - Emsworth Library - The National Archives, Kew - History Centre, Portsmouth - Record Office, - East Sussex Record Office – The Keep, Falmer

4 Abbreviations

BDCS Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society CFO Chief Fishery Officer EDCS Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society ESRO East Sussex Record Office (The Keep), Falmer HRO Hampshire Record Office, Winchester LFC Local Fisheries Committee (of SSFD) OED Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com) PHC Portsmouth History Centre SAC Sussex Archaeological Collections SFC Sea Fisheries Committee SSFD Sussex Sea Fisheries District TNA The National Archives, Kew WSRO West Sussex Record Office, Chichester

Notes on currency, Census and newspaper information

Pre-decimal British currency was based on the old penny (1d), twelve of which made a shilling (1s) and twenty shillings made a pound. Prices were normally rendered in the format £/s/d.

Modern equivalents of past money have been calculated using the remarkable www.measuringworth.com site. Unless otherwise stated, the equivalent is based on the ‘real price’ of items, taken from the prices of a fixed group of items of average household expenditure over time.

Census data is via www.ancestry.co.uk, and newspaper material is via the British Newspaper Archive, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.

Image and quotation credits

Unless otherwise credited, all photographs and specially-prepared modern maps are copyright of Ian Friel 2020.

Fig 12: Copyright of Sussex IFCA. Fig 14: Copyright of the Novium (a service provided by Council). All rights reserved.

Quotations from TNA sources are Crown Copyright, and courtesy of TNA.

5 The Brief from Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, December 2017

The focus is on Chichester Harbour, and we know that towns such as Bosham and Emsworth used to be important in the oyster fishery. However, Chichester Harbour sits within and also had important links to the oyster beds further off the Sussex coast, as well as oyster fisheries off Essex and other areas of the UK and Europe. It would be interesting to see Chichester Harbour in the context of these other oyster areas.

To help support any future oyster management work undertaken by Sussex IFCA and partner organisations, we would like to know: • Amount of oyster caught (numbers) • Number of boats and people involved • Management measures (rules, restrictions, efforts to restore beds) • Factors which caused decline in abundance • Personal stories that capture the cultural heritage and language • The nature of the fishing activity

From as far back in time as possible, the last 200/300 years in particular, up to present day.

6 Executive Summary

Archaeological evidence Oysters have been consumed in Britain since prehistory. They are common finds on Roman sites in the vicinity of Chichester Harbour, and it is reasonable to suppose that these came from the Harbour. Some oysters found at Roman Palace appear to have been cultivated, most probably in shallow beds.

Medieval archaeological evidence for oyster consumption in the area is less plentiful, but this may be a reflection of the number of sites excavated. No physical signs of continuity between Roman and medieval oyster cultivation have been found, but at the very least the Fishbourne discovery points to a local oyster industry of some kind in the Roman era.

Medieval and early modern documentary evidence (to c 1650) Medieval evidence for oyster fisheries in Chichester Harbour is sparse, though fisheries of some kind existed in 1086 at Bosham, and at a place in the vicinity of Emsworth. Oyster dredges were in use by the late 14th century by Bosham fishermen. Oysters were a very cheap food, and the link between them and poverty was made as far back as the 14th century. Fishing and poverty could also go together, though evidence from 17th century Emsworth suggests that some oyster fishermen made a good living, and invested in making oyster ponds.

The late 17th and early 18th centuries – a turning-point in the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries? In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Chichester Harbour had one of the few significant southern English oyster fisheries outside of Kent and Essex. Between 1679 and 1724, there were fourteen years in which oysters were exported from the Sussex side of Chichester Harbour, mainly to the Continent, and Emsworth oysters are known to have been in demand for restocking grounds in Kent in the early 18th century. Given that oysters will also have been supplied to markets in the Chichester area, this suggests that there were significant surpluses in the Harbour’s oyster population.

Oral tradition from the 1830s indicates that the Harbour’s oyster fishermen of the early 1700s were able to restock the harbour, increase productivity and develop a system of regulating the fishery amongst themselves. No direct contemporary evidence has been found so far to support this notion, but given the evidence of the later 17th-century oyster exports, the 1830s claim is persuasive. The fishery regulation system still existed in the first half of the 19th century. Limited evidence from Emsworth suggests that the oyster fishery there was prosperous in the late 18th century. There is no evidence that local fishermen were dredging oysters from offshore beds at this date. c 1799-1870: an age of crises Chichester Harbour’s oyster fishery was hit by a series of crises in this period. The first was caused by uncontrolled, large-scale dredging by smacks from Kent, Essex and other places. This not only removed mature oysters from the Harbour, but also took away breeding stock to be cultivated elsewhere. It could not be stopped by legal action. The effects of this cannot be quantified, but they seem to have been severe, on both the fishing communities and the oyster population.

7 Evidence from a mid-19th century map provides some information on the management of the local oyster industry, and the disposition of Bosham’s almost unrecorded former oyster ponds. Other evidence shows the involvement of the Jarrad family in the oyster fishery from this time, and also the significance of the railway in making Bosham’s and Emsworth’s marine produce available much further afield. At about this time, Bosham also became a base for a group of Essex smacks, dredging oysters off the coast and bringing them back to ponds at Bosham. Local merchants were also importing significant quantities of French oysters via Jersey in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

The attempted reclamation of the Thorney Channel, a rich oyster dredging ground, in the 1860s, also damaged the Harbour oyster fishery, even though the project was a partial failure.

1870-1939: co-operation and collapse The 1868s Sea Fisheries Act led to Orders for the creation of three several oyster fisheries in the Harbour, two in the Emsworth Channel and one based on Bosham, between 1870 and 1873. The Emsworth and Bosham fisheries were in a very bad state before the Order was granted. Emsworth and Bosham fishermen now ran two separate co-operative companies to manage their fisheries (EDCS and BDCS).

Unfortunately, within a few years each of the three Fisheries was suffering severe problems: at Bosham, the problems were caused by environmental disasters, and overfishing; the 1870 Emsworth Fishery Order, despite considerable oyster layings, was apparently plagued by poaching committed by EDCS members. The EDCS grounds themselves were not improved, having already suffered some environmental damage, and their true yields seem to have been poor.

The BDCS got into severe financial trouble. Seriously under-capitalised, it accepted an Essex oyster merchant as a major investor, and the company was transformed from a mutual structure to one which, in effect, had management and employees. Poor management and misunderstandings led to a bitter sixteen month-long strike of dredgermen between 1889 and 1891. The problems were mostly resolved, but the productivity of the grounds did not greatly improve in the 1890s despite more investment.

Pollution by new municipal sewage works affected both the Emsworth and Bosham fisheries in the 1890s and early 1900s, contaminating shellfish: a notorious typhoid outbreak in 1902 was blamed on Emsworth oysters. Scientific studies of oysters from local ponds found serious bacterial contamination (though not typhoid), which resulted in a ban on their sale for years. The EDCS, however, underwent something of a renaissance in the years 1912-13 and in 1914 added the grounds of the 1870 order to its own area. It did face serious long-term problems, however: an ageing membership and a highly restrictive system of recruiting new fishermen.

The increased investment made possible by the change in the structure of the BDCS in the 1880s seems to have led to an eventual rise in oyster yields by 1913. The First World War was a time of great productivity for the EDCS and the BDCS, with the Bosham company enjoying sales that ran to two million oysters. Sales continued well into the early 1920s, then declined thereafter. The Bosham fishery, and perhaps also that at

8 Emsworth, were effectively destroyed by a disastrous rise in the populations of slipper limpets in the Harbour in the 1920s and 1930s. The BDCS was wound up finally in 1934; the EDCS continued to exist, but there was no revival of the Emsworth oyster fishery until the late 1950s.

Revival: from the 1950s to the 21st Century With encouragement from government scientists in the late 1950s, and the enthusiasm of EDCS members, a faltering revival of the Emsworth fishery began. The Emsworth Harbour Fishermen’s Federation was formed in the 1960s, and in 1975 secured a 30- year Order for the Hampshire side of the Emsworth Channel. The fishery has experienced some considerable variations in productivity in the 21st century, and since 2018 fishing has been stopped due to signs of serious decline in oyster populations. However, in 2010 the Chichester Harbour Oyster Partnership Initiative was created, and there are hopes of once again reviving the fishery.

A summary of factors relating to the rise and decline of the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries

Rise Self-management and co-operation (pp 18-22) Commercial management and investment (pp 50-51) Government support and scientific study (pp 56-59)

Decline Poverty (pp 17, 25, 27, 39 and 44) Poor self-management (pp 38-40) Poor commercial management (pp 42-44) Under-investment (pp 38-40 and 51) Poaching (pp 25-28 and 40) Overfishing (pp 25-28 and 39-44) Slipper limpets and other pests (pp 49, 51-53, 55 and 60) Storms (p 39) Civil engineering works (pp 32-34 and 40) Pollution (pp 45-48 and 59) Ageing workforce (pp 49-50) Increasing work opportunities (p 50) Leisure boating (54-55, 56, 57 and 59) Gentrification (p 54) Freezing weather (p 25 and 49)

Appendix 5 Known origins of oysters imported into Chichester Harbour Evidence between c 1851 and 1985 shows the geographical origins of oysters imported into the Harbour. Between c 1871 and 1902, the Emsworth oyster merchant J D Foster brought oysters from as far afield as western France and the USA into the Harbour (the latter shipped to Emsworth in barrels). As far as is known, these were placed in his oyster ponds, for cultivation or storage. However, oysters brought in by others, including

9 the BDCS and EDCS, came from France, the , the Solent, Whitstable in Kent and Burnham in Essex. Some of these were laid in ponds, but the majority were laid in the Harbour channels, or on hards adjacent to them.

Appendix 6 The traditional oyster-boat used in the Harbour was clinker-built, lug-rigged, normally crewed by no more than two people, and could deploy no more than two small dredges. The traditional maximum hull-length for these boats (mandated by locally-agreed regulations), was still being observed in the 1870s and later.

10 Glossary

It is normal for glossaries to come at the end of a work, but in this case, given the very specialised terminology associated with oyster cultivation and related historical matters, it seems best to put it at the beginning.

Bed The bed of the sea, and estuary or river where oysters grow naturally. Brood oyster A breeding oyster; also, a seed oyster. Cove A term for an oyster pond or pit, in use until the 19th century (see below pp 16 and 17). Culch A bed made of old oyster shells, stones and gravel that is suitable for the growth of oysters (sometimes spelt ‘cultch’ or ‘culsh’). Drag A synonym for ‘dredge’. Dredge A metal framework with a net, towed along the seabed behind a boat in order to collect oysters. Dredgerman A fisherman who specialises in dredging oysters. Halfware A part-grown oyster. Laying or lay An area of seabed where oysters are laid deliberately by fishermen. Native oyster Also known as the ‘flat’ or ‘common’ oyster, Ostrea edulis. Pit An oyster pond. Pond An artificial pond, usually dug in the foreshore, and used to store oysters in seawater. Probate inventory A listing and valuation of the assets of a deceased person (typically goods, chattels, livestock, money and debts), made shortly after their death. Several fishery A several fishery is established by government Several Order, which restricts fishing rights in a given area for a given time to a specific private fishery, usually a group. Slubbed-up A situation where the culch bed of an oyster ground had become covered with weeds and mud, depriving spat of hard surfaces to which they could attach (see p 38). Spat A name for oyster larvae once they have attached to a surface, as such as an oyster shell. Spatfall The settling of oyster larvae on hard surfaces. Stint A working day for a dredgerman, usually defined in terms of the maximum number of oysters that can be dredged in a single day.

Oyster industry definitions are from Newell 2016, pp 10-13 and 40-41, Vause and Clark 2012 and https://www.seafish.org/media/Publications/Native_Oyster_Cult_Leaflet.pdf, unless otherwise specified.

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Fig 1 Main settlements and other features around Chichester Harbour (© Ian Friel 2020)

Archaeological Evidence

Archaeological finds suggest that people in were eating shellfish as far back as the Mesolithic (c 9500-4000 BC), though the evidence itself is not plentiful. Oysters, winkles, cockles, mussels and other species were being consumed by the Neolithic (c 4000-2300 BC), and oysters predominate on sites dating from the Roman (43-c 400) and medieval (c 400 – c 1500 periods). In his study of the history of the English coastline, Peter Murphy notes that there is some evidence for the management of oyster beds in the Roman and medieval eras: as will be seen (below), there are signs that oyster farming of some kind was being practiced within Chichester Harbour nearly 1,900 years ago.3

Prior to recent decades, it was not common to record finds of oyster shells in archaeological excavations in any great detail. Excavators tended to focus on changing occupation levels and artefacts. Not untypical of this approach was the comment made by Ian Hannah on his 1930s excavation of a Roman site adjacent to the North Walls in Priory Park, Chichester: ‘Oysters shells were as usual very plentiful indeed’.4

The development of environmental archaeology meant that recording such evidence is a normal part of modern excavations. It cannot tell us where particular oysters originated, but in the case of oysters shells excavated on ancient sites in the Chichester area, it is reasonable to suggest that they came from the Harbour. An excavation on the Fishbourne

12 Roman Palace site in the early 2000s uncovered oysters shells in all phases from the pre- 43 AD Iron Age (the period immediately before the Roman invasion) to the late Roman or early post-Roman era. One trench from the late 1st/early 2nd century AD even acquired the nickname ‘oyster gully’ because of the number of shells recovered. This feature, and the other contexts from that period, produced the largest volume of oyster shells – just 35kg in total – though the environmental report pointed out that even this formidable quantity of oysters would only have yielded some 4.5 – 5kg of meat. It was of course impossible to identify the actual source of the oysters, but given that the Palace stood in very close proximity to the Harbour, the local waters were the most likely source.

The report authors, Somerville and Bonell, were able to make some interesting deductions about the environment from which the oysters came. They felt that the assemblage of marine shells – the vast majority belonged to ‘native’ oysters, Ostrea edulis – was ‘consistent with local harvesting of oyster beds’, rather than oysters growing on reefs. They also suggested that the range, size and shape of the shells pointed to them coming from beds that were regularly harvested, and the pattern of infestations on the shells suggested that these beds were shallow. There was nothing to indicate, though, that the material in ‘oyster gulley’ came from a ‘restricted time period’, in other words that it was the product of one oyster season.5

Table 1 lists some of the finds of oyster shells on Roman and medieval sites excavations within the vicinity of the Harbour (the list of sites is indicative only, and is not intended to be definitive):

Table 1 Roman and later sites around Chichester Harbour with oyster shells

Site Date Quantity

North Walls, Priory Park, Chichester Roman ‘very plentiful’6

St Pancras, Chichester, cremation cemetery 1st-3rd/4th centuries in two burials, out of 300+7

Chichester Cathedral, Roman building late 1st/early 2nd centuries oysters8 occupation layer

Former Rowe’s Garage, The Hornet, Chichester 1st-4th centuries small groups9

House 2, Chapel Street, Chichester late 4th century thousands of oyster shells10

Fishbourne Roman Palace, Fishbourne pre-43 AD to late significant Roman/early post-Roman amounts11

Seafields Estate, Emsworth Anglo-Saxon, midden with possibly 11th century oyster shells12

Broadbridge, Bosham Anglo-Saxon period or earlier to 13th century AD large amounts13

13 The evidence suggests that at the very least, oysters were part of the Romano-British diet around Chichester Harbour. It is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of these came from the Harbour itself. The finds from the early 2000s excavation at also indicates that:

- shallow-water beds were being exploited in the Harbour; - that these beds were being managed in some way; - that the key local species was (then as now) Ostrea edulis, the native oyster.

There is no evidence of oyster dredging from boats – shallow beds could have been reached by people wading into them – but the indication is that some form of oyster ‘industry’ existed in the Harbour in the Roman period. This means that oysters were not just being recovered eaten on a random basis, consumed like wild blackberries from bushes, but were being cultivated. This, in turn, suggests that the Harbour had a healthy population of oysters at this time.

Medieval archaeological evidence of oyster consumption from the Harbour area is less plentiful, but this could a reflection of the range of sites that have been excavated rather than the actual level of oyster consumption in this period. There is some evidence, however:

- a small Anglo-Saxon settlement site, found during construction work on the Seafields Estate in Emsworth (near Beacon Square) in 1958, included a midden containing oyster shells. The site may have dated to the 11th century;14

- a manmade millstream and three ditches were excavated at Broadbridge, Bosham in 1976. They produced material dated to the 13th century, though some of the features, the millstream in particular, may have dated back to the Anglo-Saxon era. A large amount of oyster shells was found.15

No physical signs of continuity between Roman and medieval oyster cultivation has been found, but at the very least the Fishbourne discovery points to an oyster industry of some kind in the Roman era.

14 Medieval and early modern documentary evidence (to c 1650)

Anglo-Saxon and medieval fisheries

The Anglo-Saxon settlement of England between the 5th and 7th centuries is sparsely documented, though Old English written sources from the 8th century onwards shed a good deal of light on political and religious history. They generally have less to say about daily life or the economy, though , in his History of the English Church and People (completed in 731) recorded that in 681, when St began converting the pagan South (from whom Sussex gets its name), he also taught the people of (‘seal island’) to fish. It was said that they were able to catch eels in nets, but did not know about sea fishing.

Whether the local inhabitants were really so ignorant or not, the account takes the history of fishing in the Chichester area back over 1,300 years. Also, thanks to Bede’s account, the names of Bosham and Selsey are among the earliest-recorded English placenames.16

Unfortunately, the histories of the Harbour fisheries in general, and the oyster fishery in particular, are patchy until the 18th century. The of 1086, the great record of landholding across early Norman England, shows that the manor of Bosham had two ‘fisheries’, together worth 8s/10d annually. It was the only one of the Sussex lands bordering the Harbour to have recorded fisheries in Domesday. Oddly, no fishery is noted at Fishbourne, even though the name itself meant ‘fish stream’.17

Two fisheries are mentioned in the Domesday entry for Hayling Island, but it is unclear if these were on the or Chichester Harbour side. Nearly 800 years after Domesday, the acquisitive and litigious early Victorian lord of the manor of Hayling, William Padwick, used the reference to them as evidence to support his cause in a case claiming rights over the local oyster fishery.18

Emsworth is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, but it was part of manor later on, and was probably subsumed under the Warblington entry in the Domesday Book. In 1086 Warblington itself was part of Westbourne manor, and included a (now unidentified) settlement called ‘Newtimber’. Newtimber had a fishery, so presumably stood somewhere on the manor’s coastline within Chichester or Langstone Harbours. Emsworth was first mentioned in the sources in the 12th century, and by the 13th century it had some of the features of a town, with a market and fair, and in the 14th century local vessels were trading in foreign wine. In 1340, the Emsworth fishery provided a significant part of the manorial income.19

Unfortunately, few of these manorial fishery references are specific about the species caught, but given that there was clearly a significant oyster population in Roman times, it seems likely that they were harvested along with other fish and shellfish. In 1306, for example, the twelve customary tenants of the manor of (Thorney Island) were required at Easter to present the lord of the manor with some produce, including 700 oysters, worth ½d per 100 (worth about £1.68p now). The number of the oysters

15 tells us nothing about the overall stock in the Harbour, but their low price does suggest that they were commonplace.20

The well-known association between oysters and poverty actually dates back to the Middle Ages, when they were consumed widely, either fresh or in pickled form. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale, for example (see above, p 1), a mendicant friar, seeking alms to finish building a cloister, claims that he and his brothers put so much of their resources into the work that they had only oysters and mussels to eat.21

On the south coast, of England, the commercial oyster industries that fed medieval appetites were well established by the 15th century, with significant fisheries in the Tamar and Exe estuaries, Poole Harbour, the in Hampshire and Chichester Harbour. However, common as oysters were, medieval people certainly knew that it could be dangerous to consume them when they were past their best, or not preserved. In late-13th-century London, for example, only the fishermen who dredged the oysters were allowed to sell them, and the shellfish could only be on sale for two falling tides and one rising tide.22

Oysters were among the foodstuffs marketed in medieval Chichester, as in 1387 a legal judgment decreed that a toll had to be paid on oysters, mussels and shrimps caught in the lower portion of Chichester Harbour, the ‘Forehavene’, which was judged to be within the city’s jurisdiction.23 Oyster cultivation was also practiced in the Chichester area in the Middle Ages. In 1451, two men paid 2d rent to the manor of for a ‘cove’ on the sea-shore near Pagham Mill, so that they could lay oysters there. ‘Cove’ was a synonym for an oyster pond or pit. 24

The evidence for medieval English oyster fishing methods is slight, though it is clear that by the late 14th century, drags or dredges were being used to bring oysters up. In January 1377 there was a complaint to Parliament about a device called a wondyrchoun. This was made like an oyster drag or dredge, but was so long that the net attached to it scooped up all kinds of fish. The ‘great and long iron’ of the wondyrchoun was ploughing up the sea bed, catching the spawn of oysters, mussels and other sea creatures and destroying the food sources for other fish. It was also netting so many small fish that the fishermen were merely using them as pigfood. Fisheries were being seriously damaged by this innovation.25

The device was being used in many parts of the realm, according to the petition. The complaint shows and an awareness of the damage that an over-efficient fishing technology could cause, both in environmental and economic terms. The reference to the equipment being ‘in the manner of a drag’ or dredge does not suggest that oyster drags themselves were anything novel.

Bosham oystermen were using dredges by the late 14th century, because in 1390 a man was apprehended for stealing an anchor and two iron ‘drags’ belonging to three men at Little Bosham. None of these items were large – their cumulative value was between 2s/6d and 3s, not a huge sum, even then – but is does suggests that iron dredges were already a normal part of local oyster fishing equipment.

16 Fishermen in the 17th century

Probate inventories from the 16th and 17th centuries provide some more information about the boats and gear used by oyster dedgers in Chichester Harbour in that time, and tell us a little about the nature of the industry. For instance, the fisherman John Bailey of Emsworth, who died in 1607, owned a 1½-ton boat with a mast, sail and four oars, that was also equipped with two drags, worth £3 in total. He also had various nets, including a draw net, as well as lines with hooks and two eel spears. His boat was thus equipped for oyster dredging, netting, line fishing and eel-catching. He also had what seems to have been a half-interest in another small boat, a ‘cockboat’, and owned a pair of sea boots worth 9s, which made them expensive footwear – the rest of his clothing was worth only 20s. In terms of modern earnings, his boat and its gear were worth around £8,400.26

Fishermen’s widows sometimes inherited their late husbands’ boats. When William Holloway of Emsworth fisherman died in 1670 he left his goods and chattels to his wife Jane, including his boat and its tackle. Whether or not Jane Holloway did any fishing herself, she was at least in position to make money from it, either by selling the boat or by renting out to someone else.27

The long association between fishing and poverty was as well understood in the 17th century. In 1638 the Sheriff of Hampshire, Sir John Oglander, was tasked with raising taxes within his county. He remarked that the inhabitants of the 30-mile stretch from Christchurch to Emsworth, who were mostly fishermen, would be too poor to pay up, and they had little in the way of possessions to seize in order to make up the shortfall.

