CHAPTER XV.

OCEAN LIFE.—THE HARVEST OF THE SEA (_concluded_).

The _Clupedæ_—The Herring—Its Cabalistic Marks—A Warning to Royalty—The “Great Fishery”—Modes of Fishing—A Night with the Wick Fishermen—Suicidal Fish—The Value of Deep‐sea Fisheries—Report of the Commissioners—Fecundity of the Herring—No fear of Fish Famine—The Shad—The Sprat—The Cornish Pilchard Fisheries—The “Huer”—Raising the “Tuck”—A Grand Harvest—Gigantic Holibut—Newfoundland Cod Fisheries—Brutalities of Tunny Fishing—The Mackerel—Its Courage, and Love of Man—Garum Sauce—The formidable Sword‐fish—Fishing by Torchlight—Sword through a Ship’s side—General Remarks on Fish—Fish Life—Conversation—Musical Fish—Pleasures and Excitements—Do Fish sleep?

A great and important group of the bony fish is comprised under the family name _Clupedæ_. It includes such useful fish as the herring, pilchard, shad, and anchovy. The family is as interesting to the merchant as to the gastronomist.

The herring hardly needs description here, but it may just be remarked, _en passant_, that its back, indigo‐coloured after death, is greenish during life. The curious markings often found on the herring have been considered by ignorant fishermen to signify mysterious words of cabalistic import. On one November day, near three hundred years ago, two herrings were caught on the coast of Norway, which bore marks resembling Gothic printed characters. “They were presented to the then King of Norway, Frederick II., who was so frightened by the characters he saw on the backs of the innocent fish that he turned ghastly pale, for he thought that they announced his approaching death and that of his queen.” A council of _savants_ was convened, and the learned ones solemnly reported that the words implied, “Very soon you will cease to fish herrings, as well as other people.” Some more politic scientists gave another explanation, but it was useless, for the king died next year, and his late subjects became firmly convinced that the two herrings had been celestial messengers charged to announce that monarch’s sudden end.

The herring abounds in the entire Northern Ocean from the coasts of France and England to Greenland and Lapland. They are very gregarious, and travel in immense shoals, their appearance in any specified locality being uncertain and always sudden. On the coast of Norway the electric telegraph is used to announce to the fishing towns the approach of the shoals, which can always be perceived at a distance by the wave they raise. In the fiords of Norway the herring fisheries are the principal means of existence for the seaboard population. So in 1857 the paternal Norwegian Government laid a submarine cable round the coast 100 miles in length, with stations ashore at intervals conveniently placed for the purpose of notifying the fishermen. In Holland the industries of catching and curing the fish are highly profitable; the fishery is in consequence known as “the great,” while whaling is known as the “small fishery.” To a simple Dutch fisherman, George Benkel, who died in 1397, Holland owes the introduction of the art of preserving and curing the herring. Two hundred years after his death, the Emperor Charles V. solemnly ate a herring on his tomb, as homage to the memory of the creator of a great national industry.

In our country there is also an important trade in the fish. Yarmouth sends out 400 vessels of from forty to sixty tons, the larger carrying a crew of twelve. In 1857 three fishing boats of this seaport brought home 3,762,000 fish. In Scotland the one town of Wick had a few years ago 920 boats employed in the fisheries.

The Dutch use lines 500 feet in length, with fifty or more nets to each. The upper part of these nets is buoyed with empty barrels or cork, while they are kept down by lead or stone weights; they can be lowered by lengthening the cord to which the buoys are attached. The meshes of the nets are so arranged that if the herring is too small to be caught in the first meshes, he passes through and gets caught in the succeeding one. Dr. Bertram went out in a Wick boat to the fishing grounds. He says:—“At last, after a lengthened cruise, our commander, who had been silent for half an hour, jumped up and called to action. ‘Up men, and at them!’ was the order of the night. The preparations for shooting the nets at once began by lowering sail. Surrounding us on all sides was to be seen a moving world of boats; many with sails down, their nets floating in the water, and their crews at rest. Others were still flitting uneasily about, their skippers, like our own, anxious to shoot in the right place. By‐and‐by we were ready; the ‘dog,’ a large inflated bladder to mark the far end of the train, is heaved overboard, and the nets, breadth after breadth, follow as fast as the men can pay them out, till the immense train is all in the water, forming a perforated wall a mile long and many feet in depth, the ‘dog’ and the marking bladder, floating and dipping in long zig‐zag lines, reminding one of the imaginary coils of the great sea‐serpent. After three hours of quietude beneath a beautiful sky, the stars—

