The record-union., 1891-03-15
WAKEMAN'S WANDERINGS.
Among the Waterside Folk Of
the North Sea.
Old Yarmouth and Her storm-Beaten
Harbors-Graphic Description OF a
Night on a Herring Smack - The
Yarmouth Bloaters.
Especial Correspondence Of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1911

Especial Correspondence OF the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1911
YARMOUTH, England, Feb. 19, 1891.
Pilgriming in many lands / have been
much among their waterside folk-with
the fishermen of Algiers, who are con-
glomerate race of Greeks, Italians, Span
iards and 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 fishermen, supersti-
tious and sodden above all others; with
the brave, kind men of Claddagh, at Gal
way, and those along the wondrous Kerry
coast; with the lazy fishermen of the
dreary Azores, who, transferred to our
own coasts, prove the most valuable re-
cruits to our east-shore fishing-feets:
with the cap and tasseled pescadores of
Cuba, brigands all in looks and ways;
with the squatty 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 chief quarry
is the herring, all along the grand Maine
coast to the mist-wreathed crags of wild
Manan-and 1 have been continually inn
pressed with the almost indefinable and
wholly indeScribable sadness that seems
to brood over and among all this class of
people.
1t is in their cabins and homely social
life. 1t is in their voices and looks. In
repose, it sets on their faces pitifully.
Reused into some great activity, in storm,
in taking fish, or in saving lives, they
have grand, earnest faces. these fisher
men. 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 tremulousness
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 Secretto each conscious
ness some savage threat of reprisal; as if
over every little comfort, home joy, or
well-earned content, hung the specter-
hand of fate, coming closer to the inner
vision every time the fisherman's heart
grows glad. In whatever degree this is
universal, it seems to me to be more
marked among the fishermen of Var
mouth than l have ever found it else
where revealed. ] believe Dickens saw
and felt this here at this old fishing port
when he created out Of his great and ten
der heart the pathetic character of the
Peggottys: simple, tender, true; scorning
baseness; resolute in all manly attributes;
majestic in suffering and forgiveness; and
through and over all the pathetic thread
of esadness, quivering like an endless
plant in melodious though mournful
song.
1t is surely here among all these thou
sands of Yarmouth fishermen, wives and
BARNS. The upward, far look in their
eyes, has come as a heritage of centuries
of dolor and loss. The set, stern shut
ting of the jaws and lips tells better than
history can of the endless fsher-fight.
against the elements 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!"
And so they have. A desperate and up-
ceasing struggle against the elements,was
necessary on the part of Yarmouth folk,
past and present. to retain their very ex-
iStence, as well 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 suspass
the record of Yarmouth folk in their
struggles to preserve their port For
hundreds of years it was the evsr-recur-
ring victim of destructive tempeSts and
shifting sands. Seven different harbors
were eXcavated between the midale: of
the fourteenth century and the time of
Elizabeth. While the storms and the
sands were destroying one harbor after
another, war, rebellion, pestilence and
famine assailed the brave Yarmouth folk
ashore. In the old books one can read
how they sold their church plate, bells
and vestments for funds to preserve the
harbor. Again you can find where every
inhabitant, save the shipwrights at work
on her ring-boats, were compelled to la
Dor three days of every week, on Sunday,
Monday and Tuesday, at the excavations.
They worked first and worshiped after
wards, in East Anglias, in those rigorous
old days AT another time, when the
danger was imminent, the precious store
OF the towns gunpowder was sold for
means with which to save the port. And
again, when the sea had almost buried
the wharves and town in sand, the entire
inhabitants, divided into four bands, la
bored day and night for months, and
Yarmouth was saved. The seventh har-
Dor done, it has since stood the greatest
monument to human pluck and inyinci-
bility that can be found in all Britain to-
day.
One cannot help having an admiration
and affection for men made out of this
sort of stuff; and to know them in their
humble homes, in their haunts and resorts
of the quaint old town, and in their
dangerous toll of gathering the harvests
OF the deep, is to possess a long-remem-
peTtu pleasure anu uellgQC. 1nelr meth
Ods of fishing vary little at the present
time from those in vogue for the past hun
dreds of years, save that the little open
boats formerly in use have been sup
planted by fine-decked smacks; as is true
with the fishermen of the entire British
coasts, barring those of the west and
northwest Irish Islands, where the an
cient curragh, or skin-keeled canoe, is
still in use. Though-long-line and deep
sea fishing is prosecuted by many the
year round. and, during the winter
months under the most perilous circum-
stances known to any fishermen on the
globe, the paramount interest at Var
mouth, from the f1sherman's standpoint,
is centered in the herring fisheries of this
coast. These made Yarmouth. They sus-
tanned the city and it's citizens. At the
present time it is reckoned that the city
increases its population three-fold, and
houses 10000 souls during the season.
two-thirds of this number being drawn
here solely by the herring industry.
Again, this number is doubled by eXcur-
sionists and seaside loiterers from the
near manufacturing cities, and even from
far-away London itself; so that from
June until September, it is no uncom-
mon thing for Yarmouth to hold from
100000 to 10000 people.
Now as of old the merchants of Var
mouth, Lowestoft, Gorleston and other
near ports, fit out large decked boats of
from so to so tons burthen, the Yarmouth
and near coast fleet numbering, perhaps,
1900 of these vessels. Each one is
manned with master. mate, hawSeman,