CHAPTER VI.

THE OYSTER ON ITS TRAVELS.

The Isle of Sheppey, the Medway, and Whitstable; Milton, Queenborough, Rochester, and Faversham Oysters; Colchester and Essex Beds; Edinburgh Pandores and Aberdours; Dublin Carlingfords and Powldoodies; Poole and its Oyster-bank; Cornish Oysters and the Helford Beds; Poor Tyacke, and How he was Done; Dredgers and their Boats; Auld Reekie's Civic Ceremonials; Song of the Oyster; its Voyage to Market, and Journey by Coach and Rail.

Who that has travelled by water from London Bridge to Herne Bay—and who among us who live within the sound of Bow bells has not?—should the trip have been made in the beginning of August, but must have noticed, after having passed the Isle of Sheppey, a little fishing-town to his right, in East Swale Bay, raising its head out of the river like a joyous child dressed in its gayest attire, anticipating a long-looked-for holiday? It is the 4th of August, and its holiday is at hand, for to-morrow the oyster season begins; and the town is Whitstable, in Kent, standing out gaily with its bright flags and pennons in beautiful relief from the low marshy soil by which it is surrounded. Then, too, the dredgers, in their picturesque costume, add greatly to the gay appearance of the place, whilst some seventy or eighty vessels lying in the offing bespeak the importance of the oyster traffic between it and the Great Metropolis. What the Lucrine was to the citizen of Rome is the estuary of the Medway with the Swale to the citizen of London. The "Natives" obtained at Milton are in the highest repute, and consumed in every part of England; nor are the Faversham, Queenborough, and Rochester denizens less so; nor, indeed, any of the "breedy creatures" which are raised in the other beds of the Swale or the Medway.

The trade in oysters, as we have seen, has been an object of consideration in England for many ages, and now ranks in importance with the herring, pilchard, and other fisheries. The excellence of our oysters made the formation of artificial beds an object of attention soon after the Roman conquest; and the Kentish and Essex beds show a pedigree in consequence much older than that of the noble descendant of any Norman adventurer who came over with the Conqueror, claiming, on this head alone, precedence for our "Natives" amongst all the oysters of the known world. But Britain is the boasted land of liberty, and the "Natives" of one part of her coast boldly assert their equality with the "Natives" of any other. If London delights in Milton and Colchester oysters, Edinburgh has her "whispered Pandores" and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords[4] and "Powldoodies of Burran;" whilst all round our shores each locality boasts of its own "Natives" as the best oysters in the land. Poole points proudly to her oyster-bank, and tells miraculous tales of her fishery, and of the number of oysters she sends to the London market, besides those which are pickled at sea for the export trade to lands where a fresh oyster is still a luxury unknown. The Poole fishermen who open oysters in their boats for pickling are compelled, by an Act of the Legislature, to throw the shells on the strand, and these, in the course of time, have formed a strong barrier against the waves of the sea at the flow of the tide, having the appearance of an island at high-water; and, simple as it is, such is the sole construction of this celebrated breakwater.

I cannot be expected to take the reader on a voyage of discovery all round the coast, nor to the Channel Islands, to taste the oysters which Providence has spread out for our enjoyment with such a lavish hand. But there is one little spot on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames, from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount's Bay the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael's, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river, a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the "oldest inhabitant," rented certain oyster-beds, famous amongst Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians, "a long time ago," had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London; but when Tyacke rented the beds they were unknown to the good citizens who frequented the oyster taverns, of which the Cock in Fleet Street is but a last lingering type. Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the Mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster dredger think that that Mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters that travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed, so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot at which it touched land. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores of _ulva latissima_ and _enteromorpha_, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster's great delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for reshipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by the next morning, it would be wise to reship his oysters before turning in for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling-pieces, evidently anticipating the Cornishman's intention, and determined to frustrate it at all hazards.

"What do you want here?" he asked of Tyacke.

"The oysters I put down to feed," was the reply. "They were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to reship them, to be in time for to-morrow's market."

"True," replied the Kentishman, "I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about reshipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do."

Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not even be so now; and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the "Beggar's Opera" put it into verse.

The demand for oysters, wherever it exists along our coasts, creates a profitable source of employment to a class of men who necessarily become experienced seamen; and dredging for oysters is carried on in fleets, as the beds mostly lie within a comparatively small space. The boats, which are about fifteen feet long, usually carry a man and a boy, or two men. The dredge is about eighteen pounds weight, and is required to be heavier on a hard than on a soft bottom, and each boat is usually provided with two dredges.

