The Argosy — page 217: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

200 Fish Catching on the Dogger. q The Dogger Bank is thus the main fishing ground of the deep-sea trawlers, a class of men of whose very existence hundreds and thou- sands of the English people are entirely ignorant, notwithstanding the ~ fact that they almost daily share in the fruits of their arduous labours. © Yet, on that weird North Sea, some ten to fifteen thousand men and ~ youths are busily engaged through ‘‘summer’s heat and winters snow,” in all weathers and at all hours, in securing what is, after all, but a very inadequate return for their spell of weary toil by day, and their lonely watch in the darksome night, when the wind shrieks in the shrouds and the boisterous waves rage unceasingly around the tiny fishing craft. Truly there is little of comfort or ease in the trawler’s life at sea. What sort of a personage is this deep-sea fish-catcher ? | In reply it can be said that he is decidedly superior to his brother fisherman whose exertions are confined to the waters which wash the — shores of Great Britain. His wits are quicker, his phraseology more picturesque, his manner more free and his spirits more boisterous. It would perhaps be erroneous to say that he is possessed of higher, skill in his craft, but his powers of endurance are greater; and, accustomed as he is to more deadly and imminent danger, his heroism is tried and proven to a wider extent. . In appearance he need not fear comparison with any other class of ~ seafaring Englishmen. If he should chance to be short of stature,’ s he is certain to be muscular and firmly knit together; if, as is more usually the case, he is a man of powerful build, it will be found ~ that he is remarkably well-proportioned, broad-chested, erect, supple, and possessing a voice whose hearty ‘‘ What cheer, O, what cheer?” — may be heard with ease in a far distant fishing smack, loud and clear above the clamour of the waves. His life is filled up with eight weeks’ unceasing labour in the’ ; German Ocean (sometimes only seventy miles from land, but more commonly at a distance of 250 or 300 miles) and one week’s rest at home, during which his vessel is refitted and undergoes necessary, repairs. Thus, for some fifty days only, in the whole year, is he to be 7 found in his habitation ashore—at Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Hull or Grimsby—and for the remainder of the three hundred and sat! five, his home is on the water, in the dismal cabin of his fishing: smack, , | In former years the deep-sea trawler was, like the breakers by which he is buffeted, a wild and reckless fellow. He was ignorant, — except of the technicalities of his craft; he was drunken; he was. cut off from all the amenities of true social life ; his highest enjoyment consisted in a “‘ spree ” on the foreign coger at sea, or. a. prolonged drinking bout in a wretched alehouse ashore. 1 There is now, however, strong and conclusive evidence that 2 decided change has come over the character of the deep-sea trawlers. They are spoken of as, in the main, pious, upright, gentle, peaceable eed Beads = b COMUGDOOKS.E€OmM))