“The eternal orbs that beautify the night”—

began to pale their fires, and the grey dawn appearing indicated that it was time to take stock. We found that the boat had floated quietly with the tide till we were a long distance from the harbour. The skipper had a presentiment that there were fish in his net, and the bobbing down of a few of the bladders made it almost a certainty; and he resolved to examine the drifts. ‘Hurrah!’ exclaimed Murdoch of Skye; ‘there’s a lot of fish, skipper, and no mistake.’ Murdoch’s news was true; our nets were silvery with herrings—so laden, in fact, that it took a long time to haul them in. It was a beautiful sight to see the shimmering fish as they came up like a sheet of silver from the water, each uttering a weak death‐chirp as it was flung into the bottom of the boat. Formerly the fish were left in the meshes of the net till the boat arrived in the harbour; but now, as the net is hauled on board, they are at once shaken out. As our silvery treasure showers into the boat, we roughly guess our capture at fifty cranes—a capital night’s work.” Wick boats are not, however, always so fortunate. The herring fleet has been overtaken more than once by fearful storms, when valuable lives, boats, and nets, have been sacrificed.

Early in December, 1879, an apparent epidemic of suicide attacked the herrings and sprats in Deal Roads, and they rushed ashore in such myriads at Walmer that the fishermen got tired of carting them off, and they were left on the beach for all who cared to help themselves. Nature seems now and then to put bounds to over‐population, but if this be the case, no herring famines need be feared, for economical Nature would never have played into the hands of the fishermen who are always at war with her. Such wholesale suicides occur among other forms of animal life. In Africa regiments of ants have been seen deliberately marching into streams, where they were immediately devoured by fish. Rats have migrated in myriads, stopping nowhere, neither day nor night, and have been preyed upon by both large birds and beasts of prey. In the Seychelles some years ago several hundred turtles conspired to die together on the island in front of the harbour, and carried out their decision. Were they the victims of hydrophobia, delirium tremens, or some other disease? Even the gay and sprightly butterfly has been known to migrate in immense clouds from the land straight out to sea, without the remotest chance of ever reaching another shore. What could be the reason for such a suicidal act?

It would be difficult to over‐estimate the value of deep sea fisheries; in which, according to trustworthy statistics, England and Wales alone employ nearly 15,000 boats, with nearly double that number of “hands,” added to whom are over 14,000 others to whom they give occasional employment on the coasts. The report of Commissioners Frank Buckland and Spencer Walpole, who were instructed to investigate the modes of fishing in the two countries named, and how far they were conducted on proper principles, has therefore both importance and interest. It was feared that in certain directions deep‐sea fishing, which undeniably leads to the capture of myriads of young and useless fish, might have the same effect as wasteful fishing and dredging did in the case of the salmon and oyster.