Not every Emsworth fisherman lived on the poverty line, however. John Bailey of 1607 was not poor, and neither was Thomas Manser or Mancer, who died in 1693. He seems to have done well out of the trade. The total value of his goods and chattels came to £64/11s (just over £142,000 in terms of equivalent modern average wage values), but more than half of the value of his portable estate came from the three vessels that he owned. One of these was a hoy with at least two masts, a vessel that must have been one of the bigger fishing vessels in Chichester Harbour at that time. The hoy carried both nets and drags for oyster dredging, and had its own small boat for use as a tender. The hoy, its boat and equipment were worth £31. His third craft was a small fishing boat equipped with nets. He also owned a pair of fishing boots, costly items like the sea boots owned by his predecessor John Bailey of nearly 90 years before, because they were worth 10s (around £70 in modern money).28

Not much is known about the oyster ponds used for maturing and storing oysters in the Harbour at this time, but the records of Emsworth Manor from 1687-88 do note the grant of oyster ‘coves’ or ponds to various men, including a John Holloway and a John Mancer, presumably members of the families of William Holloway and Thomas Mancer. Two other men paid a rent of 200 large ‘pick’ oysters for several coves. Unfortunately, there does no appear to be any evidence as to what these ponds were like. They were probably had timber-lined sides and were perhaps floored with gravel or shells, but until a dated early oyster pond in the Harbour has been excavated, this is speculation.29

17 The late 17th and early 18th centuries – a turning-point in the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries?

The oyster export trade

There does not seem to be any quantifiable information for the Chichester Harbour oyster fishery before the late 17th century. However, there is some data contained in customs port books for fourteen of the years between 1679 and 1724 that gives some sense of the scale of the Harbour’s oyster catches. Port books were in use from 1565 to 1798, and recorded the overseas and coastal trades of English and Welsh ports. Each port book entry listed the names of ships entering or leaving a port (and the dates they did so), together with items such as the master’s name, the volume and types of goods carried, the names of the merchants shipping them, the totals of duty paid, and so-on. Series of port books often have large gaps, and those for Chichester are no exception. Chichester’s coastal trade port books survive for most years from 1654 to 1716, and those for its foreign trade from 1656 to 1731. This means that there is no data for most of the port’s century trade in the 18th century. The Chichester port books covered only the Sussex side of the Harbour, however, as Emsworth came under the customs jurisdiction of Portsmouth.

The Chichester port books for the period from the 1650s to the 1730s were investigated by the historian J D Andrews in the early 1950s.30 Though it lacked major cargo-handling facilities, and Dell Quay was the only legitimate place in Chichester Harbour for foreign trade, the Harbour was of more than local importance. In the 1730s it was the sixth largest English port exporting corn to foreign countries. For a time, it also exported oysters. As Andrews pointed out, the 17th and early 18th century oyster fisheries in Sussex were nowhere near as important as those in contemporary Kent, but within Sussex itself, Chichester was the chief location for raising oysters.

Table 2 (next page) is based Andrews’ Table 32, compiled from data recorded in the Chichester Harbour port books:

18 Table 2 Oyster exports from Chichester Harbour (excluding Emsworth), 1679-1724

Year Total nos. of oysters exported Total nos. of oysters exported to foreign countries to places in England

1679 80,000 - 1680 390,000 - 1681 241,000 - 1683 20,000 - 1684 807,000 - 1685 50,000 320,000 1686 100,000 - 1691 240,000 - 1697 50,000 - 1699 31,000 - 1701 615,000 - 1702 160,000 - 1710 444,100 - 1724 30,000 -

It is unlikely that there were many, if any, smuggled oysters that somehow evaded the customs officials. The low unit value of oysters at the time would not have made illicit trade worthwhile.

Table 3 Oysters exports by destination 1679-1724

Holland: 2.25 million oysters Flanders: 0.26 million France: 0.10 million Germany: 0.60 million Unknown: 0.08 million England: 0.32 million

Holland was by far the best market for Chichester oysters over this period, taking around 63% of the total exported. It is difficult to detect any clear pattern in the trade, however, beyond a falling-off after 1710: the 30,000 shellfish sent to Holland in 1724 represented a tiny amount compared to the volumes despatched in earlier years. How many oysters were sent out in a given shipment will have depended on a host of factors that may now be difficult to uncover, such as demand, relationships between individual merchants, market prices, and so-on, to say nothing about the effects of weather on stocks in the Harbour. However, what the figures do show clearly is that in some years, the Sussex side of Chichester Harbour had between 300,000 and more than 800,000 oysters available for export. Given that the Harbour beds will have been supplying local sources at the same time, this may suggest that at times more than a million oysters could have been maturing in the Harbour.

These figures do not include any foreign or coastal exports from Emsworth. Unfortunately, the Chichester port books that Andrews studied, and the contemporary

19 ones for Emsworth (which do not survive beyond 1720), are currently being treated for mould by the Conservation Department at The National Archives. They will not be available until later this year, beyond the end of this project. This means that it is not possible to check the Chichester originals to find out who was exporting the oysters – a way of trying to understand the local market and perhaps even find out roughly where the oysters were dredged. Selected Chichester port books between 1611 and 1647 were studied to see if there was any evidence of oyster exports, but none were recorded. The oyster export trade from the Harbour was definitely a development of the late 1670s.31

Despite the lack of equivalent information from Emsworth, Andrews was also able to find some evidence that Emsworth oysters were in serious demand outside Chichester Harbour in the this period.32 In about 1710, fishermen in Stangate Creek (a tributary of a the River Medway in north Kent), spent the (huge) sum of £150 to re-stock their grounds with oysters from Emsworth and the Isle of Wight.33

With coastal exports of oysters recorded in one year only (1685) from Chichester, the Sussex side of the Harbour does not seem to have participated much in the seaborne oyster trade with other English ports. In 1685 the Chichester exports went to Colchester in Essex (320,000), Rochester in Kent (70,000) and London (50,000). Essex and Kent had important local oyster fisheries, and these oysters were perhaps immature examples sent to be fattened on local beds – the same may have been true of those sent to London.

The port book evidence and the c 1710 Emsworth exports suggest that there was some kind of significant change within the oyster fisheries in Chichester Harbour in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. For the first time, it seems, enough oysters were being cultivated and dredged there to create a surplus that it was worthwhile to export (there is no evidence that these oysters were being sourced from offshore beds). There is some support for this idea from the corporate memory of the Harbour oystermen in the 19th century.

It was not possible, within the time available for this project, to carry out an in-depth study of the voluminous surviving manorial records from the Harbour area. Emsworth manorial sources from the 1680s record the lease of lands for oyster ponds to some local fishermen (see above, p 17), and this may indicate a contemporary upsurge in the local oyster fishery of some kind. However, a sample of manorial surveys and other documents from Bosham, covering the period 1532 to 1801, revealed very little information about the foreshores and other marine resources of the manor, and no references of any kind to oysters.34 Over twenty manors once existed either in the Harbour or its immediate vicinity, and some, like Bosham, have substantial archives. A thorough study of them might uncover more evidence of the oyster fishery, but that, in itself, would be a major research project.

What was going on?

In 1834, the fishermen of Emsworth, Langstone and Bosham presented a petition to the government and the House of Commons. It was aimed at stopping the depredations carried out by Kent and Essex oyster dredgers in Langstone and Chichester Harbours (see below, pp 25-28), but it began by relating some of the history of these oyster fisheries and the ways in which they were managed:

20

1. That ‘a century and a quarter since [ie c 1709], the ancestors of many of your petitioners with much labour and expense, restocked and improved these harbours with oysters’; 2. ‘their forefathers constantly dredged for oysters in boats of an invariable size, not exceeding fifteen feet in length, and capable of working only two dredges each’; 3. ‘That they were then enabled to support their families in comfort, cheerfully contributing their proportions to the public burthens’; 4. by ‘immemorial usage’, the dredging season was between 5 September and 12 May; 5. no oysters were to be caught that were less than 2½ inches (63.5mm) in width; 6. ‘That smacks then came periodically for the oysters and purchased them from the boats, for the London and other markets, never attempting to dredge themselves, or in any way to interfere with the boats regularly employed in the oyster fishery in these harbours’; 7. ‘That a metallic oyster, now in their possession, was suspended in the shrouds of the smacks whilst loading, to regulate the size of such oysters as were deemed marketable’, and none less than 2½ inches ‘were in those times ever purchased by the smacks’.35

In setting out the history of the fishery, the fishermen were relaying an oral tradition, unless they had some written record that has either not survived or not made it into a public archive: no such evidence has emerged in the course of this research. Uncorroborated oral testimony cannot always be trusted, especially when it must have been passed down through at least four generations, but this could have been a memory of the ‘labour and expense’ that enabled the Harbour to export oysters between the 1670s and 1720s. The volume of the exports makes the claim more persuasive than it might have been (items 6 and 7, the regular coastal export of oysters to London and elsewhere from Chichester Harbour must have come after the last of the extant Chichester port books in 1731).

Only two London port books survive for the 18th century, so there is no way of checking whether or not the capital was receiving oysters from the Chichester and Emsworth areas on a regular basis, but it is known that in the late 18th century Emsworth was able to export very large quantity of oysters at times. The information comes from Walter Butler’s 1817 pioneer local history, the Topographical Account of the Hundred of Bosmere, and is quoted in most accounts of the Harbour oyster fishery.

Butler related that in ‘the memory of an old fisherman, 24,000 oysters have been caught in one tide, and sold in Portsmouth for 2s/6d the thousand’ (ie, 3d per hundred). He also gives some much more detailed data, taken from a source that is now apparently lost, for the numbers of oysters exported from Emsworth by a dozen masters of fishing smacks in 1788 (all the fishermen were named, and presumably local). The total came to 7,035 bushels, sold for just under £1,517 pounds (worth at least £188,000 at modern values). Oysters were often sold by the bushel, and according to the oyster fishery expert H Cholmondely Pennell, who ran the Bosham oyster fishery enquiry in 1873, the unit in use locally then was the ‘West Country bushel’, which contained about 700 ‘marketable oysters’. On this basis, the 1788 Emsworth exports would have amounted to around 4.9 million oysters. In her study of the Emsworth oyster industry, Linda Newell quotes a

21 figure of about 500 oysters to the bushel, but even on this basis the 1788 exports would have amounted to around 3.5 million oysters. Some of these oysters might have been dredged outside the Harbour, but the local fishery relied mainly on small boats, of less than fifteen feet in length. It is unlikely that these operated much on the open sea, so the majority of these oysters probably came from Chichester Harbour.36

Butler pointed out that the 1788 figures did not include those marketed and consumed in the local area, which suggests that the actual take of oysters by the Emsworth fleet in that year was much higher. Besides Emsworth itself, there the urban markets at Havant and Chichester were within easy reach by road. Eighteenth-century Chichester, indeed, had a dedicated fishmarket, or ‘fish shambles’ located at the north end of South Street. It is known that Bosham fishermen were selling their catches there in 1724, because a local edict was passed to compel them to market the produce at the lower end of the fish shambles, and to pay the market tolls, which they had apparently been evading.37 If the Bosham men were selling in Chichester, it is likely that the Emsworth fishermen were doing likewise.

Butler mentions that at Emsworth, ‘For the better regulation of the fishery, a court, or committee of respectable inhabitants was formerly held at Emsworth, once a year, but this has been discontinued many years’. He also gives oyster season dates that were the same as those in the 1834 petition, and notes that after 12 May oysters were ‘milchy and unwholesome’.

The committee or ‘respectable inhabitants’ does not seem to have been a success, and one of the other interesting features of the 1834 petition is that it suggests that the oyster fishery was redeveloped and regulated by the fishermen themselves, rather than by some outside agency such as a manorial lord or a merchant. These were measures designed to prevent overfishing and damage to the Harbour bed, and to keep the oyster population stable, sufficient to provide a decent living for the fishermen and their families. Rules similar to those set out in the 1834 document were in force in the late 19th century (see below, pp 37-38)38.

The indications are that in the second half of the 17th century, the local dredgermen were able to cultivate the local oyster populations to such an extent that they created a substantial surplus, one that could be exported. Alongside this, they were able to manage and regulate the fishery on a communal basis and in a way that was sustainable, without much interference from either the local manorial lords or merchants or from external factors. This would all begin to change from the late 18th century.

22 The geography and placenames of Chichester Harbour, late 18th century

The following three images are extracts from Yeakell and Gardner’s 1778 map of Chichester Harbour. The Harbour channels are shown at low water, with low water soundings in feet (the extracts are reproduced at different scales). Many of the placenames are still extant.

Fig 2a. The western end of Chichester Harbour.

23 Fig 2b. Emsworth, Thorney Island and part of Chidham. Until the 1860s, Thorney was truly an island, accessible at low tide via a narrow carriage road that was perilous to cross as the tide rose.39

Fig 2c (below) The eastern end of Chichester Harbour.

.

24 c 1799-1870: an age of crises

The first crisis: the oyster smacks

In the late 18th century, fishermen from Kent and Essex began visiting Chichester Harbour on a regular basis and dredging its oyster stocks on an industrial scale. The 1834 petition of local fishermen dated the start of the problem to about 1799, thirty five years before:

‘That about thirty-five years since [ie 1799] a few smacks of large dimensions, and working six or eight dredges, innovated the long established customs – came into these harbours and dredged themselves for oysters – taking and carrying off all kinds, from the young and tender brood to the marketable oyster, to the imminent risk of your petitioners; who, in dread of their lives, and in apprehension of having their boats run down by the smacks, were compelled to exercise all their skill, and sacrifice much of their time in keeping out of their way, to the manifest injury to your petitioners, who, unprotected by the law, are too poor to resist the aggression on their immemorial usage, and annually increasing, the smacks have continued to work with impunity from that time – and of late years have commenced dredging on the first day of August, long before the oysters of these harbours are fit for consumption, and indeed when they are so far considered to be unwholesome that the inhabitants will not eat them – by which early and unseasonable dredging the young brood is much injured, and to a great extent, destroyed, while the hopes of your petitioners are blighted, and they have to contend with poverty for the whole of the winter’.

The petitioners added that the smacks continue to dredge for a few weeks only, ‘in that time nearly exhausting the oyster beds, when they quit these harbours, scarcely any of them returning during the Season; the oysters being so reduced in quantity that it does not answer the purpose of the smacks to renew their dredging’.

Oysters prematurely caught are sold to ‘a few persons who monopolise them in these and adjacent Harbours, where a part being deposited in shallow water, a severe winter has been known to destroy myriads; which remaining in their native beds, would have escaped injury, and proved by their increased growth of great future benefit to the public; whilst they would have afforded a livelihood to your distressed petitioners’.

Deprived of maintenance and ‘unfitted by habit for other pursuits, even were they attainable’, the greater part of the petitioners are ‘reduced to the degradation of soliciting parochial aid, unheard of amongst them in better days’.

Writing in 1817, Walter Butler described these incursions and their dire results in very similar terms, though he says that the incomers came from Portsmouth, , Rye and Hastings, ‘fifty sail in a season’. According to him, each smack had three or four crew, ran six or seven drags, and was able to take between about 3,600 and 4,900 oysters in a single tide. No local boat could match this, and the community suffered as a result. Butler also remarked on the environmental damage caused by the smacks to the seabed: ‘It is certain, that by carrying away the refuse of stones, shells, and weeds, the spit of the oysters is taken away also, which must destroy the future produce’.

25

The 1834 petition proposed legally enforceable restrictions on the oyster fishery, with a season that ran from 1 October to 30 April, worked by boats of no more than fifteen feet in length, carrying a maximum of two dredges, neither to exceed 18 to 20lb in weight (8.2-9.1kg). In addition, no oyster of more than 2½ inches was to be taken.40

The petition was pushing at an open door, in once sense: in 1833, a Parliamentary Select Committee on the ‘British Channel Fisheries’ [English Channel] discussed the situation in very similar terms, and described it as ‘unjust’. The problem was, the legal case to protect the Chichester harbour oyster fishery had already been lost, nearly twenty years earlier. Only new legislation would remedy the situation.41

In 1813 Chichester city council reported that the depredations of the smacks threatened to destroy the Harbour’s oyster fishery.42 In an effort to end the problem, in 1814 the council took a Colchester fisherman named Richardson to court. He had been apprehended for fishing in Chichester Harbour in September 1813, when he dredged three gallons of brood oysters, ‘besides old oysters. The brood oysters were young spawn, fit to be laid down on beds to grow till they become oysters. In using the dredge, the fishermen must necessarily catch large and small oysters together: but the Sussex fishermen use to throw the small overboard’. Richardson’s dredge net had a smaller mesh than others, and he was taking the brood oysters to lay down in a bed at Colchester, where they could be cultivated and then sold.

Richardson was convicted, under the provisions of an Act of James I from 1605 (3 James I, c.12), which prohibited anyone from ‘willingly destroying, or spoiling any spawn, fry or brood of any sea-fish’. His lawyer claimed that Richardson’s intent was not to destroy, but to nurture the young oysters he had dredged. Accordingly, he had not committed an offence under the Act. Richardson appealed, and after some discussion by various judges, he won. This narrow legal point left the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries, and all others, open to large-scale pillaging, and more than fifty years would pass before they had any hope of legal protection.43 Contemporary press reports decried ‘the rapacity of the smacks, and the avarice of the monopolist’, taking oysters from beds open to the public to the their own private grounds, ‘leaving the regular fisherman without the means of livelihood for the rest of the season’.44

It is again thanks to Walter Butler that we have some idea of the size of the local fishing fleet in the early 19th century. He printed a list of the numbers and home ports of fishing boats in ‘the eastern harbour’ (Chichester Harbour) in 1817. Whilst not all will have been used for oyster dredging, the list does make it possible to work out which were the most important fishing places, and which were less so (Fig. 3):

26

Fig 3. Fishing boats in Chichester Harbour, 1817 (numbers of boats next to each placename, in red). (© Ian Friel 2020)

The total of Chichester Harbour boats came to 81, and there were another 47 boats based in Langstone Harbour. The lack of boats on the eastern side of Hayling Island is notable in the Chichester Harbour list, though it is possible that these were included in the Emsworth total (six ‘North Hayling’ boats are mentioned, but these were clearly in Langstone). As was the case later in the 19th century, Emsworth and Bosham were the dominant fishing ports in the Harbour, though in 1817 had the third- largest fishing fleet (interestingly, there were concentrations of disused oyster ponds at West Wittering in the 1870s, but only five boats registered to owners in the village – see Fig 9, p 41 and Appendix 6).45

There is no way of quantifying the damage done by the oyster smacks from to the Harbour’s fishery in this period. Beyond occasional vague references in newspapers to good catches, and the handful of 17th and 18th-century figures, no data seem to survive for the amounts of oysters dredged in the Harbour by local boats before the 1870s.

The uncontrolled dredging had a malign effect on the human population of the Harbour. 1820s new oyster beds were discovered off the French coast, as well as off Worthing and Littlehampton, and this might have provided some employment for local dredgermen. However, it is difficult to say if these opportunities offset the economic and social damage caused by the oyster-smack incursions into Chichester Harbour: some Emsworth fishermen had been forced on to poor relief by the 1830s.

Whoever happened to dredge them, Emsworth oysters were well-known to consumers by the 1810s and 1820s. In 1817 a Salisbury newspaper noted that a new bed of oysters had been discovered in the English Channel: they were large, ‘but inferior in flavour to

27 Emsworth oysters’. In the 1820s, Emsworth produce was widely available on the Sussex coast. ‘Fine oysters from Emsworth’ were on sale in in 1821, at 1s the hundred, and available at the same price there in 1824. Not everyone praised them, however: in 1826 a correspondent from Newhaven remarked that if local ‘oyster-eaters’ could get hold of a recently arrived cargo of ‘fine oysters’, they ‘will soon grow sick of the refuse of Emsworth, which they now, under Hobson’s choice, so greedily swallow’.46

We know that Emsworth fishermen were dredging for oysters in Langstone Harbour at this time, because there was an effort by Langstone interests to stop them. An Emsworth Harbour Fishery Bill was out before Parliament in 1823, with the aim of depriving ‘the fishermen of this port of the right of dredging for oysters in Langstone Harbour’. The measure was rejected by a large majority of MPs, on the basis that it would infringe public rights.47

The Bosham oyster fishery in the mid-19th century

The Bosham fishery must have suffered as badly from poaching as did that of Emsworth, but in the 1850s there was still a good deal of oyster industry activity in and around the village. An undated sketchmap of Bosham, most probably drawn in mid-1850s in connection with proposed embankment works (it also refers to Admiral Berkeley, the lord of the manor, who died in 1867), throws some light on the local industry at this time. It is the only map so far found that shows the oyster ponds at Bosham (they are absent from the first editions of the 6-inch and 25-inch maps published from the 1870s onwards). The information from the map is summarised in Figs 4 and 5.

Fig 4. The areas occupied by groups of oyster ponds at Boshamin the mid-19th century, outlines approximate (map based on information derived from PHC 780A/1/13/2/2/2. This map © Ian Friel 2020)

28 Fig 5. Grounds leased for private oyster beds in the northern part of Bosham Creek (map based on information derived from PHC 780A/1/13/2/2/2). Bosham manor claimed ownership of the seabed in Bosham Creek, a claim later upheld against the Crown (which otherwise owned all seabed within British terroritoral waters). The Bosham manorial lands covered half of the Fishbourne Channel to Dell Quay, half of the Chichester Channel, the entire Thorney Channel and the seabed west of Thorney Island as far as the Sussex/ Hampshire border, in the middle of the Emsworth Channel (© Ian Friel 2020).

The map shows that over seventy oyster beds existed around Bosham, twenty-two north of the mudwall (see below, p 32), on the eastern side of the Creek, forty-seven in the inlet between Bosham and (the small settlement across the inlet from Bosham, and six to the west of the village, spread either side of the channel (the ponds between Bosham and Gosport were visible on a photograph taken from the parish church tower in 1903).

Fig. 6. Part of the area formerly occupied by the northern group of oyster ponds at Bosham. The remains of the mudwall are visible on the other side of the Creek. Apart from scatters of oysters shells, little sign of the ponds can be seen at ground level (© Ian Friel 2020).