In former days the commencement of the dredging season was held sufficiently important to entitle it to a civic ceremonial, at least such was the wont of the municipal authorities of "Auld Reekie," who also paid a particular regard both as to the supply and the price of the"breedy creatures" furnished to the good citizens of Edinburgh. The "Feast of Shells" was ushered in by the municipality of the ancient city making, for provosts and bailiffs, a somewhat perilous voyage to the oyster-beds in the Frith of Forth; and though the solemnity of wedding the Frith formed no part of the chief magistrate's office, as wedding the Adriatic with a gold ring did that of the Doge of Venice, the welkin was made to ring, as three cheers from all present uprose and announced the lifting of the first dredge upon the deck of the civic barge.

There is something poetical and pretty in the idea, which once prevailed, that the oyster was a lover of music, and as the fishermen trolled their dredging nets they sang,

"To charm the spirits of the deep."

The old ballad in use is still found in the mouth of many a hardy seaman as he pursues his toil to the melodious words—

"The herring loves the merry moonlight, The mackerel loves the wind, But the oyster loves the dredger's song, For he comes of a gentle kind."

Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first station in his destined travels in the company of those to whom long and kindred ties have bound him, on board the smack upon the deck of which they were jointly landed from the deep; and during the whole voyage, if it prove a long one, he is attentively supplied with refreshing water, so that when the smack lays alongside the wharf at which he is to part company with his captors, he is still as lively as when they first took him as a passenger on board.

Arrived in port, the oyster first truly becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery. Shovelled into sacks, or cast anyhow into carts and handbarrows, he may consider himself fortunate if a kindly hand but extends to him, in his great necessity, a drink of water impregnated with salt, instead of his own delicious beverage from the sea. Yet this is a cruelty which should be avoided wherever sea-water can be obtained, because it is neither the salt nor the water which sustains the oyster's life, but the spores of vegetation which abound in the sea, and by mixing salt with fresh water we destroy even the life of the incipient fresh-water plants which the latter contains. It is as great a mockery as when Grumio proposes to give the famished Katherine the mustard without the brawn, and need no longer exist if oyster dealers, who cannot obtain sea-water, would provide themselves with the prepared salts for the instantaneous production of artificial sea-water, the recipe for the preparation of which is thus given in No. 735 of the "Family Herald:"—

"For ten gallons it requires, sulphate of magnesia, 7-1/2 ounces; sulphate of lime, 2-3/4 ounces; chloride of sodium, 43-1/4 ounces; chloride of magnesia, 6 ounces; chloride of potassium, 1-1/4 ounce; bromide of magnesium, 21 grains; carbonate of lime, 21 grains."

This should be allowed to stand exposed to the air in a strong sunlight for a fortnight before it is used, during which time a few growing plants of _enteromorpha_, or _ulva_ should be introduced to throw off spores. These plants cost about one shilling each in London. The water then, when under the microscope, will be found to contain a confervoid vegetable growth, which forms as nourishing a food for the oyster as the spores of sea-weed in its ocean bed. Oysters laid down in a large trough and covered with this water will continue to live and thrive for months; and it was to some such method as this that the Romans were indebted for the preservation of their oysters in inland stews. On no account should oatmeal, flour, or any such _dead_ stuff, be added, which only serves to make the water foul and the oyster sick.

When oysters are to travel by coach or rail, they are usually dispatched in barrels. Where the barrels are packed at the beds, as the Colchester or "Pyfleet barrelled oysters" are, they should not be disturbed till wanted for the table, as they will keep good as they are for a week or ten days; for being carefully packed so as not to spill the water each carries in a reservoir of Nature's providing, they need no other viaticum for the journey.

The moment an oyster in the barrel opens its mouth it dies, because there is nothing in the barrel to sustain its life. It is therefore as well, on the receipt of the little cask, to open it at once by removing the top and the first hoop, and then to place the top on the upper-most layer of oysters, keeping it in position by the addition of some heavy weight, which causes the staves to spread and stand erect; and as the layers of oysters are required for the table, it is only necessary each time to replace the top and the weight to a similar position to keep the remainder fresh for a few days. But the true lover of an oyster will have some regard for his little favourite. Sea-water may be had in London and other large towns for sixpence per gallon, and when that cannot be procured the pound packet of salts, according to the recipe we have given, will not cost more than eighteen-pence at any chemist's, and that quantity will produce three gallons of artificial sea-water. Thus provided, unpack the barrel, and spread out the oysters in a large flat earthenware dish, just covering them with water, and you may keep them for many weeks as fresh as when they first left their beds.

Footnote 4:

The Carlingford oyster is the best in Ireland; a black-bearded fellow, delicate and of fine flavour, to be eaten in Dublin alternately with the Redbank oyster, at a magnificent establishment in Sackville Street, and to be washed down with alternate draughts of brown stout. The Hibernian will tell you that even our Natives are inferior to these. He is right in his patriotism, but wrong in his assertion. How often do our prejudices trip up our judgment!