THE FISHERMEN OF ENGLAND

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 79, 27 December 1939, Page 8

THE FISHERMEN OF ENGLAND

Duties In Wartime SECTIONS FOR DEFENCE AND FOOD SUPPLIES

Though many of the fishermen of England are still at work with net and trawl, many others, while the ua> lasts, will be searching the seas on a more hazardous quest (writes a cotrespondent of the London •'Observer”). As in 1914-18, fishing-vessels are

going out as mine-sweepers—bunting for the deadliest catch ot all. Again the Government has taken over a large part of the fieet. Hull, for example, usually with 260 to 280 boats, has only 35 left for normal work, and these are away at piesent in the distant waters of the fat north, looking for cod and ling, dogfish and catfish, Icelandic turbot and halibut, White Sea and Icelandic plaice. The North Sea fieet brings in, roughlv, the same type of catch. West Coast boats, it would appear, are not adapted for the task of minesweeping, so tlie men of Milford Hawn, Fleetwood, and the other ports can go to the fishing grounds on their customary errand. Camouflage Nets. Groups of fishermen and their families are helping in another way—on shore. The Ministry of Supply needs camouflage nets in hundreds of thousands, and in many cottages women and girls are now braiding the nets by hand. Ultimately they will be used for hiding guns and ammunition wagons. tanks,'and stores, and the innumerable objects that must be concealed from enemy aircraft. Titus, at the same time, English fishermen (and women) arc providing food, guarding the coasts, and helping in land defence. The mine-sweepers have the most perilous task, liven the rigours of Arctic fishing—and twothirds of our fish is caught in those waters—pale before the constant watch for the lurking mine. The anthem of the craft, nevertheless, must always be that cheerful poem of Kipling's, in which five trawlers, their names a jaunty flourish, do their work off the Foreland Sweep completed in the fairway.

No more mines remain. Sent, back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gam.

Now, after 20 years, the sweepers have returned to their posts. Steam trawlers and drifters are not meant for show. But anyone seeking the traditional colour of the fishing industry can find it still when the smaller sailing boats put out on a favourable evening—their sails, in the fiery and smouldering lights of an autumn wood, matching russets with tawny yellows, ochres, browns, and Venetian reds. Dark Weather. On such occasions, off Mevagissey or at Plymouth, when sails are flickering from the Cattewater, it is possible to forget the auxiliary petrol engine. An early morning fish auction on Plymouth Barbican, quay glistening, noise prodigious, is as lively a scene as any when New Street was really new.

Everywhere, though, whether the fishing is deep-sea or inshore, there are weeks of dark weather when tlie boars are grey shadows in the grey, and the crews must struggle for bare existence. Seekers for the romance of fishing may get a blunt reply. Deep-sea men, who voyage in the farthest north, often work for 40 hours on cit'd without rest in pitching seas and semi-twilight. Even so,’ this is preferable to mine-sweeping and a life on Unity, Claribel, and Stormcock in time of war.

Tlie war, it seems, Ims brought a small addition to our fishing licet. A new company has been formed to operate five trawlers which escaped from Poland before the outbreak; they will now become British ships.