29 The ponds varied considerably in size; most were square or rectangular, though a few were irregular. Four hards for raising oysters were marked on the east side of the channel, three leased to a Mr Jarrad, and one to someone named Barnard. Both Jarrad and Barnard also had leases with other partners on oyster dredging grounds in the Creek, north of the mudwall. The largest of these was a straight stretch leased to Jarrad and a partner, Cannon, of just over eight acres (about 3.25 hectares); Barnard leased another block of just over three acres with a partner called Austin. Barnard also has three other, much smaller grounds, tiny sections of Cutmill and Cobnor Creeks (at the north end of the Mud Wall Channel), and a narrow stream that runs between Bosham and Gosport and empties into Bosham Creek. It was then called ‘Fisherman’s Rythe’ (‘rithe’ or ‘rife’ meant a small stream). The small size of these concessions emphasizes just how profitable oyster beds could be. The map does not show any leased sections on Bosham Creek south of Bosham. This suggests that the manor allowed fishermen to operate freely there, something that seems to have been the case in the other manorial waters.

‘Jarrad’ was a man named John Jarrad. Born about 1806, he was an Essex oyster merchant. Exactly when he moved to Bosham with his family is unclear, but he was certainly established there by 1853, because in that year some men were charged with stealing oysters from a bed that he owned near the village. Jarrad may have first visited Bosham as part of the crew of an Essex oyster smack, because a later statement by his son says that he ‘had been connected all his life with the oyster trade at Bosham’. His son also said that his father went on to have what was ‘at one time the largest oyster business in the South of England’. The Jarrad family would be involved with the oyster fishery at Bosham for nearly fifty years, and though much less well-known than J D Foster, the contemporary Emsworth oyster entrepreneur, they were clearly an important part of the oyster fishery in Chichester Harbour.48

The arrival of the railways

There are indications that the Harbour’s unequal ‘relationship’ with the east coast fisheries was not wholly bad by the mid-19th century. By 1850, spat from the east coast was being brought to Emsworth, so that it could mature in the warmer conditions of the south coast. In some cases the smackmen may have bought oysters dredged by Chichester Harbour fishermen, rather than by simply ploughing them up from the grounds with their own vessels. There is a reference to a Kentish company buying Bosham oysters in 1844, and by 1851 Bosham had become the base for around 20 Essex smacks.

A few years before, in 1846, the Brighton to Portsmouth railway line had been opened, and connected the Sussex and Hampshire coast towns with London. Chichester, Bosham and Emsworth acquired their own railway stations between 1846 and 1847. The railway created commercial possibilities for the local fishing industry that simply had not existed before, because it made possible the speedy transit of highly perishable seafood to inland locations – particularly to the big cities. According to a newspaper report of 1851:

‘The village of Bosham has lately acquired some little notoriety and importance, by the establishment of large oyster beds [evidently meaning ‘ponds’], which are supplied by about 20 sailing smacks of from 15 to 25 tons each. These beds have been purchased by some purchasers from London, where the demand for oysters is so great to employ these

30 vessels with crews of 70 or 80 men and boys, continually, whilst the proximity of Bosham to the South Coast Railway enables them to transmit daily from 15 to 30 tons of these fish to the Metropolis. We presume these oysters are caught beyond the limits assigned to the summer fisheries, viz: - three miles from the headlands, and owing to the small space of time which lapses between being dredged and convoyed [sic] to the London market they must reach their destination in high condition. Bosham is peculiarly adapted for this branch of the fishing trade, having deep channels of easy access to the beds where the oysters are deposited until they are required for consumption’.49

It is impossible to know what proportion of the oysters passing through Bosham at this time had actually come from the Harbour. The oyster smacks were definitely operating offshore, and it is possible that Bosham had more or less become a way-station for such offshore catches, with only a minority of oysters coming from the Harbour. The three- mile limit for fishing (which became an effective territorial limit) was established by a treaty between Britain and France in 1843. The ‘summer fisheries’ referred were not an oyster fishing period, but regulated fishing seasons for other species. Oysters were ‘off- limits’ for most of the summer, and indeed the 1843 convention forbade oyster fishing in the English Channel between 1 May and 31 August.50

By the early 1850s, the Essex smacks were no longer regarded as mere interlopers at Bosham. When there was a regatta there in 1851, they took part in the boat races. The local fishing community was fully involved in the event – a wooden-legged Bosham fisherman was crowned as ‘despotic King’ for the day – and if the Essex men had been seen as the enemy and nothing more, it is highly unlikely that they would have been invited to take part.51

There is also clear evidence from the late 1850s and early 1860s that oysters dredged by Channel Islands boats off the French coast were being imported into Chichester Harbour. Records of sailings from Jersey between 1858 and 1861 show that 33 shipments of oysters were sent to Chichester Harbour over this period, of which 26 went to Bosham, three to Chichester (meaning Dell Quay), three to Prinsted and one to Emsworth (probably imported by the local merchant James Cribb). Besides the cargoes taken to Chichester Harbour, there was also one shipment to Langstone, plus others to places like Wareham in Dorset and Whitstable in Kent.

One of the Bosham oyster merchants importing the French oysters was John Jarrad, who had ‘Jersey oysters caught on the south coast of France’ (sic – perhaps meaning the south coast of Normandy). In a court case of March 1861 Jarrad unsuccessfully prosecuted some Bosham fishermen for stealing French oysters from his storage beds (rather than ponds, see below), which lay between the Bosham shore and the channel of Bosham Creek. It emerged in the course of the case that the French oysters were bigger than the local natives, perhaps suggesting that they were either a sub-species of Ostrea edulis, or a different species entirely.52

This case and others also revealed a little about the management of the oyster ponds at Bosham. Jarrad’s ponds were dry at low spring tides, so that he could walk round them, and he paid £37 a year to the manor in rent for them (worth £3,391 in terms of modern wage values). The accessibilty of the beds was made clear in another trial in 1859, after Jarrad had spotted a local woman, Mary Simmonds, taking oysters from his beds, ‘which

31 she placed in an apron tied round her waist. When she saw him, she ran off, and when he caught up with her, ‘she shot down the oysters on the road’.

The ‘beds’ that Jarrad described are probably to be identified with a longitudinal area shown on the 1850s Bosham map, lying on the edge of the channel between Fisherman’s Rithe and Bosham quay, described as ‘Jarrad’s Hard’. In 1861 he said that the banks of the channel were solid: ‘we are obliged to have them so for the purpose of depositing oysters… We are obliged to use hard material, such as gravel, to walk upon before we can use it. A great portion of the ground I had to go to the expense of making…’ He also mentioned that two members of the Combes family, Charles Combes and his son, had beds nearby. These were purpose-made hards, showing that besides building ponds for the storage of oysters, the local fishermen and oyster merchants also constructed hard surfaces for the oysters that were distinctively different from the natural channel beds in which the oysters grew and the ponds in which they were later placed (the gravelled surfaces still accessible in the inlet between Bosham and Gosport are probably relics of the oyster hards and ponds).

The scale of Jarrad’s operations at Bosham was very significant by the late 1850s. He said that in mid-March 1859 he had about 1,400 bushels of oysters in his ‘beds’ (probably including ponds). With 700 oysters (see above, p 21) to the bushel, this would mean that he had around 980,000 oysters in stock. This, of course, did not include oysters stocked by others in the village, so the total number of oysters stored at Bosham in March 1859 must have exceeded one million.53

Whatever difference the Essex smacks and the Jersey imports may have made to Bosham’s economy, evidence from the late 1860s and early 1870s (see below, pp 35 and 38) indicates that the continual dredging of the Harbour by large boats over decades must have damaged the local oyster fishery badly. There were other threats to it as well, and these came from local landowners.

The second crisis: land reclamation

There were some serious attempts at land reclamation in Chichester Harbour during the 19th century, and the earliest example was seen at Bosham. The family of the Earls of Berkeley and their descendants were lords of the manor of Bosham from the 15th century to 1937, and in 1809 the estate secured a private Act of Parliament to enclose 287 acres of land between Bosham and Chidham – the northern part of Bosham Creek. The land was closed off with a timber-reinforced bank, 550 yards long and fifteen feet high (503 x 4.6m), reputedly costing £20,000. The work was completed in about 1814, and the land was let out to a John Newland of Chichester. However, the wall did not last very long. A terrible storm hit the Sussex coast on 23 November 1824: the wall was breached, flooding the land behind. No-one could guarantee that the wall would last more than seven years if repaired, and it was apparent that reinstating it was not cost-effective. The land reverted to a creek, though both ends of the ‘mudwall’ are still visible at Bosham.54

In 1850, a much more ambitious land reclamation was proposed: had it succeeded, it would have created between 4,000 and 5,000 acres of new land and destroyed the fishing grounds on the east coast of Hayling, as well as those in Thorney Channel and Bosham Creek, and part of Langstone Harbour. The promoters were William Padwick,

32 lord of the manor of Hayling Island, Admiral Berkeley, the lord of Bosham, and others. In Chichester Harbour the plan involved building an embankment up the east coast of Hayling Island, from Eastoke Point to a location opposite Marker Point on Thorney; embanking a line from the north-western tip of Thorney Island to the mainland, and from the southern end of Thorney to , and thence to Cobnor Point on Chidham. The southern end of Bosham Creek would also be closed off, with a new canal dug across the Bosham peninsula to give the village continued access to the sea.

Any works that might affect navigation were an Admiralty responsibility, and it held a public enquiry into the scheme at Havant in March 1850. The account of it reveals both something about the scheme’s impact, and about the nature of the fishing community in Chichester Harbour.

A Mr Sparkes of Warblington claimed that up to 500 families depended on fishing in the area, or on gathering winkles and cockles from the foreshore. William Coster, an Emsworth oysterman, also gave evidence. He had fished off Hayling since the mid-1820s, he said, and his was one of 30 to 40 local boats that fished there, plus a ‘great number’ of boats from Portsmouth. He went on: Hayling Island had fourteen rithes (small estuaries or bays), ‘in four of which oysters grow very fast when there was a good spot’, and of these, Mill Rithe was the best. The area was not only good for oysters and other fish: some of Coster’s nine children went out on to the mud to pick winkles. His earnings could vary between about 5s and £2 a week, though he reckoned an average for people fishing there was around 10-12s. In terms of modern purchasing power, Coster’s £2 would equate to about £210 – it would not have gone very far with a family of eleven – and Coster reckoned that without even these meagre earnings from the Hayling shore the family would end up in the workhouse.

Henry Randall, another Emsworth fisherman, gave similar testimony, and said that both his father and grandfather had fished there. He also noted that: ‘There was a sort of understanding with the Bosham people not to trespass on each other’s ground, but the Portsmouth people come in shoals to Hayling, some 30 or 40 a day. The part marked in the plan for inclosure is the very best for fishing round the Island’.

The Bosham part of the plan would have brought a similar disaster to that village. William Osborn, a Bosham fisherman, said that there were about 35 fishing boats at Bosham, supporting twenty families: ‘all Bosham would have to go to the Union (workhouse) if the embankment were made’.55

Neither the Hayling nor the Bosham embankments were ever built, but those at Thorney were, despite Admiralty objections. In 1859 a private Chichester Harbour Embankment Act was passed and within five years the Thorney embankments were almost complete. The Inspecting Commander of the Bognor Coastguard was tasked by the Board of Trade to check on progress, and to assess the truth of claims made in a letter of complaint sent in October 1864 by William Coster, the same man who has appeared at the 1850 enquiry. Coster said that the embankment would ‘stop us out the same as sheep out of a fold’ from the Thorney Channel (spelling modernised). He said that 53 boats from Emsworth, each manned by one or two men, fished in the Thorney Channel, and got part of their living there. Nearly as many boats from Bosham did the same, as well as thirty or forty from other places in Chichester Harbour. There were rich oyster beds in the Channel, which

33 was two miles long and 200 yards wide (183m) at low water, with between fifteen and eighteen feet depth (4.6-5.5m) even at that low water mark.

The Coastguard officer convened a meeting of about thirty fishermen on Thorney, and they corroborated the essence of Coster’s complaint. The Thorney Channel afforded ‘good oyster dredging and other fishing’. The fishermen would suffer by the loss of this ground, particularly as no compensation was on offer. ‘They also complain that the oyster beds in the other part of Chichester Harbour, outside and in the neighbourhood of the embankments, are likely to be deteriorated by being deprived of the scour of the tide from Thorney Channel when the water is stopped out on the completion of the works’. Subsequent to this meeting, an anonymous ‘old inhabitant’ of Emsworth wrote to the Board of Trade in January 1865 to protest against the work, and noted that ‘I have seen as many as 100 sail of boats and vessels dredging at a time for oysters’.56

Fig 7. The remains of the 1860s embankment at the southern end of the Thorney Channel (© Ian Friel 2018).

The protests were of no avail: the work was completed. The northern embankment held and is why there is solid ground between the old Thorney Island and the mainland, broken only by the Great and Little Deeps. The southern embankment between Thorney and Chidham was breached by storms in the early 1870s (see below, p 39) though extensive remains still survive today (Fig 7).57

Though the Thorney Channel has been fished in recent years (see below, p 60) it is significant that it was not included in the 1873 Bosham Fishery Order which established the limits of the new Bosham oyster fishery. Most of the Channel belonged to Bosham manor, and the lord of the manor was happy to give the dredgermen access to other manorial waters in Bosham Creek (see below p 38). It seems unlikely that the Thorney Channel was excluded on the grounds that the owner was unwilling to allow access. The most convincing explanation is that by 1873 the fears of the fishermen had been proved right, and the Thorney Channel was no longer viable – in the 19th century, at least – as a ground for oysters. The later collapse of the southern Thorney bank also damaged the Bosham fishery, flooding part of its oyster grounds with mud (see below, p 39).58

34 1870-1939: co-operation and collapse

Just as the 19th century saw government make efforts to regulate manufacturing industry and a host of other activities, it also began to take steps to assume greater control of fishing. This was motivated by a variety of concerns:

- declining fish stocks were perceived as a problem (the term ‘overfishing’ had been coined by a British scientist in as early as 1854); - the fishing industry was riven by conflicts between fishermen who still used traditional methods and those who adopted an indiscriminate, industrial approach (oyster dredging was not the only fishery affected by this); - there were various problems relating to deep-sea fishing.

The Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 was one of the measures intended to address these issues. It dealt with a range of matters, and introduced a registration and marking system for fishing boats of all kinds. It also had an important section on oyster and mussel fisheries, something of key importance for Chichester Harbour. The Act allowed for groups of ‘promoters’ to apply for a ‘several mussel and oyster fishery order’: ‘several’ in this sense meant a fishery in a closely defined area, below low-water mark, that would confer an exclusive right on a group to fish for oysters and mussels in that space for a defined period. A Board of Trade Inspector was supposed to make an enquiry into the scheme, and his report would determine whether or not the Order (always written with a capital ‘O’) was granted. Stiff fines of up to £20 (over £1,700 in modern terms) were set for anyone who fished in a several fishery when they were not entitled to do so.59

Both entrepreneurs and working dredgermen were quick to see the possibilities offered by the Act. The potential market for oysters was still vast, and the supply increasingly uncertain: quoting an article in the Popular Science Review, in 1864 the Brighton Gazette noted that 700 million oysters were consumed annually in London, not counting those eaten in the rest of the country. Set against this was evidence that oyster beds in France and the Channel Islands were being fished out by the ‘rapacity of the oyster dredgers’.60

In Chichester Harbour, the first moves to take advantage of the Act were made in Emsworth. A meeting was held there in the spring of 1868, to discuss the formation of the Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society Limited’, with the objects of: ‘To restore and cultivate the oyster fishery; to give employment to local dredgermen; to acquire a several right of fishery in the Emsworth Channel (below water mark)’.

Various witnesses set out the state of the Emsworth oyster fishery: the vicar of Emsworth, Rev Sheppard, said that it was in a ‘wretched’ state, ‘exhausted by foreigners, or by fishermen belonging to the place who did no understand their own interests, and what with friends and foes it had almost been destroyed…’.

It was reported that sixty or seventy fishermen had called for the meeting, but that most had been put off from attending by a rumour that the new company would take their oyster beds from them. Few actual fishermen seem to have attended, but some of the others present did appear to stand up for their cause. William Foster, an Emsworth merchant (and father of the later Emsworth oyster entrepreneur J D Foster), opined that

35 the fishermen could not be worse off under the new arrangements than they were now: the work was dangerous and boats were expensive. An industrious fisherman was on par with a labourer in terms of earnings, something he did not think was right.

Thomas Jarman, a local surveyor, even quoted information from Butler’s Hundred of Bosmere to show how prosperous the Emsworth oyster fishery had been before ‘the unlawful fishing’ began in about 1790. Jarman himself went on to become treasurer of the new company, which was formed in June 1868. However, all of the shareholders of this company seem to have been local traders or professionals: none were fishermen. In 1869 it changed its name to The Oyster Merchants Company Ltd and in 1870 acquired an Order giving it a right of several fishery over a section of the Emsworth Channel (see Fig 8).61

Another fishing organisation was formed in Emsworth in November 1870. This took the name the Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society (EDCS, for convenience in this report), and formed itself into a limited company, with the same objects as those discussed at the 1868 meeting. Though only three of the original nine subscribers (all Emsworth men) were fishermen, most of the Emsworth dredgermen seem to have joined the Society. The company shares were of two kinds, ‘A’ shares, open to any investor, and ‘B’ shares, open only to dredgermen from specific places:

Emsworth North and South Hayling West Wittering West Thorney Prinsted Nutbourne

The Company applied for a several Fishery Order to cover those parts of the Emsworth Channel not already taken by the previous Oyster Merchants’ Company. This was granted into 1871, for a period of 60 years (see Fig 8). There was an incentive – not to say compulsion – for local dredgermen to join, as if they did not so so within one month of the Order being granted, they would lose their automatic right of membership, If they applied later, they would be forced to accept terms dictated by the Society.62

The example set by the Emsworth dredgermen inspired the Bosham men to do the same. They formed themselves into the Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society Ltd (BDCS), copied the rules of the EDCS, and applied for a several Fishery Order in their waters. An enquiry into the application was held at the Council Chamber in Chichester in January 1873, by H Cholmondeley Pennell, the Board of Trade’s Inspector of Oyster Fisheries. His report tells us something about the nature of the Bosham fishery in 1873, and the structure of the new Society. Pennell stated that:

‘The Society in all its particulars is based on that recently established at Emsworth…’ the principle in each case being ‘to secure to every local dredgerman and fisherman – that is, to every one who now obtains part of his living on the ground of the fishery – a share in the prosperity, profit and management of it’.

36

Fig 8. The areas covered by the 1870, 1871 and 1873 Orders (© Ian Friel 2020).

Pennell noted that out of 112 dredgermen at Bosham, 110 had already signed up to the Society, and elected directors and other officers. A sign of their enthusiasm was that they had clubbed together to pay for the costs of the application:

‘Of course the principle expense in Oyster farming, as carried out in estuaries like Chichester Harbor, is for labour – men and boats to dredge the Oysters, to carry them to market, and to keep the weeds, vermin, and mud from accumulating in the beds; and a fleet of 50 or 60 boats and their crews and dredging gear is equivalent to at least £4,000 a year’. On top of this, money was needed to buy oysters, and so-on. Despite these costs, Pennell reckoned that the present share capital, of £1,100 (of which £650 had already been advanced) was sufficient for the present.

The Society would be administered by the directors and a jury of twelve dredgermen, with a foreman, who would appoint watchmen and water baliffs to ensure that the byelaws were observed. Those byelaws were based on the Emsworth model, and included: a closed season from 1 May to 4 September; a minimum width for marketable oysters, set at three inches; the return of immature oysters to their beds, to prevent overfishing.

As Pennell remarked, ‘Upon this regulation hinges, in a primary degree, the success or failure of the fishery’. He also noted that between in the first two months of the 1873-74

37 season the EDCS had taken a catch that was double the figure for the entire 1872-73 season. Understandably, he felt that this was a clear sign of success.

The report also makes clear that the Bosham oyster fishery, like that at Emsworth, was facing extinction if no action was taken. Both of them ‘formerly yielding an enormous supply of excellent oysters, now reduced by excessive dredging, in season and out of season, for big and little indiscriminately. The result of this is already beginning to bear its fruit in that last and most fatal stage of oyster decay, when the beds, having been denuded of parent stock, cease to breed enough produce to pay for dredging [original underlining, for emphasis]; they are then deserted by the fishermen, and in one or two years at furthest the ground becomes what is termed in oyster terminology ‘slubbed up’, that is, the culsh or shelly covering of the beds, to which only the young that can attach itself, becomes buried under an accumulation of mid and weeds’. Most of Chichester Harbour, he said, had not reached this state yet, though the southernmost part of Itchenor Creek would need a lot of dredging and there were signs of ‘slubbing up’ in other places.

Witnesses spoke of the former prosperity of the Bosham fishery. John Martin, ‘a householder and highly respectable fisherman [said] that within the last 20 years 200 tons of oysters have been taken out of the Harbour in one day’. Martin himself claimed to have taken eighteen bushels in one day (12,600 oysters). Another witness said that seventeen years before (c 1856) he had been in a smack with four men that took 80 bushels of oysters (about 56,000 oysters) in three days, and added that he had often seen fleets of 300 boats from all parts of Sussex in the Harbour.

However, Pennell found that almost no boats now came from the outside to the Harbour: the only ones fishing inside came from Harbour settlements (the Essex oyster smacks were evidently long gone). Pennell had carried out some fieldwork as part of the enquiry, and examined the morning catches of six boats, each crewed by one man. They had begun work at 8 am, and by 1 to 2pm their working day was two-thirds over. The estimated average number of marketable oysters per man came to eighteen (even at the top price quoted per bushel by Pennell of 40s, this would have meant that each catch was only worth one shilling).

For the Fishery Order to be feasible, it needed the support of the lord of the manor of Bosham, who owned most of the seabed that would be covered by the Order. Fortunately, the Hon C P F Berkeley, lord of the manor since 1867, was fully behind the project, and prepared to grant access to his grounds.

Pennell concluded: granting the Bosham Order would lead to ‘a largely increased supply of oysters to the markets of the South of England’, and he ‘cordially recommended’ it. The Bosham Fishery Order was granted later that year (1873) and gave the Bosham dredgermen exclusive access to a large part of the Harbour for 60 years.63

Unfortunately, things went wrong for each of the three Fisheries in a very short space of time, but in different ways, as is shown by reports written in 1876 and 1877 by another Fishery Inspector, W E Hall.