The Commissioners assure us that there is neither ground for alarm nor for legislative interference. The beneficent sea is practically inexhaustible. “Bearing in mind,” wrote a commentator on the Report, “how much has been said regarding the wilful destruction of spawn, it is startling to hear that nobody ‘has ever seen the eggs of soles, turbot, plaice, and other like fish after their extrusion from the parent,’ while, with respect to the finny tribe in general, the Commissioners add: ‘So far as we know, there is, with one exception—herring spawn—no clearly‐established instance of the spawn of any edible fish being raised in a trawl net or taken in any other net.’ With these words one bugbear of the sea disappears. Nature, whatever may be her shortcomings elsewhere, knows how to take care of herself here. She carries on her life‐giving processes beyond our reach, and is veiled in a mystery which even the keen observation of the present time cannot penetrate, for the Commissioners remind us that, generally speaking, ‘little is known either of the seasons in which sea fish spawn or of the places in which the spawn is cast; still less of the time which the spawn, after it is cast, takes to vivify.’ But if the spawn evades the power of man, the young fish are not so fortunate. It is unquestionable that an immense waste of fry of all kinds goes on round our coasts. The trawler, the shrimper, the seine net, and the fixed engine, combine against these little creatures, tons upon tons of which are annually destroyed. At first sight it would seem that a grave matter here presents itself. The Commissioners, however, proceed so to reason away its importance that in the end it assumes very small dimensions indeed. Starting from the indisputable fact that all animals have ‘a tendency to increase at a greater rate than their means of subsistence,’ Messrs. Buckland and Walpole go on to show that this especially applies to sea fish; and they take as an example the fecund herring. Assuming that the British waters contain sixty thousand millions of female herrings, each of which deposits twenty thousand eggs, it follows that the total number of eggs which, but for natural and artificial checks, would come to maturity is twelve hundred millions of millions—an expression which is easy to put on paper, but which the mind can no more comprehend than it can grasp the idea of eternity. Enough that these countless hordes, if compressed by five hundreds into foot cubes, would build a wall round the earth two hundred feet broad and one hundred high. The inference from such astounding figures is that man’s destructiveness can do little. He takes one herring for every half‐million of eggs, while the original stock would be kept up were only one egg to mature out of ten thousand. All fish, it is true, are not as prolific as the herring, but the argument applies to each kind in its degree, and may be summed up generally by the statement that the proportion of spawn and fry which must perish is so great as to reduce the operations of man to limits barely appreciable. On the important related question whether the supply of fish is decreasing, the Commissioners entertain no doubt whatever. They say, ‘so far from the stock of fish decreasing, we believe that the supply of fish, taken on the whole, is at least as great as it has ever been; there are some reasons for even thinking that it is actually increasing.’ On the other hand, they refer to a general impression that the take of flat‐fish, such as soles and plaice, is becoming less; the local explanation referring almost universally to the destruction of fry. Yet while the Commissioners do not, except in the case of soles, contest the alleged decrease, they refuse to recognise the assigned cause, nor, generally speaking, do they see any reason for legislative action of a restrictive nature.” The prospects of our ocean fishing, both as an industry and as a food supply, are, therefore, encouraging. The harvest of the sea is constant, and though there must be local fluctuations, the return for the labour of those “who reap where they have not sowed” is sure.

Of the shad, though not as commonly known as the herring, there are twenty known species. In the season this fish regularly approaches the mouths of great rivers for the purpose of spawning. It is found in the spring in the Rhine, Seine, Garonne, Volga, Elbe, and in many of our own rivers. In some Irish rivers the masses of shad taken have been so great that hardly any amount of exertion has been sufficient to land the net. It sometimes attains a very considerable size, weighing from four to six pounds. The shad taken at sea is considered coarser eating than that caught in rivers.

The sprat has been by some taken for the young of the herring, and the controversy on the subject has at times waxed warm. Some anatomists declare that their peculiarities show no difference but size. It has a serrated belly, which Bertram looks upon as the tuck in the child’s frock, a provision for growth. “The slaughter of sprats,” says he, “is as decided a case of killing the goose with the golden eggs as the grilse slaughter carried on in our salmon rivers.” But Figuier reminds that writer that the young herrings are caught without the serrated belly, and that the curer’s purchase is regulated by the sprat’s rough, and the herring’s smooth, belly. Sprats are often so abundant as to be unsaleable, and are then actually used for manure.

The pilchard visits our coasts at all times, the leading fisheries being in Cornwall. Wilkie Collins has given us a lively and interesting picture of the “look‐out” for their approach and capture.(46) He says: “A stranger in Cornwall, taking his first walk along the cliffs in August, could not advance far without witnessing what would strike him as a very singular and even alarming phenomenon. He would see a man standing on the extreme edge of a precipice just over the sea, gesticulating in a very remarkable manner, with a bush in his hand, waving it to the right and to the left, brandishing it over his head, sweeping it past his feet; in short, acting the part of a maniac of the most dangerous description. It would add considerably to the stranger’s surprise if he were told that the insane individual before him was paid for flourishing the bush at the rate of a guinea a week.(47) And if he advanced a little, so as to obtain a nearer view of the madman, and observed a well‐manned boat below turning carefully to the right and left as the bush turned, his mystification would probably be complete, and his ideas as to the sanity of the inhabitants would be expressed with grievous doubt.

