Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-03-15
YARM0UTHBLOATERS.
Wakeman Describes HOW the Fa-
nous Edibles Gets Into Market.
A NIGHT ON THE NORTH SEA.
Nets Spread at Even and Drawn Full Of
Wriggling Fish at Dawn.
TIE STRANGE SADNESS OF THE FOLK

YARMOUTH, ENGLAND, Feb. 2S.-Pii
griming in many lands, 1 have been much
among their waterside foIk--with the fisher
men of Algiers, who are a conglomerate
race of Greeks, Italians, Spaniards anu
Arabs; with the fishermen of Sicily, gloomy
and voiceless as Gypsy dogs; with those Of
Barcelona, the giants of the south of Spain
with Biscayan. Breton and Cornish fisher.
men, superstitious and sodden above all
others; with the brave, kind men of Clad
dagh, at Galway, and those along the won
J drous Kerry coast; with the lazy fishermen OF
the dreamy A cores, who, transferred to our
own coasts, prove the most valuable recruits
to our east shore fishing fleets; with the cap
and-tasseled pescadores OF Cuba, brigands
| all In looks and ways; with the squstty
Eskimos of the Labrador coast, satisfied with
any fruitage of the deep WHICH will barely
sustain life; with the crofter fisher of the
North Scottish and Shetland coasts; and
with our own brave Gloucester men who risk
their lives upon the Grand Banks, and the
'Quoddy fishermen whose chiefquarry is the
herring, all along the grand Maine coast to
the mist wreathed crags OF wild Manan-and
l have been continually impressed with the
almost indefnable and wholly indescribable
sadness that seems to brood over and among
all this class Of people.
Sadness Sets on Every Face.
1t is in their cabins and homely social life.
1t is in their voices and looks. In repose it
some great activity, in storm, in takilg fish,
or in saving lives, they have grand, earnest
faces, these fishermen. But in the quiet
hours, there is something hunted, wearied,
worried. dreading and dreadful to be read
in the lines of their faces, in the tremulous-
ness of their voices, and in the light which
shines from their eyes, that all their brave
and hearty ways cannot hide or disguise
1t is as if the sea, from which they live, had
whispered in secret to each consciousness
some savage threat of reprisal; as If over
every little comfort, home joy, or we'll
earned content, hung the spectre hand Of
fate, coming closer to the inner vision
every time the fsherman's heart grows glad.
In whatever degree this is universal, it
seems to me to be more marked among the
fishermen of Yarmouth than l have ever
found it elsewhere revealed. l believe
Dickens saw and felt this here at this old
fishing port, when he created out of his
great and tender heart the pathetic charac-
ters of the Peggottys-simple, tender, true;
scorning baseness; resolute in all manly at
tributes; majestic in suffering and forgive
ness; and through and over ALL the pathetic
thread Of sadness, quivering like an end
less plant in melodiou though mournful
song.
Their Battles With the Sea.
It is surely here among all these thou-
sands of Yarmouth fishermen, wives and
bairns The upward, far look in their eyes,
has come as a heritage of centuries OF dolor
and loss. The set stern shutting of the
jaws and lips, tells better than history can
of the endless 6sher-fght against the ele-
ments and poverty. For that matter, all
old Yarmouth folk have the resolute, half
defiant expression that tells as plainly as
book can: "This is Yarmouth, as you see
it, because we have battled with the sea a
thousand years."
ceasing struggle against the elements was
necessary on the part of Yarmouth folk,
past and present. to retain their very exist
ence, as we'll as their trade in herrings The
history of the Dutch in their battles for the
preservation of their dykes against the |
gnawing of the sea, cannot surpass the rec
ord of Yarmouth folk in their struggles to
preserve their port. For hundreds of years
it was the ever-recurring victim of destruct- |
i've tempests and sitting sands. Seven
different harbors were excavated between |
the middle of the fourteenth century and the |
time of Elizabeth.
Rebellion, PestfIence and Famine.
While the storms and the sands were de- |
stroying one harbor alter another, war, re-
be!iion, pestilence and famine assailed the
brave Yarmouth folk ashore. In the old |
books one can read how they sold their
plate, bells and vestments ior funds
to preserve the harbor. Again you
can find where every inhabitant, save
the shipwrishts at work on her
days of every week, on Sunday, Monday
and Tuesday, at the excavations. They
worked first and worshiped aiterward, in
East Anglia in those religious days. At an
other time, when the danger was most immi-
1ent, the precious store of the towns gun
powder was sold for means with which to
ave the port. And again, when the sea had
almost buried the wharves and town in
Iand, the entire inhabitants, divided into
our bands, labored day and night for
months, and. Yarmouth was saved. The
seventh harbor done. it has since stood, the
greatest monument to human pluck and in
that can be found in all Britain
o-day.
One cannot help having an admiration
md affection tor men made out of this sort of
tuf1; and to know them in their humble
ZONES, in their haunts and resorts of the
uainJ old town, and in their dangerous toll
# gathering the harvests of the deep, is to
possess a long-remembcre pleasure and de.
light.
Herring Fishing the Big Thing.
Their methods OF fishing vary little at the
resent time from those in vogue for the
'ast hundreds o. years; save that the little
pen boats formerly in use have been SUD-
'lanted by fine decked smacks; as is true
With the fishermen oil the entire British
casts, barring those of the west and north.
rest Irish islands, where the ancient cur
agh, or skin-keeled canoe, is still In use.
'hough Longtime and deep-sea fishing is
rosecuted by many the year round, and.
uring the winter months under the most
erilous circumstances known to any fisher
len on the globe, the paramount interest at
.armouth, from the fisherman's standpoint,
centered in the herring fisheries of this
past.
These made Yarmouth. They sustained
lie city and its citizens. At the present
me it is reckoned that the city increases its :
opulation three-fold, and houses 60 600 !
,uls during the season." two thirds of this v
umber being drawn here solely by the her.
ng industry. Again, this number is '
oubled by excursionists and seaside lott
ers from the near manufacturing cities. a
I'D even from far-away London itself; so j
lat from June until September it is no un- ?
'mmon thing for YarmouA to hold from f
., 600 to 120. 900 people. a
The Crew of a Smack.
Now, as of old, the merchants of Var a
outh, Lowestoft, Gorleston and other near \