38 The Bosham fishery had been almost denuded of mature oysters in 1873, but a strong show of spat and brood at that time seemed to promise better things in the future if they could reproduce and grow. This had not happened, for three reasons:

(1) in winter 1873, storms altered the bar at the mouth of Chichester Harbour, causing ‘an invasion of sand’ into the Harbour: the sand destroyed about a third of the oyster fishery; (2) on two different occasions, the ‘embankments belonging to large reclamation works by the side of the channel’ (which must have meant the Thorney-Chidham embankment) had broken, releasing large quantities of mud in to the grounds; (3) at the same time, poverty had made the dredgermen ‘unable to exercise sufficient self-denial’ to keep to their own rules, and overfished the beds, taking up even the immature oysters. Stocks had declined precipitately.

Alarmed at the changes, the dredgermen introduced a 3½-inch measuring ring for oysters in 1876, and had decided not to fish at all in the 1876-77 season. They were also aiming to raise money through an issue of A shares, to allow them to partially re-stock the ground. Only about one-quarter of the most fertile beds remained clean, but the BDCS was too poor to pay the dredgermen to clean the rest of the grounds, and the men themselves were too poor to undertake the work for free.64 Hall also reported on the fisheries of Oyster Merchants’ Company and the EDCS. The Oyster Merchants’ Company seemed to have started ‘with considerable energy’ laying 374,286 oysters on its 45-acre ground in the 1870-71 season, its first year of operation (see Appendix I). It laid another 90,000 or so in 1871-72, and in both seasons, half of the oysters laid were full grown. ‘The ground, which had previously been foul and weedy, was cleaned and cultched’, and at the time Pennell had report favourably on the Fishery and its prospects. However, in 1872 the Company economised on staff, reducing the number of watchers from four to two, and this seems to have opened the way for disastrous poaching, which carried on to the end of 1875. There had been a good spatting season in 1871, bit despite that, the yield of oysters was smaller than that being put in. Oysters were still laid down between 1872-73 and 1873-74, but in diminishing numbers. The company became discouraged, reducing the number of watchers to one, and in 1874-5 it had laid no oysters. However, the Company was reconstituted, with new management, and laid 1.6 million oysters in 1875-76 in a reduced, but well-cleaned area of 25 acres, and had employed five men as watchers, who were stationed in three barges moored at the site. The remainder of the ground was kept clean, with the exception of the ends next to the EDCS areas, but no oysters had been laid on it. The plan was to leave native oysters there, and those ‘immigrant’ oysters that had been laid down in the past, and to transfer their brood to the protected part of the ground.

Hall felt that the prospects for the Company were good: concentrating the oysters in a smaller area offered greater chance of success than diffusing them over a wide area. All of the oysters laid down in 1875-6 were French, from Calvados (Normandy), Arcachon (Gironde), and from Brittany (probably Auray). The Inspector believed that if the Breton oysters were from Auray, they had been laid in conditions similar to those in their home area, whereas the Arcachon oysters had been exposed to a lower temperature, and the

39 Calvados shellfish had been placed on a ground and at a depth to which they were not accustomed. More generally, Hall noted that the returns made to the Board of Trade by the UK oyster fisheries were ‘misleading’ when it came to reporting spat: they were either under- reporting or over-reporting falls of spat.65 In 1871, when Pennell held his enquiry at Emsworth into the Order, there was evidence that three years earlier, the fishery had been in ‘a very exhausted state’, and had deteriorated further since that time. Only 20-25 marketable oysters could be dredged in a tide. Pennell made two recommendations for the revival of the fishery:

1. the ground and the culch should be cleared thoroughly with a dredge; 2. the ground should be re-stocked with breeding oysters. The grant of the Order seemed to promise an immediate improvement. Pennell had re- inspected the ground in 1872, and felt that its prospects were ‘excellent’. The crop had increased rapidly, with just under 700,000 oysters laid in the 1874-75 and 1875-76 seasons, and in the last few months of 1876, 77,000 oysters had been brought up.

However, Hall had his suspicions about this cornucopia. For one thing, it was said that the grounds near Emsworth itself had been damaged by reclamation works (this must mean the embankment that linked Thorney to the mainland in the 1860s). He carried out some test dredges at points away from Emsworth, and only brought up 54 oysters in fourteen hauls of the dredge. Bad weather prevented him from dredging near the Harbour mouth, which the dredgermen said was the most productive, but he was still able to cover most of the 1871 Fishery Order area: the results were very poor.

Hall related a ‘grave accusation’ by the Oyster Merchants’ Company that members of the EDCS had been carrying out ‘systematic poaching’ on their grounds in the middle of the Emsworth Channel, which lay between the two EDCS areas. Two policemen had testified that in 1873 they had seen twenty Emsworth boats dredging on the Merchants’ area, between sixteen and eighteen doing the same in 1874, and twelve more in 1875. Boats tended to come at night or on foggy mornings, with the numbers on their hulls and sails obscured with mud. The dredgermen themselves denied that the poaching was serious, and an attempted prosecution in 1873 had failed. However, it was said that the poaching had got worse since then. Hall was driven to the conclusion that some of the EDCS members had indeed poached from the Oyster Merchants’ ground. He could not estimate the extent, but believed that it was not ‘insignificant’. The EDCS areas, grounds that had been in poor condition and unproductive in 1871, but had somehow produced over 800,00 oysters in the next five years (see Appendix 1). Conversely, the Oyster Merchants’ had laid 596,000 oysters between 1870 and 1874, and sold 510,000 between 1870 and 1875, yet their grounds were almost empty by 1876. It was noticeable, he remarked, that since 1876, when the Oyster Merchants’ began guarding their ground properly again, the EDCS yields had dropped to a third or more of the figure they had been at in 1875. Hall also noted that the EDCS had abandoned the use of the three-inch ring, and instead took the oysters to a receiver, who judged whether or not they were fit to market. He felt

40 that it was good practice to judge by quality rather than size, as long as the receiver could do his job without interference from greedy individuals.

Despite Hall’s optimism about the Oyster Merchants’ Company, it did not prosper, and it was voluntarily wound up in 1878. It was acquired by a Poole Company, which seems to have done nothing with the fishery rights.66

Map evidence of oyster ponds in the Harbour between about 1855 and 1885 indicates the main centres of the shorebased activity in the oyster fishery in those years. The sites of at least 198 ponds are recorded, though their numbers are only an approximate clue to levels of industry activity, as the ponds could vary widely in size. Most local oyster ponds were square or rectangular: although Rithe, for example, had only six oyster ponds in the 1870s, these were long and narrow, and still enclosed a significant area.

Not all of the ponds shown on the map were necessarily in use in the period c 1855-85 – the nine or more near West Wittering, at Snow Hill, were described as ‘old’ when they were surveyed in 1875. With all these caveats, it is still clear that Emsworth, Bosham and Mill Rithe on Hayling Island were the most important places where dredged oysters were stored.

Fig 9 Chichester Harbour: known oyster pond locations c 1855-85: sources: 67 Each red dot represents one or more oyster ponds, with the numbers recorded on contemporary maps next to each dot (© Ian Friel 2020).

41 Later crises: money, managers, old men and limpets

The troubles of the Bosham fishery continued into the 1880s. Though part of the seabed within the Bosham Fishery belonged to the manor, and could be accessed by the dredgermen for free, the other half of the channel from Dell Quay to the southern limit of the fishery was owned by the Crown, and the BDCS had to pay an annual rent for this. The rent was late in 1883, and in 1884 the Society asked for a rent reduction. The collapse of the Thorney embankment at Pilsey Island had done them thousands of pounds of damage, they said (as remarked in Hall’s report), and three-quarters of the oysters they had laid had died. No reduction was forthcoming, but the rents were finally paid in full in 1885.68

The BDCS was forced to undergo major changes from the mid-1880s, changes that created major tensions and led to the Bosham dredgermen going on strike between November 1889 and February 1891. The troubles got so bad that in 1890 the Board of Trade sent one of its senior Fishery Inspectors, Charles Fryer, to Sussex to act as an arbitrator, and to carry out an on-site investigation. His even-handed and perceptive report helps to reveal what had happened.69

The figures for oyster sales told part of the story. The numbers dredged had never been spectacular. Between 1875-76 (the oyster season overlapped two years) and 1879-80 they had ranged from just under 45,000 to around 77,000. They reached a peak more than 94,000 in 1880-81, but then began to fall off, plunging to 18,000 in 1883-84 and a mere 3,000 in 1885-86, and near-total exhaustion (see Appendix 2 for the detailed figures). Even at the 1880-81 peak, the catch was sold at 8s/6d per hundred, and would have raised about £401: once operating costs had been taken out of that, the return to each fisherman would have been very small given the months of hard work.

The root problem was that the BDCS was seriously under-capitalised. The ‘B’ shares had been taken up by the dredgermen, as they who were the only ones allowed to hold them, and had one each. At the same time, very few of the ‘A’ shares had found investors. These could be owned by anyone able to afford them, and could be held in significant numbers. They were the only means by which the Society could have drawn in substantial amounts of capital. The nominal value of each A and B shares was £5, but the dredgermen were considered to be paid up if they invested 10s (the ‘paid up’ level for A shares was £2).

In 1885, the BDCS members were introduced to a man named John Smith, an oyster merchant from Burnham in Essex. He was a relative of the Jarrad family, and Staff Commander Frederick William Jarrad, John Jarrad’s naval officer son, had contacted Smith to see if he could be persuaded to invest in the BDCS. Frederick Jarrad later wrote that his motivation for this was twofold: though now serving in the navy, he had known the oyster trade since boyhood, and felt that it had a chance of success; also, he wanted to help the village people:

‘I knew all the men and their families, lived among them, and wished in every way to help them, though their own folly had killed the fishery’; he knew that they had been led on by a few, and the ‘hardworking and deserving’ majority were not responsible. That said, he went on to write: ‘the dredgermen are uneducated men of no business knowledge

42 whatever, most of them living hand to mouth and moreover possessing the unthriftiness of their class, and the temptation to get all they could at the time was too great for them’.

Though there is no doubting Jarrad’s wish to help the Bosham people, his own attitudes to them seem to have been a mixture of paternalism and near-contempt, seasoned, as matters would prove, with the authoritarian outlook of a Victorian naval officer.

The plan, which was accepted by the dredgermen, was to create 1,600 new A shares at £5 each, to be bought by Smith, his son and the two Jarrads. John Smith became Chairman, with John Jarrad as manager. By June 1888 the Society had a total of 1,800 A shares and 200 B shares. Of the A shares, 1,100 belonged to John Smith and 100 to his son Ernest. This meant that in any company meeting, the dredgermen, with only 200 shares at most, could be outvoted. The Society had been transformed from an organisation with a broadly democratic basis to one in which there were, in effect, ‘management’ and ‘workers’. There were still a few fisherman directors on the company board, but it is fairly clear that Smith and the Jarrads now expected to get their way, and were not good at communicating with the dredgermen.

Even more damaging, the dredgermen seem to have misunderstood the nature of the investment – not all of the ‘nominal’ money would come in at once. They thought that Smith had committed himself to putting £8,000 into the BDCS, to clean the grounds, re- stock them with oysters and provide employment for the dredgermen (though a company, the Society still had exactly the same altruistic aims as in 1873). Smith did invest, but not on the scale expected. The fishermen came to resent their new managers, feeling that:

- instead of having more employment, ‘they have had less than ever’; - that insufficient quantities of oysters had been laid down, and many have died through neglect; - ‘that the merest patches of ground have been cleaned, and that only partially and spasmodically’; - they believed that all this indicated a desire on Mr Smith’s to ruin the fishery rather than allow the possibility of competition with the other oyster fisheries he was interested in, ‘than restore it to its former productiveness’.

Fryer discounted the last point: if Smith had wanted to ruin the fishery, he could have merely left it alone, rather than put money into it. He did, however, find by inspection that only two portions of the oyster grounds were clean. It was said that 1½ million oysters had been bought, but no-one had checked the invoices to ensure that this number actually arrived. Fryer found few oysters on the grounds: some were French, but most were natives; few starfish and other oyster predators were seen by Fryer, but he did find a huge number of sea-squirts or ‘ascidians’ that occupied the culch that was used to make good oyster beds. John Smith claimed that there was not much incentive to spend money on the English fisheries as there was a lot of competition from French and Dutch oysters, but Fryer pointed out that ‘this argument is disproved by the fact that Bosham oysters have constantly realised a higher price than their foreign competitors’.

The Bosham dredgermen saw little employment between 1885 and 1889, with most of the grounds were left unworked. Matters reached a head in late 1889, when the

43 management introduced a proposal to pay 5s per ‘stint’ of 500 oysters. The working day of a dredgerman was limited to a stint in which he was allowed to catch a specified number of oysters. The men had formerly received that sum for stints of between 250 and 350 oysters, and they rejected the 1889 offer. They said that they would accept 5s for 400 oysters, but on condition that the directors invested £2,000 in 1890, to re-stock the grounds. As Fryer observed, ‘a very strong feeling prevails among the fishermen that Mr Smith has not treated them well; but they have expressed their readiness to ‘work with him’ if more regard is paid to their views and interests’. Smith did not respond.

The 1889 annual report of the Society had actually shown the best recorded results since the BDCS had been founded, with over 191,000 oysters laid, but this had little influence on the way the dredgermen felt. The strike lasted about sixteen months, and must have inflicted considerable hardship on the dredgermen and their families. F W Jarrad took over as manager, but his attitude cannot have helped much. In his view, when the dredgermen controlled the Society, they had squandered its resources: there does seem to have been some justice in this, but, as Fryer remarked, the dredgermen were people of little education and little business experience, and had previously sold their oysters to merchants and other middlemen on an individual basis.

As often with such disputes, attitudes hardened on both sides. A Bosham Fishermen’s Union was in existence by the summer of 1890, with the Bosham schoolmaster, Edwin Faville, as its Secretary: Faville, for his part, feared that the men and their families were facing starvation over the winter. In 1890-91, F W Jarrad, wrote to the Board of Trade of the men being in the ‘thraldom’ of the Union, which was preventing them from returning to work, and he railed against ‘agitators’. Faville saw the issue in much wider political terms, as a struggle of the weak against the strong, fighting for their rights and an inheritance for their children.

The dispute was finally settled on 20 February 1891. The dredgermen accepted rates of 5s per stint of 400 oysters, and 4s per day for work in cleaning the grounds. In return, the management promised to lay one million oysters. There are signs of more investment in the 1890s, but apart from a sale of 191,000 oysters in 1894-95, with 2 million French and native oysters bought, the two other years for which figures exist showed sales of from 35,000 to 65,000. This was despite the fact that at the same time estimates of stock ran into millions.

There was another BDCS dispute in 1895, when some dredgermen refused to obey Jarrad’s ‘orders’ (his term) to bring up some native oysters, as they felt this could ruin the fishery. Jarrad had also refused to let them look at the company books, something which aroused suspicion. The men were aggrieved, as were the management: Jarrad pointed out that the A shareholders had not received any dividends in the past nine years. The dispute seems to have petered out, but the productivity of the oyster fishery remained erratic for years, with annual sales between 1899 and 1905 ranging between just under 14,000 to 1.1 million. Some of this variability, though, must have been caused by an outside factor (see Appendix 2).70 That outside factor was one that challenged both the Bosham and Emsworth oyster fisheries: municipal sewage works.

One of the great achievements of national and local government in the 19th century was the introduction of clean water supplies and efficient systems of sewage disposal, which

44 had a very positive impact on public health. Conversely, it was known at the time that sewage discharge into rivers, estuaries and harbours could contaminate fisheries. Oyster beds were particularly vulnerable, as oysters drew in large amounts of water in order to extract nutrients, and so could absorb bacteria harmful to human health in the process. Both Chichester and Emsworth embarked on the construction of public sewage works in the 1890s, and both installations would have an adverse impact on the oyster fisheries in Chichester Harbour.71

The late 1880s and early 1890s saw another government initiative that was intended to help develop and protect Britain’s fishing industry. In 1888 a Sea Fisheries Regulation Act of 1888 was passed, in response to demands from fishermen, scientists and local authorities. The Act empowered local councils to create Sea Fisheries Districts covering the coast out to the three-mile limit. The Districts were overseen by Sea Fisheries Committees composed in part of, and funded by, local authorities, though they reported ultimately to the recently-established Fisheries Department in the Board of Trade SFC’s were empowered to pass byelaws, with penalties for infringements, which had to be validated by the Board of Trade. Fishery officers were appointed to oversee local fisheries, and they were given police powers to search boats and bring prosecutions for infringements of the byelaws.72

The Sussex Sea Fisheries District was created in 1893, and its remit included the whole of Chichester Harbour, with the eastern coastline of Hayling Island, and the southern coast of the Island as far west as the Coastguard station on the seafront there (the eastern extremity of the District lay at Dungeness Point). The District was divided into three sub-districts, and Chichester Harbour lay in the No 3, or Western District. Fisheries Districts were alive to the dangers of pollution from the start, and Number 4 byelaw of the SSFD prohibited the ‘deposit or discharge of any solid or liquid substance detrimental to sea fish or sea fishing’. This gave it a direct interest in environmental matters.73

The new Chichester sewage works discharged into the Harbour at sluice, above Dell Quay, and they were supposed to be foolproof. In 1900 the City Surveyor of Chichester said that fears of pollution in the Harbour were unfounded: the sewage was chemically treated and diluted 800 times before being discharged. More serious, in his opinion, was the insanitary condition of villages and towns around the Harbour, citing one unnamed village (Bosham?) where ‘privy middens’ emptied directly into the water within one hundred feet of oyster ponds; crude sewage, he also said, went into the water from both Old and New Fishbourne.

The Surveyor’s confidence in the city’s system was misplaced: later that year, the County Analyst reported that a sample of effluent from the works was ‘not properly purified’. In the autumn, 168 fishermen and others from Bosham, New Fishbourne, Apuldram, and West Wittering signed a petition complaining that they were losing trade because of the destruction of shellfish and flatfish by the sewage, and there was an ‘abominable nuisance’ caused by the smells from the outflow. The petitioners had the full support of Lord Gifford, the-then lord of Bosham manor.

The petitioners backed up their claims with facts and figures that showed that the amount of groundwater entering the sewage system was exceeding its storage capacity,

45 and so raw sewage was being unavoidably discharged. The fishermen, it was said, had caught at least 150 tons of fish in Bosham and Fishbourne Creeks annually, but the catch had dropped year by year to just 50 tons. Fishermen had even found toilet paper in their nets, and customers were now refusing to buy fish if they knew it had been caught in Chichester Harbour: ‘our shellfish trade has gone’, it was claimed. Lord Gifford started a legal action against Chichester Corporation, and in 1902 they were forced to make changes to their system to remove the ‘nuisance’. By 1904 a scientist reported for the SSFD on the changes, and described the sewage station as now working efficiently, though at the same time he did point out that Bosham had its own problems, with some privies emptying into the Harbour, and rubbish on the foreshore.74 However, by this time, the sewage problems caused by the Chichester works had been overshadowed by a very public disaster at Emsworth.

James Duncan Foster (1858-1940) is one of the most famous names in the history of Emsworth, the son of a shipbuilder and timber merchant who created a fleet of offshore oyster smacks, constructed in his own yard, and built up one of the most significant oyster businesses in the country. Foster’s career has been thoroughly studied by other historians, and there is no need to repeat it here. Foster’s fleet of oyster smacks operated from the North Sea in the east to Falmouth in the west, and as far south as Brittany (see Apepndix 5 for a summary of the areas from which his oyster cargoes originated). Their oyster catches, though stored in Chichester Harbour and marketed through Emsworth, are not central to the history of the oyster fishery within the Harbour itself (Foster reckoned that about 60% of his oysters were dredged by his own boats, and 40% were bought elsewhere.) His sales were vast, averaging around 2½ million oysters annually between 1883 and 1901, but unfortunately it is impossible to know how many, if any, of these shellfish came from Chichester Harbour. Foster would not have been able to dredge in the areas covered by the 1870, 1871 and 1873 Orders, so if he acquired any from Harbour sources, they must have come from the EDCS or the BDCS, and there is no evidence of them selling him anything. In point of fact, Foster was keen to distance himself from the EDCS. In 1885, when there were complaints that his new oysters ponds at Emsworth were posing a serious hazard to navigation, he wrote this as part of his defence:

‘I have and am now acting in this matter in an individual capacity, and have not any connexion with the Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative or any other Society… I believe it is your wish, and lies within your province to encourage all oyster fisheries, and I may mention, when I went I to this business some few years since this trade was virtually nil here. I have succeeded in working a large business and employ largely ‘local labour’, which is sorely needed’.

Fig 10. The remains of some of Foster’s oyster ponds at Emsworth, photographed in 2010 (© Ian Friel 2010).

46 The remnants of Foster’s ponds are very extensive, and some have been excavated. They were structures lined at the sides with wooden planks, supported on posts. Some had concrete bases, which are probably Victorian in date. Foster began acquiring oyster ponds from other fishermen in 1871, and by 1900 he had bought over thirty, besides building some new ones. The ponds lay on the Emsworth foreshore and the east coast of Hayling Island.

The question of the ownership of oyster ponds surfaced amid official attempts to get Foster to remove his oyster ponds from the foreshore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A foreshore might belong to a local manor, and there is evidence that the Emsworth Manor leased land for oyster ponds in the 17th century (see above, p 17). In 1841, a legal case showed that ponds on the east side of Hayling were being rented from the manor (Bosham manor did likewise). However, manorial control was sometimes prone to lapse, and in some cases, manors did not always actually own the foreshores that they thought that they did.

Some of the people that Foster bought his oyster ponds from could not produce legal title to them. In 1883, when six oyster ponds were sold to Foster, the vendor could only produce a receipt for their purchase from someone else in 1863 –‘There is no writing to the ponds’ – ie, no title in law. The implication of this is that a large number of oyster ponds, particularly in the Hayling Island and Emsworth areas, may have been constructed without any record. In 1903, it was said that the fathers of fishermen then living had laid down these beds ‘when the Colchester and Whitstable boats came to take away oysters at the time’. Interestingly, as part of its 1905 case with Foster, Warblington Urban District Council included the testimonies of some older fishermen, including a ‘Coster’, then aged 89 – perhaps a son of the man who took a stand against the Harbour embankments in the 1860s. He said ‘that forty years ago the Lord of the manor made a claim for rents for the beds which was resisted and then dropped’.75

Foster and Emsworth went on to acquire unwelcome national notoriety in November 1902, when a total of 41 people who attended three large public dinners at Winchester, Southampton and Portsmouth, contracted typhoid. Two of them died, including the Dean of Winchester. The cause of the outbreak was traced to oysters supplied by Foster and his Emsworth business rival, Jack Kennett. Subsequent studies showed that some of the oysters in Emsworth Harbour were contaminated by the sewage works of Warblington Urban District Council, though no typhoid bacilli were found. Foster took the Council to court in 1905 for damaging his business, and won a subsequent appeal, though the punitive damages he asked for were subsequently reduced.76

The impact on the Emsworth oyster industry was huge, and it affected that of Bosham. In December 1902, the Fishmongers’ Company, which had (and still has) significant oversight over the sales and quality of fish and shellfish, banned the sale of oysters from Emsworth and Bosham. The ban on Emsworth oysters lasted for years, until about 1911, though by 1904, the Fishmongers’ Company was allowing the sale of oysters from Bosham if they had been relaid in uncontaminated water for fourteen days. This made it possible to sell 80,660 oysters.77

The EDCS’s activities were affected by the ban as much as those of Foster and Kennett, and as individuals their members probably suffered even more. They were keen to make

47 clear that the sale of contaminated oysters was none of their doing. In September 1903, the Chairman of Emsworth Harbour Committee, wrote on their behalf to the Board of Trade:

‘…the oysters partaken of were not Emsworth Oysters, but imported Oysters [original underlining, for emphasis} laid down in pits on the foreshore by two merchants who trade in shell fish, these pits being accessible at low water, this saving labour in obtaining these shell fish for market’.