“But a few words of explanation would make him alter his opinion. He would learn that the man was an important agent in the pilchard fishery of Cornwall, that he had just discovered a shoal swimming towards the land, and that the men in the boats were guided by his gesticulations alone in their arrangements for securing the fish on which so many depend for a livelihood.” These watchers are known locally as “huers.” They can easily detect the approach of the shoals, as they darken the water, producing the effect of a cloud. As they approach the fish may themselves be seen leaping and playing on the surface by hundreds; sometimes they are so abundant that the fish behind force those in front ashore, and they are taken by hand or in baskets.

The boats, each of about fifteen tons burden, carry a large, long seine net, kept up by corks and down by lead. The grand object in the fishery, guided by the “huer” on the cliffs ashore, is to drive the shoals into shallow waters and bays.

“The grand object is now to enclose the entire shoal. The leads sink one side of the net perpendicularly to the bottom, the corks buoy the other to the surface of the water. When it has been taken all round the shoal, the two extremities are made fast, and the fish are imprisoned within an oblong barrier of netting. The art is now to let as few of the pilchards escape as possible while the process is being completed. Whenever the ‘huer’ observes that they are startled, and separating at any particular point, he waves his bush, and thither the boat is steered, and there the net is shot at once; the fish are thus headed and thwarted in every direction with extraordinary address and skill. This labour completed, the silence of intense expectation that has hitherto prevailed is broken, there is a shout of joy on all sides—the shoal is secured.” The seine is now regarded as a great reservoir of fish, and may remain in the water for a week or more. The pilchards are collected from it in a smaller net known as the “tuck.” When this net has travelled round the whole circuit of the seine, everything is prepared for the great event—hauling the fish to the surface.

“Now all is excitement on sea and shore; every little boat in the place puts off crammed with idle spectators; boys shout, dogs bark, and the shrill voices of the former are joined by the deep voices of the ‘seiners.’ There they stand, six or eight stalwart, sunburnt fellows, ranged in a row in the seine‐boat, hauling with all their might at the ‘tuck’‐net, and roaring out the nautical ‘Yo, heave ho!’ in chorus. Higher and higher rises the net; louder and louder shout the boys and the idlers; the ‘huer,’ so calm and collected hitherto, loses his self‐possession, and waves his cap triumphantly. ‘Hooray! hooray! Yoy—hoy, hoy! Pull away, boys! Up she comes! Here they are!’ The water boils and eddies; the ‘tuck’‐net rises to the surface; one teeming, convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales, one compact mass of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly striving to escape, appears in an instant. Boats as large as barges now pull up in hot haste all round the nets, baskets are produced by dozens, the fish are dipped up in them, and shot out, like coals out of a sack, into the boats. Presently the men are ankle‐deep in pilchards; they jump upon the benches, and work on till the boats can hold no more. They are almost gunwale under before they leave for the shore.” At the little fishing cove of Trereen, Mr. Wilkie Collins tells us, 600 hogsheads, each of 2,400 fish and upwards, were taken in little more than a week.

The sardine also comes under the _Clupedæ_ family. It derives its commercial name from Sardinia, but is found all over the Mediterranean, the coast of Brittany, &c. On the latter coast the fish are caught in floating nets, and arranged in osier baskets, layer after layer, each boat returning to port when it has secured 25,000.

Space will not permit of more than a passing notice to the flat‐fish, or _Pleuronectidæ_. These fish swim by means of a caudal fin, and they can ascend or descend in the water readily, but they cannot turn to right or left with the same facility as other fish. Most flat‐fish, soles, turbot, flounders, and plaice, are taken by trawl nets. Some of the larger are speared.

The holibut (or halibut) is a fish which attains a great size, sometimes as much as seven feet in length, and weighing 300 pounds. One brought to Edinburgh measured seven‐and‐a‐half feet in length by three feet in breadth; it weighed 320 pounds. In Norway and Greenland a long cord, from which branch thirty or so smaller cords, each furnished with a barbed hook, is employed for their capture. The main cord is attached to floating planks, which indicate the place where it is let down.

The _Gadidæ_ family includes some most important fish, commercially considered, such as the whiting, haddock, and cod, the general form and peculiarities of which are familiar to all.

