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Edited transcript of a typed account of the British herring fishing industry (probably prepared as an introduction to a screening of Drifters ) [1929], (Ref. G2.1.19).
[Document begins with a short history of fishing around the British coast.]
Since the Napoleonic wars government support and organisation have gradually turned the tables and the industry is now one of the great industries of the country about equally divided between the Scottish ports and the English. The thousands of drifters which manoeuvre for the shooting berths are from Banff and Buckie and Peterhead and Lowestoft. We have round the coasts between 2,000 and 3,000 of them, all armed in the modern style with engines and smoke-stacks and steam winches to help with the hauling.
The herring shoals, as properly befit the works of the Lord and the wonders of the deep, move fairly mysteriously, science has been after them for half a century but they still keep the majority of their secrets. They will appear suddenly in one quarter, and disappear just as suddenly a couple of months after;* so suddenly that the fishing over a huge area will fizzle out in a night.
In the summer months it is the North East of Scotland, in the fall of the year the grounds round Smith's Knoll, due east from Yarmouth and Lowestoft, and in the winter it is Cornwall and the Scots lochs. But the herring do not emanate from the North Pole and move round, as was once supposed, each quarter has its own visiting tribes, as different from each other to the scientific eye as the Bantus from the Hottentots. Fishing itself is a brave sight, hard to the point of agony with heavy hauls and heavy seas, uncertain to a degree in the matter of returns: but for the layman whose shoulders are out of it, one of the great spectacles of the world.
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Steam and the facilities of steam have increased the catching power of drifters and each carries about two miles of nets, the nets of the fleet at Yarmouth, at Smith's Knoll in fact, would span the Atlantic. But the original zest of the performance remains. The nets are shot down the wind in a straight line, and are thrown out by hand fathom after fathom. They float up-right just below the surface and form a barrier on which the rushing shoals impale themselves. The drifter herself ties up to one end of the line and hangs on while the nets drift in the tide. Shooting depends on what the fishermen call 'appearances', but these are sometimes subtle matters; in some quarters the men will go by a faint fizzing in the water, or they will be guided by the presence of tumbling whales and diving gannets, or the water may be dark with plankton, the minute crustaceans that herring feed on. But then, there are 'lucky' fishermen who could shoot in the Dead Sea and get herring. Each skipper has his own art.
An ordinary hauling which generally takes place in the dark hours of the early morning has all the rudiments of [a] phosphorescent spectacle. The crossing curves of the top and the bottom end of the net are bellied out by the strain of the weather and the shoals come out of the sea in a blanket of light. The great shoulders of the men glistening in oil skins and haul and shake, haul and shake in a slow rhythm that swings with the water beneath them. They may go on for 6, 8, 10 or 12 hours at a stretch if the haul is good, and the labour of it can be complicated by anything from nets torn by passing steamers (without compensation) to nets sunk to the bottom by too much fortune.
With the haul aboard the ships turn swiftly to units of commerce and become involved in the matter of markets: markets for 'fresh', markets for 'pickled', markets for bloaters and kippers and 'reds'. Most of their fish goes to the Baltic countries and cross over as cured herring, but a practice has grown up by which catches are shot straight into the holds of ships with a liberal supply of ice and salt and rushed to their destinations, these are the 'freshers'. Altogether the industry is worth 3 or 4 million pounds to the country but it could mean much more if herrings were as common a food in the home countries as they used to be in, say, the days of Wolsey. Herrings were a national diet in those days and they might be the same national diet today. Caller herring are bonnie fish and there are more of them in the home seas than the market can ever exhaust.
* a characteristic of the herring shoals which Grierson himself experienced when filming Drifters