‘Now, Sir, the beds of the real Emsworth Native Oysters are situated on a space of ground covering many acres miles away from these ponds on the foreshore and are covered at low water to a depth of 18 ft., the right of breeding and dredging oysters on the ground in question being granted to the Emsworth Fishermen’s and Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society… [by Act of Parliament and Board of Trade Order some years ago] … This Society through the ‘Oyster Scare’ has suffered to an extent to be greatly deplored, about £2,000 worth of oysters laying in the beds or grounds, because there is no market for Emsworth Oysters, and it affects about fifty families who have shares in the grounds and stock to which I refer’.78

Appeals to the Board of Trade were in vain and the ban persisted. It did not destroy the EDCS, however: by 1913 its Honorary Clerk was a woman named Miss Ellen Jewell, and she wrote to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (which now had the responsibility for the oyster fisheries) asking for the area of Emsworth Channel covered by the 1870 Order to be allotted to the EDCS. It lay in between the two sections that the EDCS had been granted under the 1871 Order, and had not been worked for years. The ground was barren, she wrote, and was fouling the EDCS areas.

A public enquiry into the issue was held at Emsworth in March 1914. The records of an April 1913 meeting at Emsworth and of the 1914 enquiry tell us quite a bit about the EDCS. The 1913 report said:

The EDCS ‘is by no means wealthy, being composed entirely of working dredgermen. Some years ago the affairs of the Society became neglected, and its grounds were practically bereft of oysters: but, acting on advice given to them on behalf of the Board of Trade, the members took the fishery in hand, and they have recently so improved matters that a careful examination by a competent observer showed the grounds to be clean, and fairly well stocked with culch and oysters. Specimens produced at the Inquiry were well-grown and included a fair proportion of spat. Last season 235,000 were sent to market’.

The EDCS was clearly recovering by this time, having sold nearly £506-worth of oysters in 1911-12, and over £567 in the 1912-13 season (to April 1913). Miss Jewell and the EDCS directors pointed out that this ‘money was the principal means of supporting about 50 fishermen & yachtsmen during the slack time of the year’ (‘yachtsmen’ in the sense that fishermen frequently got part of their living by acting as crew on large private yachts). The Society was doing quite well, and had survived the ‘oyster scare’.

The EDCS was found to have 73 dredgermen members (all that were in Emsworth, it was believed), each restricted to catching no more than 100 oysters in a day’s stint (joining

48 the Society was usually restricted to the sons of fishermen). The old grounds they wanted to take on were described as derelict and foul. Disturbing evidence of this were examples of American slipper limpet (Crepidula fornicata) that had been found there: ‘this fact alone points to the importance of steps being taken to ‘clean the ground’. Exactly how the limpets got into the Harbour can never be known, but given the vast geographical range of J D Foster’s oyster imports in the years up to 1902, it is not inconceivable that they came in with one of his oyster smacks, or with barrelled oysters imported directly from the USA (see Appendix 5). 79

Another view of the EDCS was given in a confidential report on the inshore fisheries of Britain in 1913. This part of the report was authored by C E Minchin, a member of the Local Fisheries Committees of both the Sussex and Southern Fisheries Districts. The EDCS was described as the only important example of co-operation among fishermen on the east and south coasts of England (Bosham was not included, presumably because the BDCS was structured more like a normal company). The co-operative model was recommended, because ‘The fisherman is not a good business man. He is precluded by the nature of his calling from acquiring the comparatively simple arts of the fish salesman’.

Minchin praised Chichester Harbour as ‘from time immemorial famous for its oysters, which are of the indigenous British ‘native’ variety’. The extensive sand and mud flats and shallow channels were kept at a high and even temperature during summer and were thus favourable to production of copious spat, ‘which indeed is hardly known to have altogether failed even in exceptionally chilly summers. The channels have been dredged in some cases to depletion by the local fishermen for very many years, and it was not until they showed signs of exhaustion that some parts of them were reserved and protected by various Provisional Orders and Acts of Parliament’.

The Emsworth fishermen were allowed to sell oysters now, but only after they had been laid in ‘a flow of pure, or hypothetically pure, sea water. It follows that the dredgermen, not having a place of this kind in their own control, are obliged to sell their take to some pit-owner who thus becomes a middleman and markets the produce at his own convenience’.

Minchin wrote that there were only about fifty dredgermen who now worked, out of about eighty members. The fishery was controlled by the directors, who would inspect the Channel and decide how much fishing could be undertaken without the risk of depletion. They set the dates of the season: the dredgermen were allowed to work six days a week (Sundays excepted), and were paid a fixed price of 6d for their stint of 100 oysters. The EDCS negotiated the price with the pit or pond owner (where the oysters were laid to be purified) at the start of the season, but this was not a very open competition, as only those with ponds within an accessible distance of the Channel could tender.

Minchin identified a very serious weakness in the Society’s structure, however: ‘Some are very aged men no longer able to undertake the severe work of winter dredging and a good many others are employed aboard the large smacks which dredge the banks in the English Channel and some may be otherwise occupied’. There was provision to elect new

49 members, but entrance was normally only open to the sons of fishermen when they became adults.

A 1912 report on the EDCS had identified some of the same issues. Most of the profits went to middlemen, and the Society seemed unable to get in direct touch with Billingsgate, still the centre of the British fish trade. As regards entry to the Society, its membership had decreased by a quarter since 1885, and its rules tended to turn it into a ‘close corporation’. The son of an EDCS member had to join within one month of becoming eighteen, or lose his place. An example was given to the effect that a boy who joined the navy at eighteen (fishing was traditionally seen by the state as a ‘nursery of seamen’) would find no place in the EDCS when he finally returned, ‘so it is the stay-at- home loafers who get the chances from which the smart men-o’war’s men are excluded’. Despite these misgivings, in 1914 a new Emsworth Fishery Order gave the EDCS control of the central section of the Channel (the old 1870 Order are), and extended the life of the several fishery at Emsworth to 1974.80

What was happening with the BDCS at this time is less clear. Annual returns of oysters do indicate that the increased investment made possible by the management changes in the 1880s was finally paying off, and there is no more evidence of serious labour disputes after 1895. John Smith died in about 1904, but at least two members of the Smith family remained as directors until the Society folded. A north London oyster merchant named Samuel Scutt joined as a shareholder in 1912, and his involvement may help to explain the high volumes of sales that the company enjoyed from about 1914. Through him, the BDCS is likely to have had a much better and more direct contact with the major London fishmarket at Billingsgate, than did their Emsworth contemporaries. The estimates of stock that the company declared were generally at three million oysters and above from the early 1900s to the late 1920s.

The First World War proved to be good for the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries in economic terms, though some local fishermen must have perished in the conflict: the surnames of fishing families can be seen on war memorials at both Bosham and Emsworth. There are indications that Bosham was exporting some oysters abroad before the war, because the 1914-15 return noted that ‘although the Continental trade was entirely abandoned, the home trade was above average and the season generally a good one’. Problems with manpower were noted at Bosham in 1917-18, though: ‘on account of the war great difficulty was experienced in getting the oysters fished’.

There was a brief scare at Emsworth in 1915, when it was claimed that consuming Emsworth oysters had put all the officers of a battleship at Portsmouth ‘out of action’. An official enquiry was held, and the story was found not to be true. The local shellfish industry was ‘vindicated’, as the press put it.81

Both the Bosham and Emsworth fisheries were very productive during the war, and in the immediate postwar years, though Bosham sold nearly seven times as many oysters as Emsworth over the 1914-18 period (5,191,302 as opposed to 755,700: see Appendixes 1 and 2). Then, in the 1921-22 season, there was a sharp decline in output in both fisheries: in Bosham by 83% and in Emsworth almost exactly the same percentage. There was no recovery. Bosham sold its last 300 oysters in 1930-31 and at Emsworth a final, paltry 200 were sold in 1931-32.

50

2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

Series1

1,000,000 Series2

500,000

0 1913-14 1914-15 1916-17 1918-19 1919-20 1920-21 1921-22 1922-23 1923-24 1924-25 1926-27 1928-29 1929-30 1930-31 1931-32 1915-16 1917-18 1925-26 1927-28

Fig 11 Oyster sales (numbers of oysters) at Bosham (blue) and Emsworth (red), 1913-14 to 1931-32. Post-1927-28 figures are too low to register on the graph. No data for Bosham 1918-20.

Official fishery reports of the period have little to say about the disastrous decline of these fisheries. Though the EDCS remained in being (the 1914 Order would run until 1974), the BDCS did not.

Indeed, in the years 1915-16 the Bosham fishery stock levels within the Harbour rose to 10.9 million, and then to an all-time peak of 17.3 million in 1919-20, though by 1921-22 they had fallen to 7.5 million. It was believed that there had been heavy mortality in the years 1920-21.

The Bosham company seems to have estimated that ten per cent of the stock would die in any one year, but the problem was that this, like the stock estimates, was a guess. It was believed, for example, that the stock suffered heavy losses in the years 1920-21, but there does not appear to have been any systematic sampling of the stock – beyond the results of normal dredging. Diminishing returns must have told the directors and the

51 dredgermen that something was badly wrong, but the BDCS’s first and only recorded sampling effort took place 1 July 1929:

‘…for the purpose a powerful Motor Boat was used and four dredges were worked, but the result was very disappointing.

‘It was found that Slipper Limpets had increased to an alarming extent, in some parts of the Fishery filling the dredges at every haul; on other layings where culch could be caught, oysters were very scarce: the total catch during these operations being about two dozen only… Under these circumstances the Directors have no alternative to writing down the Stock to a nominal value which they have put at £100. No decision as to the future of the Fishery can be arrived at for the present, as Brood for re-stocking is practically unobtainable in any quantity and the price is prohibitive’.

Fig 12. A bed of slipper limpets. The limpets do not attack oysters, but they do compete with them for sea-bed nutrients: at Bosham, and probably also Emsworth, they were disastrous for the oyster fisheries in the 1920s and 1930s (© Sussex IFCA).

In December 1932, with the lease of the Crown-owned seabed within the fishery area coming up for renewal in 1933, the directors advised that the BDCS should be voluntarily wound up. The Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society formally ceased to exist on 13 June 1934, but it had been dying for years.82

This pattern of decline was seen in other oyster fisheries along the south coast. The results between 1920-21 and 1930-31 were as follows (these were the only south coast ports for which official oyster returns were made) – see Table 4, next page:

52 Table 4

Numbers of oysters landed at various south coast ports, 1920-21 and 1930-31

Port 1920-21 1930-31

From Deal eastwards 0 0

Selsey 5,500 0

Bosham 1,221,125 300

Emsworth 304,370 200

Warsash 111,515 0

Lymington 11,000 0

Poole 1,045,000 17,000

Weymouth 5,700 0

Yealm 525,082 66,700

Falmouth 0 0

Helford Passage 1,057,855 0

Source: 83

In the mid-1930s, Chichester Corporation sought to update and extend its powers over Chichester Harbour, proposing the Chichester Corporation Bill, which eventually passed into law in 1938. Bosham fishermen and others vocally opposed the Bill, in a campaign that reached the national press and involved a petition by the ‘Men of Bosham’ to Parliament. The Bill gave the Corporation new powers over the Harbour, including the right to charge fees for anchoring, mooring and wildfowling, and control of foreshores, but made no mention of fishing, except as a potential hazard to navigation. The local fishermen had never paid for mooring their boats, it was said (and 59 Bosham men signed to say that they had never done so), and the Bill offered them no protection. The Parliamentary petition called for free mooring rights for any man who could prove that he or his father had used moorings (without having to pay for them) in the Bosham Channel in the five years preceding 10 June 1925. It also sought to secure their rights to shoot wildfowl.

The case of the Bosham people was based on old – often unwritten – customs and prescriptive rights, and it was permeated by a strong sense of the long history of the local oyster fishery. As 69 year-old Gregory Major, a former director of the Dredgermen’s Society, commented, people had fished there without charge for two thousand years.

53 A Bosham man, George Whybrow, did his best to galvanise the fishermen to protest, and G A Bayley Chairman of Chichester Rural District Council, reported that the Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society had offered strong support to Bosham. Their Fishery Order still had 37 years to run, and they had laid oysters in the Harbour. They also felt that if the Corporation had control, it might interfere with oyster dredging and other fishing. Mr Prior, Secretary of the Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, also noted that his members feared that if the Corporation got control of the Harbour, they would lease it out to a private person. They were also worried about the possibility that new yacht mooring buoys would be laid which could interfere with trawling by Emsworth and Bosham boats, which mainly trawled at night. The fishermen called for any excess revenue to be spent on the , and for the appointment of a harbourmaster for the whole Harbour.

The press coverage of the dispute also inadvertently put on record testimony from Bosham fishermen who had first dredged oysters in the 19th century, revealing something about the local industry in its last stages. The fishery may have died a few years before, but there was a strong feeling among some that the Harbour Bill would prevent any future redevelopment of the fishery. Alan ‘Butch’ Arnold, was one of those interviewed by the press, and was one of those who feared for the future. He was a son and grandson of fishermen, and had himself fished for fifty years. Following the end of the oyster fishery, he had turned to working on yachts, either fitting them out, painting them or making sails. Three other members of his family had done likewise, along with many other former fishermen – four Coombes, a Major and three Whites. Many others from fishing backgrounds had done the same, though some men also now worked as gardeners or farm labourers, he said. At the same time that this was happening, fishermen’s homes were being taken over by wealthier people as weekend cottages, forcing fishing families to move elsewhere. A time might come though, he felt, when other sources of employment dried up, and local men would need to turn back to fishing.

Arnold went on to say that at the end the Great War (1918), there were nine Bosham boats going out into the Solent, and they were able to dredge 900,000 oysters in one winter. The oysters were then brought back into the Harbour. In 1922 they caught oysters with big black marks on them, which made them unsaleable, but they were brought in and relaid in the Harbour, and in six months they had lost the marks. Millions of Solent and Whitstable oysters were also laid in ‘Bosham Harbour’. Oysters used to arrive in sackloads from Whitstable by train, and then they were taken to barges by truck, and then dropped overboard to restock the Harbour. Arnold remembered the fishing as having ended in 1925, but he said that in the first half of the 1920s the Harbour was a ‘goldmine’.

Another former fisherman, Ernest Frogbrook, was very clear as to why the fishery died: there had been an ‘invasion of limpets’, that lay two feet deep (60cm) on top of the oysters.

The story Bosham’s opposition to the Bill reached the national press, but in the end it achieved nothing. Even Westbourne Rural District Council, which represented Bosham, could only mount token opposition: they were advised that they could not take legal action on the basis of the hereditary rights of a minority of its ratepayers, and in the end they decided that the RDC’s interests were not affected by the Bill. Added to this was the

54 consideration that those ratepayers represented a ‘practically extinct’ industry. Lieutenant-Commander Best, a Fishery Officer from the Sussex Sea Fisheries District talked of reviving the local oyster industry at one of the Bosham opposition meetings in the Anchor Inn, but it did not happen.84

It is may be that the Emsworth oyster fishery succumbed to competition from slipper limpets in much the same way as that at Bosham: the limpet had been present in the Emsworth Channel since at least 1914 (see above, p 49). It is also quite possible that the EDCS was also afflicted by an ageing workforce, as predicted in the 1912 and 1913 reports. Younger men may also have been finding other local employment opportunities in the 1920s and 1930s, despite widespread and recurrent national economic troubles.

There were attempts to revive the Emsworth oyster fishery in the 1930s, but they had no real success. In the late 1930s there was conflict between the EDCS and Hayling Island Sailing Club over the question of yacht moorings in areas where the dredgermen were used to working (the conflict was not finally resolved until after the Second World War). Speaking in February 1939, Captain W Prior, the Secretary of the EDCS said that his members feared that their harbour might become ‘like Bosham’, where most of the fishermen had lost not only their livelihoods but their homes. He did mention one ray of hope: 40,000 oysters had been laid in the Emsworth Channel a few years back, and were expected to mature in September. Unfortunately, September 1939 also saw the outbreak of the Second World War. Chichester Harbour became a defence zone, and it would not be until the late 1950s that any serious effort was made to revive oyster dredging at Emsworth.85

55 Revival: from the 1950s to the 21st Century

In May 1945 the Chief Fishery Office of the Sussex Sea Fisheries District visited Emsworth with James Hornell, FLS (1865-1949), ‘to enquire into the deterioration of the oyster fisheries’. Hornell was an eminent zoologist and maritime ethnographer, and ‘an authority on oyster culture’. The brief report on the visit noted that numerous seed oysters had been laid in the Emsworth Channel by the EDCS, but no spat had been seen to come from these layings. It was hoped that Hornell could offer suggestions, but if he ever sent any, they were not recorded in the SSFD minutes.86

One of the main activities in the Emsworth Channel in the 1940s and 1950s (and later) was leisure boating of one kind or another. New moorings for yachts could encroach on oyster grounds, and in 1949, for example, the EDCS agreed to take compensation for loss of fishing when twelve moorings were proposed for Mill Rithe on Hayling. It was not something a fishing organisation would have done if it had much hope for the future. The membership of the EDCS may well have been very elderly by this time: as far back as 1937, even the Secretary of the Society did not know the exact limits of the fishery, ‘their origin appearing to have been lost in the mists of time’. A Mr Browning, an 86 year-old member of the SSFD No 3 District, was to be asked to look into old papers on the subject.87

Chichester Harbour was not the only place in the Sussex District that inshore fisheries were in decline. An SSFD report of 1952 noted that in less than a generation the number of inshore fishermen in the District had dropped from about 1,300 to 750, and numbers of fishing boats had also declined. Nor were the problems facing small-scale fishermen entirely to do with the weather, the sea or fish stocks:

‘The inshore fisherman working from small coves and ports are particularly at a disadvantage in having to sell their catch to one buyer who is able to dictate the price the fisherman shall receive, as there are no alternative channels for the sale of their fish’.88

In 1953 the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries said that it wished to resuscitate oyster fisheries, and research was started at the new MAF Fisheries Laboratory at Burnham in Essex to look at ways in which this could be done. The Emsworth fishery was one of those under consideration. Scientists from Burnham made a brief visit to Emsworth in 1955, ‘to obtain information on the derelict oyster fishery’.

By 1957, as the Chief Fishery Officer (CFO) of the SSFD reported to MAF, the EDCS was thinking about reviving the fishery, and looking to the future:

‘the Society had now appointed a new secretary who now envisaged the cleaning of certain beds with a view to the relaying of oysters. The Ministry’s Scientific Staff had already surveyed the area and had selected ground suitable for cleaning, and a site for pits. Should the scheme fail the only losers would be the members of the Society who were prepared to give voluntary service and to donate their limited capital towards the cost of restocking. The Committee (Local Fisheries Committee of SSFD) commended the steps taken by the Society, and endorsed the suggestion that if the oyster fishery was resuscitated the Society might well apply for an extension on its expiry in 1974’.

56 In November 1957, four boats owned by EDCS members carried out a test cleansing of part of the oyster grounds, working six hours each, and brought up seventeen good- quality oysters in the course of the work. There was hope that the grounds could be productive again, but at the same time there was concern at obstructions on the sea bed, in the form of concrete mooring blocks laid by the Admiralty in the Second World War, and the perennial problem of yacht moorings. Despite these issues, the CFO wrote:

‘A lot of hard and unremunerative work at considerable cost lies ahead of the Society members before any reasonable success can be hoped for, but I am assured that they are all enthusiastic about the venture’.

By December 1958 he could report the following:

1. A large area of the bed of the Emsworth Channel had been cleaned in the past twelve months, and MAF scientists now advised that it was clean enough for oysters to be laid there, though they also said it would be useful to undertake some more ‘harrowing’ and lay more bleached shell there, to create a stable bed and thus a good environment for the growth of spat; 2. in April 1958 some three year-old Dutch oysters and Fal () oysters had been laid as a test in a small, pre-prepared area by EDCS members in the lower part of the Emsworth Channel: the aim was to compare the mortality and growth among oysters with a view to giving guidance for the purchase of oysters stocks in the spring of 1959; 3. on 23 October 1958, MAF scientists and EDCS members had recovered by dredging a number of the Dutch and Fal oysters, and at the same time examined the ground which the fishermen had cleaned during the summer months: the condition of the dredged oysters was found to be good; 4. both kinds had grown, but the Fal oysters had done rather better in terms of growth and survival than the Dutch examples, and were in slightly better condition, despite fairly high overall mortality in both cases; 5. in the scientists’ opinion, ‘the rate of growth and fattening in the Emsworth Channel is much superior to that which has occurred anywhere on the East Coast, but that the effect of the shell-boring worm is much more severe and may affect winter mortalities’; 6. it was thought that both kinds would give a good return if relaid, but allowance would need to be made for their differential mortalities, and in the short term the dredgermen should consider using the Fal oysters; 7. at the time of the report, the EDCS was considering the purchase of new stocks to relay in spring 1959; 8. the CFO paised the dredgermen’s efforts to revive the fishery, given their limited resources and the hard work that would be involved, and the fact that it would be a long time before any substantial financial return was seen.

One of the problems in reviving the EDCS may have been a lack of documentation. In 1958 its Secretary, H Cole, made a new list of shareholders ‘because it was obvious that many of the Company’s records had been lost’. The new list showed that there were 43 shareholders, of whom nine were retired. Interestingly, thirty of the members came from just seven families, groups that had between three and five shareholders apiece. As in the past, inshore fishing remained an intensely local, community activity.