The cod fish is a most voracious feeder, and is provided with a vast stomach; it eats molluscs, crabs, and small fish, and has been known even to swallow pieces of wood. It is essentially a sea fish, and is never seen in rivers. From the days of John Cabot, the English, French, Dutch, and Americans have prosecuted the great fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland; 2,000 English vessels, manned by 32,000 seamen, are employed in the pursuit. The modern cod‐smack is clipper‐built, has large tank wells for carrying the fish alive, and costs about £1,500. The fish is taken in nets, or by line. Bertram tells us that each man has a line of fifty fathoms in length, and attached to this are a hundred hooks, baited with mussels, pieces of herring, or whiting. “On arriving at the fishing ground, the fishermen heave overboard a cork buoy, with a flagstaff about six feet in height attached to it. The buoy is kept stationary by a line, called the ‘pow end,’ reaching to the bottom of the water, where it is held by a stone or grapnel fastened to the lower end. To the ‘pow end’ is also fastened the fishing‐line, which is then paid out as fast as the boat sails, which may be from four to five knots an hour. Should the wind be unfavourable for the direction in which the crew wish to set the line, they use the oars. When the line, or ‘taes,’ is all out, the end is dropped, and the boat returns to the buoy. The ‘pow’ line is hauled up with the anchor and fishing‐line attached to it. The fishermen then haul in the line, with the fish attached to it. Eight hundred fish might be, and often have been, taken by eight men in a few hours by this operation; but many fishermen say now that they consider themselves fortunate when they get a fish on every fifth hook on an eight‐lined ‘taes’ line.” On our own coasts the cod is principally taken by deep‐sea lines, with many shorter lines depending from them armed with large hooks. One man has in ten hours taken 400, and eight men have taken eighty score in one day off the Doggerbank. The Norfolk and Lincoln coasts afford a large supply; the fish taken is stowed in well‐boats, and brought to Gravesend, whence they are transhipped into market boats and sent to Billingsgate. The store‐ boats with their wells, through which the water circulates, cannot come higher, as the fresh water of the Thames, and possibly some of that which is _not_ too fresh, would kill the fish.

The haddock is also taken with lines. In the village of Findhorn, Morayshire, large numbers of fine haddocks are dried and smoked with the fumes of hard wood and sawdust. Hence the term, “Finnan haddies,” which, when obtained, are the finest for gastronomic purposes, being of superior flavour.

The mackerel (_Scomber scombrus_) is a most valuable fish for man. The tunny, bonita, and mackerel have yielded immense supplies of excellent food, the first‐named being esteemed in parts of France far above any other fish. It is called the salmon of Provence. They attain a far larger growth than the mackerel, specimens having been found of seven, eight, and even nine feet in length, and weighing up to 400 pounds. They are specially abundant in the Mediterranean, where they are usually caught in nets. In Provence they are driven, much as are the pilchards in Cornwall, into an enclosed space called the _madrague_, where at last the fish finds itself ensnared in shallow water. Then “the carnage commences. The unhappy creatures,” says Figuier, “are struck with long poles, boat‐hooks, and other weapons. The tunny‐fishing presents a very sad spectacle at this its last stage; fine large fish perish under the blows of a multitude of fishermen, who pursue their bloody task with most dramatic effect. The sight of the poor creatures, some of them wounded and half dead, trying in vain to struggle with their ferocious assailants, is very painful to see. The sea red with blood, long preserves traces of this frightful slaughter.”

The bonita is principally a tropical fish, not unlike the mackerel, but more than double its size. It is the great enemy of the flying‐fish, and possesses electrical or stinging powers, for any one attempting to hold the living fish is violently shaken as in palsy, and one’s very tongue is tied, and unable to make more than a spasmodic sputter.

The mackerel is common to all European seas. It is the _macquereau_ of the French, the _macarello_ of the modern Romans, the _makril_ of the Swedes, the _bretal_ of some parts of Brittany, the _scombro_ of the Venetians, the _lacesto_ of the Neapolitans, and the _cavallo_ of the Spaniards. It is one of the most universally‐esteemed fish.

The mackerel is very voracious, and has courage enough to attack fish much larger than itself. It will even attack man, and is said to love him, gastronomically speaking. A Norwegian bishop who lived in the sixteenth century records the case of a sailor attacked by a shoal of mackerel, while he was bathing. His companions came to the rescue; but though they succeeded in driving off the fish, their assistance came too late; he died a few hours afterwards.