57

A report by the CFO in December 1960 said that a lot of ground clearance work had been carried out by dredging and many of the oysters laid three years before had been brought up. The Society was still not yet running a commercial fishery, but its members wanted to develop things in that direction, and were planning to buy seed oysters. The CFO praised the MAF scientists and inspectors for their continuing encouragement of the work.89

Set against this was a report that at the October 1960 AGM of the EDCS, a lack of confidence was expressed in the future of the fishery, despite the optimistic reports that there were the ‘good conditions for oyster cultivation’ in the Emsworth Channel. A Dutch company, Bona Fides, and the Whitstable Oyster Company, of Kent, expressed interest in the Emsworth fishery in the years 1959-63. Bona Fides even supplied some of the oysters laid in 1959, but in the end this involvement came to nothing - the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company, for one, had to withdraw in 1963 because the fierce and prolonged winter of that year had dealt their stocks a severe blow.

In March 1961, Dr Hancock of the Burnham Laboratory reported on the Emsworth fishery, and suggested that it was better to use good quality British oysters: the south coast was then the only source for them, he said, due the incidence of the American tingle worm pest in the Essex and Kent oyster grounds. He suggested that it was better to market oysters in quantities of a thousand, rather than in hundreds as they were dredged, and that they should be stored in a pit, a few yards square: ‘The main point is that oysters should not be kept in sacks either on the foreshore or hung over the stern of boats until enough have accumulated for sale’. Some pits still existed low on the shore at Mill Rithe, with a few inches of water in them, which would be suitable for short-term storage. The EDCS had identified two plots, one just above Mill Rithe, and the other in the Sweare Deep, for laying oysters. The length of each plot was to be about 50 to 100 yards (45.7 - 91.4 m), the distance determined by the length of tow and the manoeuvrability of the boats (in 1964 another government official identified the best places in the Emsworth Channel for oyster cultivation as Mill Rithe and the quarter mile or so of ground above Beacon Point).

Hancock recommended that cleaning should begin at low water, working gradually over distances of 30 yards, with all rubbish and limpets recovered to be laid at the low water mark. Once the oysters had been taken up and the ground had been cleaned, it could be left until the following spring. New oysters could then be laid after re-cleaning by dredging and harrowing. He suggested that as not all of the members and their boats could work effectively on one small ground at a time, they should split into two small groups for the cleaning work. Doing this would also increase the chance of observing spatfall from the breeding stock.

In 1964 the now-Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) noted that the Emsworth Channel was ‘one of the best potential areas in the country for an oyster fishery. Although oyster cultivation had been practically nil over the previous few years, there were signs that it could be revived and made very productive’.

However, in 1965 the EDCS assigned the oyster fishery rights for the last nine years of the 1914 Order to a Major Chandler, who was experimenting with a French method of

58 cultivating oysters on poles in the water. The experiment does not seem to have been a success, and it was reported that the ground was now infested with slipper limpets and other pests. An Emsworth Harbour Fishermen’s Federation (EHFF) had been formed in about 1967, with some 50-60% of the members said to be from the EDCS. They wished to lease back some of the fishery, and put down a trial laying of 10,000 oysters on trays on the seabed. MAFF officials wanted to encourage this, because they were clear that once the Order expired in 1974, the yachting interests would take over the ground.90

The EHFF managed to save the Emsworth oyster fishery, and were successful in obtain a new Fishery Order, that came into force in the Emsworth Channel in 1975. The Order was for a period of thirty years, with the several fishery rights conferred on Emsworth Harbour Fishermen’s Federation Ltd. The fishery area covered the Hampshire side of the Emsworth Channel.91

Dredging on the oyster beds in 1984 produced reported landings of between five and ten hundredweight from ‘numerous boats’ (254 kg to 509.9kg, or about 3,180 to 6,360 oysters), but within a few days the landings were as down to half a hundredweight, the beds having been dredged clean. The EHFF cultivated the grounds in the summer, then opened them ‘at most weekends during the season according to demand’. Despite the rapid end of the dredging, the Federation reported a good yield of oysters and a good spatfall.

From a report made by the CFO in February 1985, it seems that the ten boats involved in dredging were ‘crewed from all walks of life’, but the grounds were usually ‘skimmed off’ in the first week, thereafter with only the odd boat going out to pick up the oysters that were left. It was also noted that ‘up to four boats’ had been dredging in the Thorney Channel, on beds in the vicinity of Prinsted and Thorney, where a short day’s dredging might bring up 56lb (25.4kg) of shellfish, or around 318 oysters. This was three times as much as the stint total allowed to Emsworth dredgermen before the Great War, but not too far different from the numbers produced by stints at Bosham in the late 19th century. Though motorised fishing boats had been in use for sixty or seventy years by this date, and the gear of the 1980s was probably far superior to that of earlier times, it does seem that modern technology does not always make quite the difference one might expect to the productivity of an inshore oyster. That said, technology has undoubtedly made the working lives of fishermen easier and safer.

The 1985 dredging season in the Emsworth Channel several fishery opened to EHFF members from October, following a spring and summer spent in cultivating the beds. The public fishery began on 1 November, when fourteen boats converged ‘on the oyster grounds established at Prinsted, Thorney Channel and Itchenor’ (the area covered by the 1975 Order was not open to the public). Landings varied according to the numbers of dredges used and the engine power of the boat (the local fishing fleet had of course been motorised for decades): some boats brought up three hundredweight, while others were double that. Because the fishery was small, it was quickly depleted, though four weeks on, three boats dredging ‘alternative beds’ were landing up to two hundredweight apiece, with a value of £65 per hundredweight. The total catch in 1985 came to 33 tons (33.6 tonnes), or around 420,000 oysters. Some of these will have been Pacific oysters, laid in the Sweare Deep in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is reported that by this time, oyster stocks were being affected by the anti-fouling paints used on craft in the Harbour, which

59 caused the oysters to grow thicker shells to protect themselves, but in the process made them too heavy to open, so they suffocated.92

The management of Chichester Harbour changed fundamentally in 1971 when the Chichester Harbour Conservancy was established to conserve, maintain and improve the the Harbour and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that surrounds it. The administration of inshore fisheries has also changed in recent times, as well. The Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (Sussex IFCA) came into being in 2011, as the successor to the old Sussex Sea Fisheries District. This followed on from the creation of the Marine Management Organisation by the Marine and Coastal Access Act of 2009.

The Chichester Harbour Oyster Partnership Initiative (CHOPI) was developed in 2010, as a partnership between local authorities and fishing people, and is part of the wider Native Oyster Network of UK and Ireland. It has undertaken research into the Harbour oyster fishery, and in 2018 commissioned a valuation of it. The Sussex IFCA Oyster Permit Byelaw of 2015 placed restrictions on dredge size, the amounts of time spent fishing and limits on landing, which mean that when the average catch per boat in a day falls below 15kg per hour for every one metre of dredge, the fishery is closed.93

The 2018 Valuation Report on the oyster fishery by NEF Consulting observed that both the Solent and Chichester Harbour stocks had been declining in productivity for some years, due to infestations of the slipper limpet and predatory winkle, loss of habitat, water quality, environmental change and fishing activity. No single cause could be identified for the decline of the Chichester Harbour fishery, though all of these factors played a part (in 2017, the Food Standards Agency closed oyster fishing in the Thorney Channel, because of high levels of E. coli in the shellfish).

Fig 13. Emsworth oyster boats, photographed in 2010 (© Ian Friel 2010).

The European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), the ‘real native’ species has been a part of the Harbour ecosystem for at least the past two thousand years, and since 2003 the EU has recognised oyster beds and oyster reefs as a priority habitat. Significantly, the current legal minimum size for landing an oyster under the Sussex IFCA is 70mm (2¾ inches), not much more than the 2½ inches apparently observed in the 18th century, and modern boats in the Harbour normally also use only two dredges, like those of the past. Thirty- one boats were engaged in oyster dredging in the years 2008-09: this dropped to below ten between 2009-10 and 2010-11. When dredging permits were introduced in 2013, 31 boats were active again, but by 2017 this had fallen to ten.

Total landings from 2006 to 2017 (the fishery has been closed since 2018) varied widely, from about 71,000 oysters to nearly 900,000 (see Appendix 4). Most oysters were sold to Viviers UK in Portsmouth, and were exported (perhaps four-fifths), though some still

60 went to Billingsgate. The NEF report concluded that better water quality in the Harbour would lead to better shellfish harvests.94

It is impossible to know just how clean the Harbour water was before the first of the municipal sewage works were constructed in the 1890s. Since that time, a whole range of effluent and manmade chemicals have entered the water – oil, fertiliser and others. One should perhaps not imagine that the waters of earlier times were ‘pure’ – villages like Bosham had cesspits that drained over oyster beds (see above p 46), and the River , for one, was an open sewer for Chichester for centuries before the sewage works were built at Apuldram.95 However, since the later 19th century the chemical and effluent inputs into the Harbour have been on an industrial scale: the signs are that in the ‘preindustrial’ era, particularly in the 18th century and before, the oyster population in the Harbour was large enough for the surplus to be exported around the coast or abroad, sometimes in their hundreds of thousands.

61 A summary of factors relating to the rise and decline of the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries

For the Chichester Harbour oyster fisheries, the past two centuries or so have had something of a ‘rollercoaster’ experience: they have gone from prosperity to near- extinction, then to another revival and another decline. In looking at this long history, it is perhaps best to address some of the individual factors that have helped the fishery to both rise and decline. The ‘decline’ list is much longer than the ‘rise’ one, underlining the threats that face any industry involved with the exploitation of natural resources.

Rise

Self-management and co-operation (pp 18-22) Though the details are obscure, and are perhaps unlikely ever to be known in full, it does seem that Chichester Harbour fishermen in the late 17th and early 18th century worked together to re-stock and regulate the oyster fishery on a sustainable basis, and succeeded in bringing it to a level where it could export surplus oysters.

Commercial management and investment (pp 50-51) Commercial management and investment seem to have helped in the eventual revival of the Bosham fishery in the years before the Great War, and to have contributed to its wartime and (brief) postwar success.

Government support and scientific study (pp 56-59) Government support seems to have acted as a catalyst in the revival of the Emsworth fishery in the late 1950s, although it would not have got anywhere without the enthusiasm and commitment of local dredgermen. In earlier decades, as in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the intervention of Fishery Inspectors also helped to resolve disputes and provide fishermen with advice on redevelopment. Scientific study was part of that government support in the 1950s and 1960s, and remains crucial to the fishery today.

Decline

Poverty (pp 17, 25, 27, 39 and 44) As late as the 20th century, the fear of poverty marked the lives of fishermen and their families, and sometimes forced them into short-term measures such as overfishing, simply because they had little alternative.

Poor self-management (pp 38-40) Despite the apparently successful self-management practised by their ancestors, both the EDCS and the BDCS seem to have managed their fisheries poorly after they received their Fishery Order grants. The reasons behind this were probably a mixture of commercial inexperience, lack of education, a lack of capital – and poverty.

62 Poor commercial management (pp 42-44) Inept and authoritarian management almost drove the BDCS dredgermen into a long and damaging strike between 1889 and 1891. The social gulf between the managers and the dredgermen was part of the problem, but so were an authoritarian management style and a failure to communicate properly with the fishermen. Later, in the 1918-29 period, the management also failed to monitor the condition of the oyster beds, despite clear evidence of declining catches, until it was too late.

Under-investment (pp 38-40 and 51) Both the BDCS and the EDCS were seriously under-capitalised to begin with; financial investment finally seems to have led to the BDCS to achieve high returns in the period of the First World War, when its oyster sales were nearly seven times higher than those of the EDCS.

Poaching (pp 25-28 and 40) Until the establishment of several fishery orders after 1868, oyster poaching was not, strictly speaking, poaching, unless it was carried out in privately-owned waters. However, in Chichester Harbour, the fishermen and other inhabitants saw the commercial oyster smacks as interlopers and poachers, and they certainly had an adverse effect on local oyster stocks and the economic well-being of the community. The dredging by Emsworth boats in the 1870 Order area was illegal, though.

Overfishing (pp 25-28 and 39-44) The 17th to early 19th century traditional management systems were designed to prevent overfishing: the incursions by large oyster smacks from the late 18th century, which continued for decades, seem to have driven the fishery close to extinction. In the 1870s, poverty drove the BDCS fishermen to over-work their grounds, though they did try to take corrective measures.

Slipper limpets and other pests (pp 49, 51-53, 55 and 60) Slipper limpets were present in the Harbour from at least 1914, and there is absolutely no doubt that in the 1920s and early 1930s they killed off the Bosham oyster fishery, and perhaps that of Emsworth.

Storms (p 39) In the early 1870s, storms drove sand from the mouth of Chichester Harbour over some of the oyster beds belonging to the Bosham Fishery, burying the oysters and depriving spat of a hard surfaces on which to grow.

Civil engineering works (pp 32-34 and 40) The project that did the most damage to the Harbour’s oyster fishery was the attempt to reclaim the land between Thorney and Chidham in the early 1860s. There is evidence that the Thorney Channel oyster beds here were highly productive before the embankments to the north and south of Thorney were built. Fishermen at the time predicted that the embankments would reduce the scouring effect off the tides in the Thorney Channel, that presumably helped to keep the beds free of mud, and this may well have happened. The clearest sign of the decline of the Thorney Channel oyster beds is that none of the 1870-73 Fishery Orders included it. Had the Channel still been productive, it is inconceivable that it would have been excluded.

63

The collapse of the southern Thorney-Chidham embankment in the first half of the 1870s also damaged the Bosham Fishery area, releasing mud that covered some of the beds dredged by the Bosham fishermen. There is evidence of some damage at Emsworth as well, apparently caused by the embankment north of Thorney.

Pollution (pp 45-48 and 59) Water pollution has taken many forms since the late 19th century, first with sewage, and later with the run-off from fertilisers, oil spills, anti-fouling paint and other chemicals. The industrial era, and an increasingly urbanized world, have not been kind to oyster fisheries, which rely on good water quality above all things.

Ageing workforce (pp 49-50) The recruitment structure of the EDCS meant that it ended up with an ageing workforce and an inability to recruit enough young fishermen. The system may have ensured that local dredgermen’s jobs were secure when the 1871 Order came into force, but it may well have helped to doom the EDCS in the longer term.

Increasing work opportunities (p 50) Though none of the sources used in this study cite this as a problem for the oyster fishery, it does seem likely that increased levels of education and job opportunities, from the 19th century onwards, will have led people to move away from the fisheries, in much the same way that the agricultural workforce declined over the same period.

Leisure boating (54-55, 56, 57 and 59) Leisure boating in the Harbour began to be a problem for the oyster fisheries from the 1930s onwards, when yacht clubs and yacht owners began to require more and more offshore moorings in the rithes and channels. These often seem to have occupied oyster beds, and made oyster dredging impossible in places.

Gentrification (p 54) This was identified as a problem for the fishing industry in Bosham by a fisherman there in the 1930s. As more and more people took over local housing for weekend cottages, the available accommodation for fishing families was said to have declined, forcing them to move away.

Freezing weather (p 25 and 49) The sources do occasionally note periods when freezing weather caused problems for the Harbour oyster fisheries, by freezing oysters in ponds to death. The very cold winter of 1905 is said to have helped to kill off part of the Hayling Island oyster breeding industry, though there is little clear evidence of such damage in other parts of the Harbour. Indeed, in 1913 the high and even temperatures of the Harbour waters were said to be among the reasons that it was a good place for cultivating oysters.96

64 Appendix 1

Data relating to Emsworth oyster stocks, catches and exports

1a. Emsworth Fishery Order 1870 (Oyster Merchants’ Company)

Year(s) Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1870-71 374,286 Half of Parliament oysters laid 1877, p 474 were full grown 1871-72 90,550 As above As above 1872-73 77,537 As above 1873-74 37,200 As above 1874-75 0 As above 1875-76 1,600,000 As above 1870-75 510,000 596,000 The ground Parliament Totals was probably 1877, p 476 subject to poaching – see above, pp 39-40

65 1b. Emsworth Channel Fishery Orders 1871, 1914 and 1975 (Emsworth Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society) All returns below are for the areas covered by the 1871 and 1914 Emsworth Channel Orders. *‘or dredged’ – includes oysters raised during periods when sales were banned, though most figures relate to sales.

Year(s) Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* Note: 1872- 76 figures may be unreliable, the products of poaching – see pp 39-40 1872-73 (1) 30,210 Figures for (1) (2) 40-50,000 (1) and (2) do Parliament not agree, 1877, p 475- though it was 76; remarked (2) TNA MT that figure 10/147/5 (2) was probably nearer 40,000 than 50,000 1873-74 (2) 83,448 (1) 95,943 (2) Partial 1) Parliament figure only: 1877, p 475- represents 76; two months’ (2) TNA MT fishing 10/147/5

1874-75 310,993 Parliament 1877, p 475- 76 1875-76 379,744 Parliament 1877, p 475- 76

1875 20,000 Imported Parliament oysters 1877, p 476

1876 108,049 Parliament (calendar 1877, p 475- year) 76

1876 (Sept to 77,000 Parliament Dec) 1877, p 475- 76

1871-76 818,890 Parliament Totals 1877, p 476

66 Year(s) Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1895 400 See Notes Small stock of Inspectors French 1895, p 20 oysters laid 1895-96 2,500 Inspectors 1896, pp 23- 24 1896-99 No data 1899-1900 1,000 Inspectors 1900, p 21 1900-01 8,443 Inspectors 1901, p 29 1901-02 8,409 Inspectors 1902, p 14 1902-03 Typhoid Inspectors scare: no 1903, p 28 sales 1903-04 Scare abating, Annual 1904, but no sales p 43 1904-05 Many oysters, Annual 1905, but no sales p 88 1906-12 No data 1911-12 235,000 MAF 41/579 1913-14 63,085 some Some oysters Annual 1914, bought ‘from xxx and Emsworth’ Fisheries and laid 1918, pp 134- down 35 1914-15 200,450 300,000+ 300,000 Fisheries oysters 1918, pp 134- moved to 35 new laying in the Harbour 1915-16 25,175 Fisheries 1918, pp 134- 35 1916-17 273,075 40,000 45,000+ 40,000 Fisheries brought from 1918, pp 134- Emsworth 35 and laid down; 5,000 half-ware put back 1917-18 257,000 40,000 Laid down: Fisheries half-ware 1918, pp 134- 35 1918-19 178,500 Fisheries 1919, p 34 1920-21 304,370 Fisheries 1921, p 15

67 Year(s) Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1921-22 331,986 Fisheries 1922, p 14 1922-23 53,700 Fisheries 1923, p 11 1923-24 67,100 Fisheries 1924, p 11 1924-25 7,700 Fisheries 1925, p 11 1925-26 4,200 Fisheries 1926, p 11 1926-27 19,300 Fisheries 1927, p 11 1927-28 500 Fisheries 1928, p 11 1928-29 600 Fisheries 1929, p 11 1929-30 300 Fisheries 1930, p 11 1930-31 0 Fisheries 1931, p 11 1931-32 200 Fisheries 1932, p 11 1933-1958 No data; ‘Oyster’ category removed from tables 1952-59 1959-64 Nil ‘Oyster’ Fisheries category 1960-64 returned to tables 1959-60 10,000 TNA MAF 209/2000

1985 about Newell 2016, 420,000 p 26

68 Appendix 2 Data relating to Bosham oyster stocks, catches and exports

All returns below are for the areas covered by the 1871 and 1914 Emsworth Channel Orders. *‘or dredged’ – includes oysters raised during periods when sales were banned, though most figures relate to sales. Year Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1859 980,000 John Jarrad’s Sussex stock only Agricultural (estimated from Express, 5 April c 1,400 bushels) 1859, p 2 1875-76 77,047 TNA MAF 12/18 1876-77 57,515 TNA MAF 12/18 1877-78 No info TNA MAF 12/18 1878-79 44,824 TNA MAF 12/18 1879-90 74,277 TNA MAF 12/18 1880-81 94,458 TNA MAF 12/18 1881-82 58,432 TNA MAF 12/18 1882-83 48,775 TNA MAF 12/18 1883-84 18,084 TNA MAF 12/18 1884-85 10,612 TNA MAF 12/18 1885-86 3,000 TNA MAF 12/18 1888-89 158,400 600,000 TNA MAF 12/18 1889-91 Strike: no dredging 1891-92 191,000 French oysters Inspectors 1895, p 20 1893-94 100? 2,940,000 2,340,000 TNA MAF French oysters, 12/18 600,000 indigenous brood 1894-95 191,000 20,000 2,000,000 Almost all killed Inspectors Solent brood French + by frost 1895, p 20 some native 1895 7,000,000 Inspectors (31 Aug) 1895, p 20 1895-96 65,175 0 4,000,000 Stock estimate Inspectors approx based on value 1896, pp 23-24 1896-98 No data

69 Year Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1898-99 35,425 Natives Inspectors 1900, p 21 1899-1900 179,053 220,760 Laid down: Inspectors 200,760 1900, p 21 Burnham oysters and 20,000 brood 1900-01 102,242 492,200 Natives sold; Inspectors 139,000 natives 1901, p 29 from Burnham and 353,200 Solent oysters laid 1901-02 576,976 915,250 Natives and Inspectors Solents dredged; 1902, p 14 500,000 Burnham and 415,520 Solent laid 1902-03 13,975 535,825 Contamination & Inspectors sale prohibition; 1903, p 84 oysters laid down inc 10,400 French ‘relays’ 1903-04 80,660 3,024,000 Stock inc Annual 1904, p 900,000 half- 74 ware 1904-05 1,123,080 936,205 2,936,000 Solents laid; Annual 1905, p stock inc 88 936,000 half- ware 1906-07 No data 1907-08 3,467,000 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1908-09 3,728,000 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1909-10 3,500,000 Stock nos. TNA BT approx estimated from 31/3081/6596 estimated value 1910-11 3,300,00 Stock nos. TNA BT approx estimated from 31/3081/6596 estimated value 1911-12 3,404, 294 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1912-13 3,041,000 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1913-14 601,000 1,665,998 4,105,000 Solents and Annual 1914, Langstone xxx, and TNA oysters laid BT down 31/3081/6596 1914-15 1,037,166 609,650 3,875,000 Stock est inc Fisheries 200,000 half- 1918, pp 134- ware 35, and and TNA BT 31/3081/6596

70 Year Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1915-16 1,034,136 8,152,455 10,993,000 Laid down: Fisheries 544,000 1918, pp 134- Langstone; 35, and TNA 296,955 Solent, BT Thorney and 31/3081/6596 Langstone; 7,311,500 Essex brood oysters 1916-17 806,000 1,536,100 11,723,000 Laid down: Fisheries 420,100 1918, pp 134- Langstone; 35, and TNA 1,116,000 Essex BT brood 31/3081/6596 1917-18 2,314,000 3,104,000 12,567,000 Laid down: Fisheries native brood 1918, pp 134- from Essex and 35, and and Solent oysters TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1918-19 16,755,000 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1919-20 17,290,625 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1920-21 1,221,125 Fisheries 1921, p 15 1921-22 207,075 7,515,740 Fisheries 1922, p 14 and, TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1922-23 78,000 7,044,674 Fisheries 1923, p 11 , TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1923-24 42,300 Fisheries 1924, p 11 1924-25 85,000 6,203,626 Fisheries 1925, p 11, and TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1925-26 Fisheries 5,497,259 The stock figure Fisheries 1926 has a is from company 1926, pp 11 figure of records for sales and 31, and 86,600 but and included a TNA BT the actual 10% allowance 31/3081/6596 return in for mortality company records shows 95,561

71 Year Total of Total of Total stock Notes Source oysters sold oysters laid estimate or dredged* 1926-27 Fisheries 4,8886, 379 Stock figure Fisheries 1927 1927 has accounts for p 11, and TNA 59,600 but some sold and BT the actual included a 10% 31/3081/6596 return in allowance for company mortality records shows 67,950 1927-28 31,000 4,369,819 Stock figure Fisheries accounts for 1928, p 11, some sold and and TNA BT included a 10% 31/3081/6596 allowance for mortality 1928-29 2,700 Fisheries 1929, p 11 1929-30 Fisheries Fisheries 1930 has 1930, p 11 2,400: actual return in company records shows 2,730 1930 976,000 TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1930-31 300 100 Fisheries 1931, p 11 and TNA BT 31/3081/6596 1931 and No data No data No data No data from No data from later from any from any from any any sources any sources sources sources sources

72 Appendix 3

Railway shipments

Quantities of fish (including shellfish) conveyed inland from Bosham and Emsworth, Brighton and Hayling Island by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway: figures in tons (2,240lb or 1,018kg)

Year Emsworth Bosham Brighton Hayling Is

1879 71 69 1,320 - 1880 52 15 993 - 1881 48 2 985 - 1882 49 2 501 - 1883 158 - 447 - 1884 212 - 387 - 1885 253 - 451 - 1886 193 - 439 - 1887 213 - 486 449 1889 248 10 416 771 1890 63 - 462 737 1891 355 - 544 92 1892 205 - 724 274 Source: Railway 1879-92

Year Bosham Emsworth Hayling Island 1895 29 833 125 1896 39 710 50 1897 32 792 24 1898 51 842 34 1899 21 816 25 1900 39 812 64 Source: Returns 1900, p 42

73 Appendix 4

Emsworth oyster fishery returns, 2006-17

Date Figures Number Total Total value Value Source for of weight per 100 oysters* (converted oysters to metric tonnes) 2006 Total 375, 750 30.06 £39,044 £10.39 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2007 Total 896,000 71.68 £80,489 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2008 Total 602,750 48.22 £46,131 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2009 Total 353,500 28.28 £50,522 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2010 Total 379,875 30.39 £61,026 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2011 Total 73,125 5.85 tonnes £17,550 NEF 2018, pp landing (incomplete 12-13 figures) 2012 Total nk Nk Nk NEF 2018, pp landing 12-13 2013 Total 167,000 13.36 £46,769 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2014 Total 163,250 13.06 £45,521 NEF 2018, pp landing tonnes 12-13 2015 Total 328,750 26.3 tonnes £78,900 landing (8.8t Thorney Channel, 17.5t Emsworth Channel) 2016 Total 356,250 28.5t (3.9t £85,500 landing Thorney Channel, 24.6t Emsworth Channel) 2017 Total 71,625 5.73 tonnes £14,850 £20.73 NEF 2018, pp landing, 12-13 Emsworth Channel

*based on an average of 0.08kg weight per oyster (figure advised by Sussex IFCA)

74 Appendix 5 Known origins of oysters imported into Chichester Harbour

For creatures with no means of locomotion, oysters have proved remarkably mobile over time, thanks to the humans who have cultivated and consumed them. The following table summarises the evidence presented in this Report for the origins of oysters known to have been imported into Chichester Harbour.

Date Oysters Oysters Where Description of Reference imported imported laid: oysters/Notes in Real from: to: Natives (RN) or other source c 1850 East coast Bosham Spat imported RN, p 30 for growing 1851 English Bosham ponds RN, pp 29- Channel (probably) 30 1858- France, via Bosham ponds/ ‘Jersey oysters RN, pp 30- 61 Jersey oyster caught on the 31 hards by south coast of Bosham France’ (sic – Creek perhaps meaning the south coast of Normandy): French oysters described as bigger than the Chichester Harbour natives 1875- French, from Emsworth Emsworth RN, p 38 76 Calvados Channel (Normandy), (central Arcachon section (Gironde), under and from 1870 Brittany Order) (probably Auray). c 1871- English Emsworth J D Newell 1902 Channel (as Foster’s 2011, p 34 far west as ponds Falmouth)

75 Date Oysters Oysters Where Description of Reference imported imported laid: oysters/Notes in Real from: to: Natives (RN) or other source c 1871- North Sea Emsworth J D Newell 1902 Foster’s 2011, p 34 ponds c 1871- Northern Emsworth J D Sometimes Newell 1902 France, Foster’s imported 2011, pp particularly ponds directly in 34 and 37 Brittany Foster’s smacks, at other times came via London c 1871- Ile d’Oléron, Emsworth J D Portuguese Newell 1902 western Foster’s oysters, 2011, p 37 France ponds cultivated at the Ile d’Oléron c 1871- USA Emsworth J D Oysters stored Newell 1902 Foster’s in barrels, 2011, p 37 ponds brought by ship and then rail c 1871- East coast of Emsworth J D Newell 1902 England, Foster’s 2011, p 37 generally ponds Whitstable, Kent c 1871- Falmouth, Emsworth J D Shipped in Newell 1902 Cornwall Foster’s steamers 2011, p 38 ponds 1891- France Bosham BDCS area RN, p 68 94 of Chichester Harbour, under 1873 Order c 1894- Solent Bosham As above RN, p 68 95

76 Date Oysters Oysters Where Description of Reference imported imported laid: oysters/Notes in Real from: to: Natives (RN) or other source 1895 France Emsworth EDCS area RN, p 66 of Emsworth Channel, under 1871 Order 1899- Burnham, Bosham BDCS area RN, p 69 1902 Essex of Chichester Harbour, under 1873 Order 1899- Solent Bosham As above RN, p 69 1902 1902- France Bosham As above Oysters RN, p 69 03 described as ‘French relays’ 1904- Solent Bosham As above RN, p 69 05 1913- Solent Bosham As above RN, p 69 14, 1915- 16 and 1917- 18 1913- Langstone Bosham As above RN, p 69 14, Harbour 1915- 16 1915- Essex Bosham As above RN, p 69 18 c 1918 Solent Bosham Used to Dredged by RN, p 53 restock Bosham the smacks Harbour c 1918 Whitstable, Bosham Used to Brought in by RN, p 53 Kent restock rail the Harbour

77 Date Oysters Oysters Where Description of Reference imported imported laid: oysters/Notes in Real from: to: Natives (RN) or other source 1958 Netherlands Emsworth Emsworth RN, p 56 Channel, lower part 1958 River Fal, Emsworth Emsworth RN, p 56 Cornwall Channel, lower part c 1961 ? River Fal, Hayling Test pits Experimental RN, p 57 Cornwall Island and in Mill layings Emsworth Rithe and Sweare Deep c 1985 Pacific Emsworth Laid in RN, p 58 oysters Sweare Deep

78 Appendix 6

Traditional fishing boats and dredging

Both the EDCS and the BDCS relied on traditional boat types that were developed to suit the nature of the waters in which they worked and the fisheries for which they were used. They were not the same as the bigger harbour boats and oyster smacks constructed and used by large-scale owners like J D Foster of Emsworth. One of Foster’s boats was the Terror, constructed c 1890, and magnificently restored to sailing condition in recent years. The Terror is 28ft 10ins in length (8.8m – not counting the bowsprit) and is fore-and-aft rigged as a cutter (ie, the sails are rigged in line with the keel), with a triangular jib before the mast and a four-sided gaff sail behind. Though an important reminder of the Emsworth oyster trade, the Terror was built as a ‘lighter’, designed to load up with oyster catches from larger vessels and bring them into port. The small Chichester Harbour dredgers were very different.

The 1834 Harbour fishermen’s petition (see above, p 21) wanted to restrict boats used in oyster dredging to fifteen feet in length (4.6m), suggesting that this was the traditional maximum length of the local oyster dredgers perhaps established in the early 18th century. Nineteenth and twentieth-century evidence indicates that the small boats used at Bosham and Emsworth, the two main oyster ports in the Harbour, were broadly similar.

These craft were clinker-built (that is, their hulls were composed of overlapping planks, fastened at the edges with clenchnails), and normally rigged with a single lugsail, a four- sided fore-and-aft rigged sail suspended from a small yard attached to the mast (they could also be rowed). The boats had to be of shallow draught, because of the profusion of mudbanks and shallows in the Harbour, and the smallest boats had to be capable of being handled by one, or at the most, two men.

A typical Harbour oyster boat had a V-shaped hull section and a flat transom stern, and the Emsworth boats had an 18-inch deep (46cm) ‘false keel’ attached underneath the keel to help stop the boat being blown to leeward, or sideways. Bosham boats apparently did not have this, though some had a retractable centerboard to perform the same function. Both types might have a small deck at the bow, with fish trays at the stern, for sorting catches. They were called ‘luggers’ from their rig, though the Emsworth boats were also known as ‘Jerkies’ (from their tendency to heel over a good deal in the wind) and the Bosham boats were known as ‘punts’. Handling a lugger under sail could be rather awkward, and many men apparently preferred to row the boats, rather than sail them.97

A mid-19th description of dredging gives some sense of how these boats were worked:

‘The dredge is a kind of net made of coarse rope, and attached at its mouth to an iron framework of a rectangular shape, and about four times as long as it is wide. The upper and lower edges of this framework present tolerably sharp edges, and from its sides proceed two iron bars which are united in front by a ring of metal. When this instrument is about to be employed, a rope is fastened to a ring, and the apparatus is thrown from a

79 boat, which floats over the beds. The boat is then urged forward either by wind or oars, and the dredge scrapes the sea-bottom till it has filled its net with oysters, when it is drawn up and emptied of its contents. This is the way in which our oysters are obtained at present’.98

Fig 14. A lug-rigged oyster dredger (unusually, with two masts,) at Bosham Quay in the early 1880s. The boat has an outrigger at the stern, presumably for handling the dredges, with an adjacent flat surface or fish tray for sorting the catch. Detail from ‘The Mill Quay, Bosham’, by Walter Jenner, c 1880-83, oil on canvas ,The Novium Museum, Chichester P0526 (Copyright of the Novium (a service provided by Chichester District Council). All rights reserved.

The 1869 Sea Fisheries Act required all fishing boats, whatever their size, to be registered to a particular port. Each boat had to be painted with the code for that port and its individual number. The Sussex side of Chichester Harbour came under the Littlehampton Registry, and the registration records give us a ‘snapshot’ of the local fishing fleet between 1869 and 1878. Most of the boat records came to an end on 7

80 January 1878, because in October 1877 and amendment to the Act was introduced exempting all ‘open or undecked’ fishing or dredging boats.

In the first year of the Act, 1869, a total of 48 boats was registered on the Sussex side of the Harbour, five from West Wittering, two from Itchenor and 47 from Bosham. Forty of these were open boats carrying a single mast with a lugsail. The keel-lengths of 34 of the boats were between 12 and 14ft (2.66-4.27m). More detailed dimensions survive for two later, small Bosham-built boats, each rigged with a single lugsail:

Measurements Keel Length Width Depth in feet length overall of hull

Onward (1890) 14 15.5 5.33 1.7

Winnie (1906) 14 15.25 5.33 1.66

Keel to beam and depth ratio:

Onward: 1: 2.62: 8.24 Winnie: 1: 2.62 : 8.43

The boats ranged in tonnage from about one to one and a half tons, and the proportions indicate that the boatbuilders were working to a fairly standard model. With overall lengths of little more than fifteen feet, these craft were probably not too far different the oyster dredgers described in the 1834 petition.

Thirty-eight of these small boats in 1869 were used for oyster dredging. The majority combined this function with other types of fishing:

Dredging only: 5 Dredging and trawling: 17 Dredging and netting: 13 Dredging, trawling and mackerel fishing: 1 Dredging, netting and line fishing: 1 Dredging, trawling and netting: 1 Netting only: 2

Forty of these boats were each owned by the man described as ‘master’ and in twenty- seven cases he was also the sole crew member. Six boats had two crew apiece, four had three, and three boats had four each.

Of the eight larger boats of 1869, five had keel lengths of between nineteen and twenty feet (5.79-6.1m), the others ranging from 29 to 42ft (8.8-12.8m). They were not large by the standards of contemporary sea-going vessels, though, with tonnages of between three and nineteen tons. Significantly, five of these eight craft were skippered by someone other than the owner, with crews of between two and six. These vessels had decks or half-decks, unlike the smaller open boats, and were single-masted, but with fore-and-aft rigs, often in the cutter configuration, with as many as four sails. Each vessel was used for oyster dredging, though in four cases this was combined with trawling.

81 Given their size, they were probably better suited to offshore operation, and indeed one of them, the 19-ton Gay William, was wrecked on the Isle of Wight in 1874. In total, the 48 boats on the 1869 Register were crewed by 85 men and seven boys.

Thirty boats were added to the Register of the Sussex side of the Harbour between 1871 and 1877, twenty-eight belonging to Bosham and two to Itchenor. All bar one of them was used for oyster dredging, though in seventeen instances this was combined with another fishing method, usually trawling. Twenty of them were in the 12-14ft keel-length range, and the majority were open boats, All were one-masted, most of them lug-rigged. Of the bigger vessels, five had keel-lengths of sixteen to nineteen feet. The largest boat was the Emma of Bosham, with a 38-ft keel, the only one described as a ‘smack’. As in 1869, the vast majority of these boats were skippered by the men who owned them.

Nine of the 1869 boats were re-registered between 1870 and 1892, but the change to the boat registration conditions in the Sea Fisheries Act in 1877 meant that there is very little direct record of the fishing fleet in the Sussex side of the Harbour thereafter, apart from a handful of registrations during the First World War (the Registers have been checked from 1869 to 1937). This, in itself, is very significant, because the 1877 changes removed inshore fishing craft from the registration process, and indicates that the Bosham, Itchenor and West Wittering fishermen mainly concentrated on fishing within the Harbour itself, or within three miles of the coast, using small boats.

The advent of the Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society in 1873 seems to have made no difference to the types of boats used in that part of the Harbour. However, out of 78 boats registered on this side of the Harbour between 1869 and 1878, only seventeen left the local registry: two were lost, seven were broken up, and the remainder either ceased to be used for fishing or were sold to owners in other register ports. This means, in effect, that the net size of the local fishing fleet in this period grew by about 27%, most likely in response to the opportunities offered by the establishment of the Bosham several fishery in 1873. This mushroom-like growth probably contributed to the overfishing noted by Hall in 1876.99

82 List of Sources Consulted (in addition to Bibliography)

Digital

Archaeology Data Service https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/browser.xhtml British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk British Newspaper Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

Manuscript sources

The National Archives (TNA), Kew

ADM 249/131 The Ecology of Chichester Harbour. Topography, Physical and Chemical Conditions, April 1956 BT 31/1221/2816C Emsworth Oyster Farming Company Ltd file BT 31/1344/3583 Hayling Oyster Company Ltd file BT 31/1400/3980 Emsworth Dredgermens Cooperative Society Ltd company BT 31/30813/6596 Bosham Dredgerman's Co-Operative Society Ltd company file BT 31/17626/86862 Company No: 86862; Emsworth Ship and Land Company Ltd. Incorporated in 1905. BT 31/4934/32885 South Deep and Hayling Oyster Company Ltd (incorporated in 1890) BT 297/161 Emsworth oyster beds - J D Foster 1879-1911 BT 297/162 Emsworth oyster beds - J D Foster 1885-1908 BT 297/163 Emsworth oyster beds - J D Foster 1885-1913 BT 297/164 Emsworth oyster beds - J D Foster 1895-1906 CRES 58/1242 Emsworth Channel, Chichester Harbour: manor of Bosham 1851-1963 E190/756/4 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1611-12 E190/756/19 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1612-13 E190/757/4 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1614 E190/757/7 Chichester Customs COASTAL 1614-15 E190/757/16 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1616-17 E190/758/3 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1617-18 E190/758/8 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1618-19 E190/758/9 Chichester Customs COASTAL 1618-19 E190/761/1 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1623-24 E190/761/7 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1624-25 E190/763/12 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1629-30 E190/763/22 Chichester Customs Overseas 1630-31 E190/766/4 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1634-35 E190/766/15 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1635-36 E190/766/22 Chichester Customs COASTAL 1639-40 E190/767/22 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1639-40 E190/767/24 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1640-41 E190/767/31 Chichester Customs OVERSEAS 1646-47 MAF 12/18 Bosham Oyster Fishery Order, 1873 – 1889-95 papers MAF 41/394 Chichester Harbour: byelaws, 1939

83 TNA MAF 41/397 Privileges extended to certain societies under the Emsworth Channel Fishery Orders, 1871-1914 MAF 41/539 SSFD – reports of meetings 1923-41 MAF 41/579 Emsworth Channel Fishery Order, 1914 MAF 41/1431 SSFD reports of meetings 1942-48 MAF 41/1501 Reports of the tours made by the Departmental Committee on Inshore Fisheries, summer 1913 MAF 41/1536 Emsworth Channel Fishery Order 1975 MAF 71/310 and MAF 71/311 1891 and 1893 maps of Sussex Sea Fisheries District (SSFD) MAF 71/316 Bosham Fishery Order 1873 – map MAF 71/322 Emsworth Fishery Order 1870 - map MAF 71/323 Emsworth Channel Fishery Order 1871 – map MAF 209/277 File concerning the Emsworth oyster fishery 1947-1962 MAF 209/333 Sussex Sea Fisheries District committee reports 1949-53 MAF 209/333 SSFD MT 10/9/5 Proposed land reclamation in Chichester Harbour, 1864- 65 MT 9/1709 MT 9/1709 Foreshores (Code 46): Navigational obstructions - Emsworth 1885-1926 MT 10/147/5 Bosham Fishery Order 1873 – conveyance of foreshore MT 10/421/3 Bosham Fishery Order, 1873. Payment of rent arrears by Bosham Dredgements' Co-operative Society, 1885 TNA MT 10/859/5 Foreshores. Request for information on rights of the City of Chichester and of the Lords of the Manors of Warblington, Hayling and West Thorney 1902 MT 10/1621/2 Harbours. Emsworth Harbour Accounts from 1900-1 to 1912-13 MAF 71/310 and MAF 71/311 1891 and 1893 maps of Sussex Sea Fisheries District MAF 71/316 Bosham Fishery Order 1873 – map MAF 71/322 Emsworth Fishery Order 1870 - map MAF 71/323 Emsworth Channel Fishery Order 1871 – map MAF 209/277 File concerning the Emsworth oyster fishery 1947-1962 MAF 209/333 Sussex Sea Fisheries District committee reports 1949-53 MAF 209/333 SSFD byelaws 1948-54 MAF 209/334 Sussex Sea Fisheries District committee reports 1954-61 MAF 209/673 SSFD coast protection work 1950-62 MAF 209/2000 File on the Emsworth oyster fishery, 1959-69 MAF 209/2930 SSFD byelaws 1969-77 MR 1/1713 1851 map showing proposed embankments to block the Thorney Channel and Bosham Creek MR 1/1715 1852 map showing the land to be reclaimed north and east of Thorney Island WO 199/2555 Proposals for the defence of Chichester Harbour, 1941

West Sussex Record Office, Chichester

Acc 939/III/1 Bosham Manor, survey 1532 Acc 939/III/7 Bosham Manor, survey 1617-18 Acc 939/III/8 Bosham Manor, survey 1618 Acc 939/III/9 Bosham Manor, survey 17th century

84 Acc 939/III/10 Bosham Manor, survey 1746 Acc 939/III/11 Bosham Manor 1746 Acc 939/III/12 Bosham Manor 1765-66 Acc 939/III/13 Bosham Manor, survey 1801 Acc 939/I/6 Bosham Manor, court book 1659-73 Acc 939/I/7 Bosham Manor, court book 1673-78 Add MS 34419 Papers re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, 1890, 1894 and 1934 Add MS 34,420 Papers re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, 1876-78 Add MS 34,421 Papers re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, undated Add MS 34,422 Papers re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, – miscellaneous correspondence 1885-1897 Add MS 34,423 Paper re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, c 1895 Add MS 34,424 Paper re: Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, 1895 Add MS 55,742 Bosham Dredgermen’s Co-operative Society, 1906 share certificate CE/3/3/1 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1869-1892 CE/3/3/2 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1892-1902 CE/3/3/3 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1902-1937 EP IV/2/15 1599 fishing lease, E5005-5023 Late 18th century maps of parts of Sussex at 5.9ins to the mile, by Yeakell and Gardner HC/1/10 Papers relating to Chichester Corporation Act, 1938 HC 1/10/4/2(b) Copy of the petition of the Men of Bosham, 1938. HC 1/10/4/5 Copy of 1584-85 Act reagrdign Chichester Harbour HC 1/10/4/6 Commission and Return of 32 Charles II HC 1/10/4/9 Abstract of lease, 1685, relating to the Harbour HC 1/10/4/11 1757 lease regarding the Harbour WSRO HC 1/10/4/15 Map and letter regarding ownership of tidal lands, 1931 HC 1/10/4/21 1935-38 newspaper cuttings relating to opposition to the Chichester Corporation Act, 1938 HC 1/10/4/23 Map of buoys owned by Mr Sadler HC 1/10/4/24 Copy of, and notes on, the petition of the Men of Bosham, 1938 Raper MSS 351 Raper Uncatalogued, Box 90 Lease of Bosham foreshore, 1873 TD/W4 1838 Apuldram Tithe Map TD/W16 c 1847 Birdham Tithe Map TD/W17 1839 Bosham Tithe Map TD/W30 1846 Chidham Tithe Map TD/W87 1839 Fishbourne Tithe Map TD/W144 1839 West Itchenor Tithe Map TD/W147 1846 West Wittering Tithe Map