This fish is generally taken by drift‐nets, usually 20 feet deep, and 120 long, well buoyed with cork, but without weights to sink them. The meshes are made of fine tarred twine. They are in their best condition in June and July. The ancients used to make a sauce piquant from their fat, which was called _garum_, and sold for the equivalent of sixteen shillings the pint. It was acrid and nauseous, but had the property of stimulating jaded appetites. Seneca charged it with destroying the coats of the stomach, and injuring the health of the high livers of his day. A traveller of the sixteenth century, Pierre Belon, found it highly esteemed in Constantinople.

The formidable sword‐fish is also tolerable eating, especially when young, and there are fisheries for its capture in the Mediterranean. The fishermen of Messina and Reggio fish by night, using large boats carrying torches, and a mast, at the top of which one of their number is stationed to announce the approach of their prey, which is harpooned by a man standing in the bows. This fish attains a length of five or six feet, its sword forming three‐tenths of its length. It is one of the whale’s natural enemies, and it objects even to ships passing through its element. There are numerous cases cited of ship’s bottoms having been pierced by it. In 1725, some carpenters having occasion to examine a ship just returned from the tropics, found the sword of one of these animals buried in its lower timbers. They averred that to drive a pointed iron bolt of the same size to the same depth would require eight or nine blows with a thirty‐pound hammer. It was further evident from the position of the weapon that the fish had followed the ship while under full sail; it had penetrated the metal sheathing and three‐and‐a‐half inches of the timber.

And now, before leaving the minor and intermediate types of ocean life for the monsters of the deep, a few general observations may be permitted. Pliny described 94 species of fish; Linnæus described 478; the scientists of to‐day know upwards of 13,000, one‐tenth of which are fresh‐water fish. The reader will then understand why only a few of the more important, useful, or curious have been described in these pages.

A hard man of science once described fish‐life as “silent, monotonous, and joyless.” Modern science has disproved each and all of these statements. As regards the first, there are species actually known which “indulge in jews’‐harps, trumpets, and drums.... Musical fish are a fact of positive knowledge, for not only can they be heard in shoals thrumming their jews’‐harps in unison, but other kinds have been taken in the very act of trumpeting and drumming.” Bertram, as we have seen, speaks of the “death‐ chirp” of the captured herring. The application of the telephone has proved that a fish, placed alone in some water, actually talked to itself! Mr. S. E. Peal, in a letter to a scientific journal, tells us of a large fish, _Barbes macrocephalus_, which converses with a peculiar “cluck,” or persuasive sound, which may be heard as far as forty feet from the water. He also mentions a bivalve of Eastern Assam which actually “sings loudly in concert.”

How fish‐life could be called monotonous and joyless will puzzle any one who has watched them in a large aquarium, where their every movement tells of pleasure, or at least excitement. Imagine, then, their life in the ocean itself. All around them is life—life in constant activity. The ancients said, and Pliny assented to the dictum, that in the water might be found anything or everything that was found out of it, and as much more besides. Then there is the excitement of the chase, in which they may be either the pursued or the pursuers. “Not only,” said a writer in a leading daily journal, “can they indulge themselves in running away from sharks, as we should do from tigers if they swarmed in the streets, in contemplating the while the elephant of the seas sauntering along through his domain, or finding diversion and instruction in the winged process of the flying‐fish or the tree‐climbing of perch, the buffooneries of sun‐ fish and pipe‐fish, the cunning artifices of the ‘angler‐fish,’ the electric propensities of some, the luminosity of others, the venomous nature of these or the grotesque appearance of those—not only is all the variety of experience to be found on the earth to be found also in the water, but even in a wider range and a greater diversity. The sea floor is strewn with marvels, and the rocks are instinct with wonders.” Fish‐life is, then, full of excitement and interest.

An accomplished ichthyologist, Mr. F. Francis, has stirred up the vexed question, “Do fish sleep?” Only a very few fish, the dog‐fish being one of the few exceptions, can close their eyes at all. Still, on the other hand, some human beings, and notably infants, can sleep with one or both eyes open, while the hare is credited with being able to take his nap in the latter condition. Fish would seem to require sleep from their constant activity; but in actual fact, no scientific watcher has yet caught one asleep.