85 Hampshire Record Office, Winchester

88M99/13 Emsworth - several fishery plan 1869 88M99/14 1869 chart of Emsworth Fishery 88M99/47 Emsworth channel - oyster ponds and works and manuscript plans 1885 88M99/147 Plans of layour of J D Foster's shipyard, Emsworth 1915 DP/C13 Plan of Emsworth harbour 1895 11M64/214 Copy of the Customs of the Manors of Emsworth and Warblington 1783 124M71/Z15 Late 19th cent -Memorandum of Association of the Emsworth Dredgermen's Co-operative Society 129MO/K99/1 Sale particualrs of the Manor of Hayling Island 1869 129MO/K99/2 Map to accompany the sale particualrs of the Manor of Hayling Island 1869 COPY/495/1 - Sale particulars of J C Park's estate in Hayling Island 1921 1607AD/04 Probate inventory of John Bailey, fisherman, of Emsworth 1607 1663AD/117 Probate inventory of Henry Woolgar of Emsworth, fisherman, 1663 1670A/057 Will of William Holloway of Emsworth, fisherman, 1670 1677A/078 Probate inventory of Edward Rowland, fisherman, of Emsworth 1677 1693AD/047 Probate inventory of Thomas Mancer, fisherman, of Emsworth 1693

The Keep, East Sussex Record Office, Falmer

MIB/1/1/1 SSFD minutes and reports 1893-1897 MIB/1/1/2 SSFD minutes and reports 1897-1902 MIB/1/1/3 SSFD minutes and reports 1902-1907 MIB/1/1/4 SSFD minutes and reports 1907-1912 MIB/1/4/1 SSFD presscuttings book 1894-1928 MIB/1/7/5 SSFD minutes 1922-34

Portsmouth History Centre, Portsmouth

780A/1/1/4 Manorial perambulation, 1786 780A/1/13/1/3/5 Oyster beds, weirs, sandbanks etc off Hayling Island 19th cent 780A/1/13/4/2/1/1(i) Part of Yeakell and Gardner Map of Sussex 1778, amended 780A/1/13/2/2/1 Bosham Creek: Plan and cross sections of land north of Chichester Creek and to the east of Bosham Creek, 19th cent 780A/1/13/2/2/2 Bosham: Plan of the Bosham Mudwall Channel and Oyster Ponds belonging to Admiral Berkeley, 19th cent 780A/1/13/2/3/2 Map of the manor and parish of Chidham and parish of West Thorney 1784 780A/1/13/2/3/3 Map of Manor of Chidham, 19th cent 780A/1/13/4/2/4 Chart of the Owers, Chichester and Emsworth Harbours, by Lt Murdoch Mackenzie, 1786 780A/1/13/4/2/1 C19? Chichester Harbour and east side of Hayling Island 780A/1/13/4/2/3 c 1851 chart - Langstone Harbour to Chichester Harbour 780A/1/13/2/3/3 Map of Chidham, ?19th cent

86 Bibliography Government statistical publications on fisheries Accessed via: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140508034354/http://www.marineman agement.org.uk/fisheries/statistics/annual_archive.htm#1890 Annual 1903-1914 Annual Report of Proceedings under Acts Relating to Sea Fisheries (England and Wales) 1903-1914, London Fisheries 1918 Fisheries in the Great War. Being the Report on Sea Fisheries for the Years 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, London Fisheries 1919-2007 Sea Fisheries Statistical Tables from 1919-20 to 2007, London (under various departmental headings) Inspectors 1895 Sea Fisheries (England and Wales). Tenth Annual Report of the Inspectors for 1895, London Inspectors 1896 Sea Fisheries (England and Wales). Eleventh Annual Report of the Inspectors for 1896, London Inspectors 1900 Sea Fisheries (England and Wales). Fifteenth Annual Report of the Inspectors for 1900, London Inspectors 1901 Sea Fisheries (England and Wales). Sixteenth Annual Report of the Inspectors for 1901, London Inspectors 1902 Sea Fisheries (England and Wales). Sixteenth Annual Report of the Inspectors for 1902, London Parliament 1877 Reports from Commissioners, Inspectors, and Others Vol XXIV. Oyster and Mussel Fisheries. Reports of Inspectors appointed in the Year 1876, by the Board of Trade, under " The Sea Fisheries Act, 1868," to inquire into the State of the Fisheries established under Orders made by the Board, pp 465-94, London Railway 1879-1892 Quantity of Fish Conveyed Inland by Railway, London Returns 1893-1900 Returns of Fish Landed in 1893 (-1900) London Sea Fisheries 1866 Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Sea Fisheries of the , London Sea Fisheries 1901 Sea Fisheries of the United Kingdom. Statistical Tables 1901, London Sea Fisheries 1902 Sea Fisheries of the United Kingdom. Statistical Tables 1902, London

Other works Andrews 1954a J H Andrews, Geographical Aspects of the Maritime Trade of Kent and Sussex, 1650-1750, University of London doctoral thesis, 1954 Andrews 1954b J H Andrews, ‘The port of Chichester and the grain trade’, SAC 92, pp 93-105 Bromley-Martin 1978 A Bromley-Martin, Bygone Bosham, Chichester Burton 2000 A Burton, ‘Government, science and the fisheries: local fisheries administration since 1888’, in Starkey et al 2000, pp 174-179 Butler 1817 W Butler, Topographical Account of the Hundred of Bosmere, in Hampshire, Havant Davidson 1976 P Davidson, Oyster Fisheries of England and Wales, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Fisheries Laboratory Leaflet No 31, Lowestoft Down 1970 A Down, ‘The Roman cemeyery at St Pancras’, in Down and Rule 1970, pp 53-126 Down 1981 A Down (ed), Chichester Excavations 5, Chichester Down and Rule 1970 A Down and M Rule (eds), Chichester Excavations I, Chichester

87 Friel 2003 I Friel, The British Museum Maritime History of Britain and Ireland 400-2001, London Green 2011 A Green, Cattle, Corn and Crawfish. 900 Years of Chichester’s Markets, Chichester Greenhill and Mannering 1997 B Greenhill and J Mannering (eds), The Chatham Directory of Inshore Craft. Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles, London Haines 2000 M Haines, ‘Fisheries of the Westcountry and Wales, c 1850-2000: the Welsh fisheries’ in Starkey et al 2000, pp 201-05 Hannah 1934 I C Hannah, ‘The walls of Chichester’, SAC 75, pp107-27 Hertslet 1898 L Hertslet, A Complete Collection of the Treaties and Conventions and Reciprocal Regulations at Present Subsisting Between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, Vol VI, London (reissue of 1845 original) Hore and Jex 1880 J P Hore and E Jex, The Deterioration of Oyster and Trawl Fisheries of England, London Hunnisett 1958 R F Hunnisett, ‘Sussex Coroners in the Middle Ages. Part II’, SAC 96, pp 17-34 Kowaleski 2000 M Kowaleski, Fishing and Fisheries in the Middle Ages: The Western Fisheries’ in Starkey et al 2000, pp 23-28 Manley and Rudkin 2006 J Manley and D Rudkin, ‘More buildings facing the Palace at Fishbourne’, SAC 114, pp 69-113 March 2005 E J March, Inshore Craft of Britain, Vol 2, London Morgan 1992 R R Morgan, Chichester. A Documentary History, Chichester Murphy 2011 P Murphy, The English Coast: A History and a Prospect, London Morris 1976 J Morris (ed), Domesday Book. Sussex, London and Chichester NEF 2018 NEF Consulting Limited (report by C Williams, W Davies and J Kuyer), A Valuation of the Chichester Harbour Provisioning Ecosystem Service Provided by Shellfish, New Economics Foundation, London Newell 2016 L Newell, Uncovering the Past… Emsworth Oysters and Men, Emsworth Page 1908, W Page (ed), A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 3, London Ramster 2000 J Ramster, ‘Government, science and the fisheries: fisheries research in England and Wales 1850-1980’, in Starkey et al 2000, pp 179-187 Reports 1815 Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of King's Bench: With Tables of the Names of the Cases and the Principal Matters, Volume 2, London Rudkin 1975 D J Rudkin, The Emsworth Oyster Fleet and Shipping, Emsworth Rudkin 2001 D J Rudkin, Old Emsworth, 2nd edn, Emsworth Rudkin 2005 D J Rudkin, Emsworth: Echoes of the Past, 2nd edn, Emsworth Rule 1970 M Rule, ‘Excavations in Chichester Cathedral’, in Down and Rule 1970, pp 127-42 Salzman 1936, L F Salzman (ed), A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 3, London Salzman 1953, L F Salzman (ed), A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, London Seager Smith et al 2007 R Seager Smith, N Cooke, R Gale, S Knight, J I McKinley and C Stevens, ‘Archaeological investigations on the site of the former Rowe’s Garage, Chichester, West Sussex’, SAC 145, pp 67-80 Sharp et al 1913 J E E S Sharp, E G Atkinson and J J O’Reilly (eds), Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem: Volume 8, Edward III, London Sherley-Price 1968, L Sherley-Price (trans and ed), Bede, A History of the English Church and People, London Smyllie 2011 M Smyllie, Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain and Ireland, Stroud

88 Somerville and Bonell 2006 L Somerville and J Bonell, ‘Part 4 – Biological and environmental analyses’ in Manley and Rudkin 2006, pp 94-97 Starkey et al 2000 D J Starkey, C Reid and N Ashcroft, England’s Sea Fisheries. The Commercial Sea Fisheries of England and Wales since 1300, London Steer 1963 F W Steer (ed), Minute Book of the Common Council of the City Of Chichester 1783-1826, Sussex Record Society, XLII, Thomas 1961 F G S Thomas, The King Holds Hayling, Havant Toller 1981 H Toller, ‘An excavation at Broadbridge, Bosham 1976’, SAC 119, 1981, pp 214-16 Vause and Clark 2012 B J Vause and R W E Clark, Baseline Fisheries Information (‘Native/Flat/Common Oyster, Ostrea edulis’, pp 87-90), Brighton Williams 2000 C Williams, From Sail to Steam. Studies in the Nineteenth-Century History of the Channel Islands, Chichester Woolgar 2000 C M Woolgar, ‘Take this penance now and afterwards te fare will improve’: seafood and late medieval diet’, in Starkey et al 2000, pp 36-44

Endnotes

1 https://vimeo.com/107015605. 2 Hampshire Chronicle, Monday, 10 April 1826, p 4; Hampshire Telegraph, 16 October 1847, p 5. 3 Murphy 2011, pp 49-52. 4 Hannah 1934, p 119. 5 Somerville and Bonell 2006. 6 Hannah 1934, p 119. 7 Down 1970, pp 103, 111 and 124-26; with oyster shells mussels: burial nos 127and 201. 8 Rule 1970, p 131. 9 Seager Smith et al 2007, p 77. 10 Down 1981, p 134. 11 Seager Smith et al 2007, p 77. 12 https://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=242174#aSt. 13 Toller 1981. 14 https://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=242174#aSt. 15 Toller 1981 16 Sherley-Price 1968, pp 227-29. 17 Morris 1976, p 1. 18 Page 1908, pp 129-34. 19 Page 1908, pp 134-39. 20 TNA CRES 58/1242, letter from T R Fearnside, Office of Land Revenue Records, 29 November 1853. 21 Woolgar 2000, p 43. 22 Woolgar, loc cit; Kowaleski 2000, pp 24-25. 23 Salzman 1935, pp 100-02. 24 Salzman 1953, pp 227-33; Sharp et al 1913, No 280. 25 'Edward III: January 1377', in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given- Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry and Rosemary Horrox (Woodbridge, 2005), British History Online http://www.british-

89 history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/january-1377 [accessed 16 January 2020]. 26 HRO 1607AD/04. 27 HRO 1670A/057. 28 HRO 1693AD/047. 29 BT 297/161. 30 Andrews 1954a, pp 226-28 and Andrews 1954b, pp 93-94 and 103. 31 TNA E190/756/4, E190/756/19, E190/757/4, E190/757/7, E190/757/16, E190/758/3, E190/758/8, E190/758/9, E190/761/1, E190/761/7, E190/763/12, E190/763/22, E190/766/4, E190/766/7, E190/766/15, E190/766/22, E190/767/22, E190/767/24 and E190/767/31. 32 Andrews 1954a and b, loc cit. 33 Warrant Book: March 1712, 26-31', in Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 26, 1712, ed. William A Shaw (London, 1954), pp. 208-222. British History Onlinehttp://www.british- history.ac.uk/cal-treasury-books/vol26/pp208-222 [accessed 18 January 2020]. 34 WSRO, Acc 939/III/1 Bosham Manor, survey 1532, Acc 939/III/7 Bosham Manor, survey 1617-18, Acc 939/III/8 Bosham Manor, survey 1618, Acc 939/III/9 Bosham Manor, survey 17th century, Acc 939/III/10 Bosham Manor, survey 1746, Acc 939/III/11 Bosham Manor 1746, Acc 939/III/12 Bosham Manor 1765-66, Acc 939/III/13 Bosham Manor, survey 1801, Acc 939/I/6 Bosham Manor, court book 1659-73, Acc 939/I/7 Bosham Manor, court book 1673-78. 35 Sussex Advertiser, 26 May 1834, p 3. 36 Butler 1817, p 106; TNA MT 10/147/5, Report by H Cholmondely Pennell on the Bosham Oyster Fishery enquiry, 16 January 1873, p 18. 37 Green 2011, p 18. 38 Butler 1817, p 107. 39 WSRO Acc 939/III/13, pp 22-23. 40 Sussex Advertiser, 26 May 1834, p 3; Butler 1817, pp 104-06. 41 Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 26 October 1833, pp 1-2. 42 Steer 1963, pp 117-18. 43 Reports 1815, pp 568-75. 44 Hampshire Advertiser, 1 October 1836, p 2. 45 Butler 1817, p 107. 46 A ‘plenteous’ catch: Morning Chronicle, 19 October 1821, p 3;Murphy 2011, p 52; Newell 2016, p 20; Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 5 May 1817, p 3; Morning Post, 4 December 1821, p 3; Sussex Advertiser, 9 February 1824, p 3; Sussex Advertiser, 10 July 1826, p 3. 47 Hampshire Chronicle, 12 May 1823, p 4. 48 PHC 780A/1/13/2/2/2; photo of oyster ponds: Bromley-Martin 1978, image 91; Sussex Advertiser, 5 July 1853, p 6; Sussex Agricultural Express, 19 March 1861, p 4; 1861 Census, via ancestry.co.uk; MAF 12/18, statement by Staff-Commander F W Jarrad, 14 May 1890. 49 Newell 2016, p 22; Morgan 1992, p 39; Rudkin 2001, p 34; Friel 2003, p 220; Hampshire Telegraph, 26 July 1851, p 5. 50 Hertslet 1898, pp 416 and 422. 51 Kentish Independent, 13 July 1844, p 6; Hampshire Telegraph, 19 July 1851, p 4. 52 Williams 2000, p 72; Jersey Independent and Telegraph, 9 January 1858, p 3, 27 March 1858, p 2, 5 March 1859, p 3, 14 March 1859, p 3 and 23 March 1859, p 3, 7 Apr 1859 p 3,

90

12 Apr 1859 p 3, 13 Apr 1859 p 3, 26 Apr 1859 p 2, 5 May 1859 p 3, 27 Feb 1860 p 3, 28 Feb 1860 p 3, 8 Mar 1860, 13 Mar 1860 p 3, 21 Mar 1860 , 7 April 1860, p 3, 21 April 1860, p 3, 24 April, 1860, p 3, 9 May 1860, p 3, 26 March 1861, p 3 and 9 April 1861, p 3; Sussex Agricultural Express, 19 March 1861, p 4 and 13 April 1861, p 6; Emsworth imports: Portsmouth Times, 23 November 1867, p 8. 53 Sussex Agricultural Express, 19 March 1861, p 4 and 13 April 1861, p 6; Sussex Agricultural Express, 5 April 1859, p 2. 54 TNA CRES 58/1242, letter from T R Fearnside, Office of Land Revenues 8 March 1852; copy of 1826 law case document regarding the mud wall; Hampshire Chronicle, 29 November 1824, p 2. 55 Hampshire Telegraph, 16 March 1850, p 6; maps of the plan: PHC 780A/1/13/4/2/4 (1786 chart with some details of the c 1850 scheme added, but without the Hayling Island proposals); 780A/1/13/2/2/1 (Bosham canal). 56 TNA MR 1/1713 and MR 1/1715; TNA MT 10/9/5; Brighton Gazette, 24 March 1859, p 7. 57 There is a gap in the embankment, with the southern end of the Thorney Channel clear, shown on the Sussex LXII 6-inch map, surveyed in 1875. 58 TNA MAF 71/316: map of Bosham Fishery Order, 1873; WSRO HC1/10/4/5: map of manorial boundaries in Chichester Harbour. 59 Burton 2000, pp 174-75; Ramster 2000, p 197; Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 (31 & 32 Victoria, Cap. 45). 60 Brighton Gazette, 28 July 1864, p 3. 61 Portsmouth Times, Sat 4 April 1868, p 7; TNA BT 31/1400/398; TNA MAF 41/579. 62 HRO 124M71/Z15; TNA MAF 71/322; MAF 71/323; MAF 209/277 (1870, 1871 and 1914 orders). 63 TNA MT 10/147/5. 64 Parliament 1877, p 469. 65 Parliament 1877, pp 474-75. 66 Parliament 1877, pp 475-77; TNA BT 31/1400/398; TNA MAF 41/579. 67 Ordnance Survey, 6-inch maps: Hampshire and Isle of Wight LXXVI (surveyed 1859-60, published 1870); Hampshire and Isle of Wight LXXXIV (surveyed 1866, published 1871); Sussex LX (surveyed 1875-77, published 1889); Sussex LXI (surveyed 1875, published 1880); Sussex LXII (surveyed 1875, published 1879), PHC 780A/1/13/2/2/2 (Bosham, c 1855); Hampshire Telegraph, 27 February 1864, p 6 (reference to an oyster pond at Prinsted); Rudkin 1975, p 31 (Fowley Island). 68 TNA MT 10/421/3. 69 TNA MAF 12/18: Fryer Report, 1890. 70 TNA MAF 12/18, letter from F W Jarrad to the Board of Trade, 14 May 1890; letters of 17 July, 18 and 23 August 1890, from Edwin Faville to John Smith; letter of 2 February 1891 from Edwin Faville to Sir R Raper; TNA BT 31/3081/6596. 71 ESRO MIB/1/1/1, minutes of 13 February 1896; ESRO MIB/1/1/2, report of 26 July 1897; Morgan 1992, pp 29-30. 72 Burton 2000. 73 TNA MAF 71/310 and MAF 71/311; ESRO MIB/1/1/1; byelaws: eg ESRO MIB/1/1/2, p 190. 74 MIB/1/1/2, minutes of 8 February, 9 August, 8 November 1901 and 20 December 1900, 14 February 1901, 6 May 1902; MIB/1/1/3, report to contributing councils, 31 March 1904.

91

75 Rudkin 1975, pp 12-44; Newell 2016, pp 30-38 and 64-72; TNA BT 297/161, letter from J D Foster to the Board of Trade, 15 April 1885; copies of invoices and correspondence relating to oyster ponds, 1863-84; letter from Aldfred Blackmore to the Board of Trade, 5 October 1903; Warblington UDC to Board of Trade, 5 April 1911; Thomas 1961, 127-29. 76 Newell 2016, pp 66-72. 77 Lancashire Evening Post, 24 December 1902, p 3; London Evening Standard, 6 January 1903, p 6; Inspectors 1903, p 84; Annual 1904, p 74; Annual 1914, xxx and Fisheries 1918, pp 134-35; Newell 2016, p 72 has 1916 as the end date of the Emsworth oyster sale ban, but it is clear that the ban was lifted before this. 78 BT 297/161. 79 MAF 41/579: letters of Ellen Jewell, EDCS, to Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 7 January, and 1 April 1913; 1911 Census: Ellen Jewell; papers 1913-14. 80 MAF 41/579; MAF 41/1501, pp 6, 8 and 9-11; Annual Report of Sea Fisheries 1912, Part I, p 63. 81 Fisheries 1918, pp 134-35; Portsmouth Evening News, 12 January 1916, p 3. 82 TNA BT 31/3081/6596. 83 Fisheries 1921, pp 15-17; Fisheries 1931, pp 11-13. 84 WSRO HC 1/10/4/21, presscuttings from Sussex Daily News, 3 and 22 January, and 2 February, 1938, The Times, 6 January 1938, Chichester Observer, 12 and 26 January, 2 February 1938, Portsmouth Evening News, 13 January 1938, Daily Telegraph, 21 January 1938, Southern Weekly News, 29 January 1938; HC 1/10/4/2(b); HC 1/10/4/24; MAF 41/394 Chichester Harbour: byelaws, 1939, p 9, Byelaw No 28. 85 MAF 41/397: prescuttings from from Evening Standard, 12 April 1937 Portsmouth Evening News, 11 February 1939. 86 MAF 41/1431, report of 19 June 1945; Folklore, Vol 60, 1949, p 306: Hornell obituary. 87 MAF 41/1431, minutes of 14 April 1949; MAF 41/397, minutes of 8 April 1937. 88 TNA MAF 209/333, report of 1952 and report to contributory authorities, 31 March 1951. 89 TNA MAF 209/334, minutes of 8 October 1953, 7 December 1955; report of 10 July 1957; reports of 10 March 1958 ad 12 December 1958, 14 December 1960 and January 1961; TNA MAF 209/2000, EDCS membership 1958: letter from C W Randall, Secretary of the EDCS, June 1961, to the Fisheries Secretary at MAF; TNA MAF 209/277, passim. 90 TNA MAF 209/2000, passim. 91 MAF 41/536. 92 TNA MAF 209/3352, SSFD Annual Report, 1 April 1984 - 31 March 1985; CFO report 28 February 1985 and December 1985; 1985 tonnage, Pacific oysters and mortality: Newell 2016, p 26. 93 www.conservancy.co.uk; www.southern-ifca.gov.uk/the-district; nativeoysternetwork.org/portfolio/chopi; https://www.sussex-ifca.gov.uk/oyster- permit. 94 NEF 2018, pp 5-13; priority habitat: (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187870). 95 Morgan 1992, p 27. 96 Thomas 1961, pp 127-29. 97 http://oysterboatterror.org.uk/history; Newell 2016, pp 61-63; Greenhill and Mannering 1997, pp 117-19; Smyllie 2011, pp 251-54; March 2005, pp 153-54.

92

98 Brighton Gazette, 28 July 1864, p 3, quoting s paper on ‘Oysters and Oyster Cultivation’ in the Popular Science Review. 99 WSRO CE/3/3/1 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1869-1892; CE/3/3/2 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1892-1902; CE/3/3/3 Littlehampton Register of Fishing Boats 1902-1937; Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 27 October 1877, p 8.

93