The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-02-10
THRONES BUILT on HERRINGs.
How the MiEratfous of This Little
Fish Have Affected the History of
Nations.

{ How the M1EFNttoua OF rms Lutte
Fish Have Affected the History of
Nations.
Ex-ConsulDanieis. in the New York Mail
and Express.
A recent report OF the extraordinary
development Of the Norwegian herring
trade induced me some little tine ago to
make an Investigation INFO the past his
tory Of the herring hshery which may be
of interest TO your readers
/ In many respects this FISH Is one Of the
most remarkable of living things. It was
/ calculated three years ago that no less
\ than u.0l0 miles of herring netting were
cast yearly in the North Sea alone.
! Two Of the species Of whales feed exclu-
/ sively upon herrings, while the cod is
4 a most fvoracious foe. Dr. NELL, the
naturalist. calculated that the one col
ony of gannets at ST. HIda consumed
annually gi.o1l000 of behring's. Yet it is
/ not as fishes 20. gifted with very large
fertility In reproduction. While the
mackereI has been estimated to produce
I 100000 eggs. the sole 1Oo0.00J and the cod
| 100000. the herring is said 10 spawn only
oo.yJJ at a time
1 1t spawns. it IS true, both in spring and
I in autumn, but il must be remembered
/ that il as nshed at all times. 1t may be
'full." that is OF roe or mnt, or n may
\ be empty or ''shotten'-lt is IN both states
an article Of commerce.
y salmon, at certain times, Is unsal-
I able; a herring has no rest, even TO repro
! Cuce its kind. Even when young il is
/ food for man, for whitehall is nothing
/ hUt "horrng-sile, as il is called on the
/ Yorkshire coast. 8 much for the crea-
/ tLIc llself.
"Ihe herring says the editor of Buff
/ fons natural history" lis one Of those
animals which decide the destiny of ma
/ tons Nor. strange as it may seem, IS
/ this statement exaggerated. We must re-
I mc mber Two facts winch lent 40 the nsn-
I cry In the middle ages an Importance
which II cannot relatively possess. The
/ winter feeding OF cattle. as now practised
/ in Europe, is not more than Two or three
/ centuries old. Hence salt fish was in
ancient times a staple article of diet.
/ The second fact was that fasting was
/ compulsory for centuries in Lent in all
Christian lands. Fasting meant eating Of
/ fish. and the demand was on that account
/ vastly increased. So, in the Domesday
book heTrings are mentioned as source
I of wealth, and it was even common for
/ tolls and rents in some places, TO be paid
Z in herrings as a sort of currency In kind.
I Thus Beccles, before the conquest. paid
Z q yearly rent to the Abbey of St. Ed
munds of $1,000 herrings. Yarmouth was
from early times up to the fifteenth cen
/ fury, the great center Of the trade in
England. Its great fair lasted forty days,
I it was thronged by members of nearly
every nationality in Europe, and the red
herring traversed the whole continent as a
/ common article of diet In 1910 William de
Fortitus. Earl of Albemarle, granted to
( the monks of Meaux half an acre of land,
I somewhere in East Hun or Sutton for a
/ storehouse for herrings ana other fish, so
/ that the HUI herring trade is also of an
cient date.
I Not, however. to dwell further on this
aspect of the subject, 1t is most interest
I ing TO note the part the herring and its
migratlons have played in the develop
/ ment OF nations and the progress of civill-
cation. Al tine very dawn of the middle
ages the chief maritime and commercial
| interest centeTs in the rise of the great
I confederation of the hanse towns On the
/ island of the Gothland may still be seen
/ the majestic ruins Of the once powerful
/ city of WHISKY. Later it was Lubbock which
/ succeeded to power.
In the fourteenth century the confeder-
/ acy comprised ninety Of the free cities Of
Germany. They had their great factory
/ at Novgorod. Bergen was theirs, and
the whole trade of Norway. For two cen
/ turtles they had nearly all the trade of
i London, and one tine held the crown of
] England in pawn. Now, 1t was on behring's
that this mighty power was built Their
1 rise was contemporaneou with the choice
by the behring's of the shores of Scania,
on the southeast Of Sweden, for a spav-p-
ing ground, and their trade was chiefly in
fish.
On the arms Of Lubbock may still be seen
the three herrngs plain on a ground of
azure. These fishermen We're proud and
powerful men. Their old proverb is worthy
Of being quoted:
Was whilst begehrenmehr
Ais die alte Lubsche Ehr.'
Thus the herring created the Hanse
towns ard the Eanse towns created the
trade of Northern Europe, as one mound
sterling" still tesufes, sterling being
snort Tor Easterling." the common
name given to the traders of Hanse
At length the herring became scare in
the Baltic, and appepared in Immense
shoais In the North sea. Then arose Am
sterdam, built as il has been said. "upon
herring bones" and the Hanse power
waned as the Hollanders took their place.
IL was Dutchman named Benkel who in
vented the improved method of sailing the
herrings on board the broad Dutch
BUSES or yawls, similar, we may sun
pose, to the picturesque boat which a
few years back, used to be beached in
tIey bay.
Upward of fifteen hundred of these
Dutch buses, of seventy or eighty tons
burden are said to have hshed the seas
along the coasts of the northeast of Eng
land and Scotland in the sixteenth cen
fury Twenty armed ships ACCOMPANIED
them, and 400 dosger boats Of. sixty tons
We're employed in taking the catch to land.
me annual revenue then reaped by these
enterprising Hollanders from an ind,,str,,
in which the English and Scotch We're too
sluggish to compete with them was no less
than S15,6J0O90.
1t was in 1903 that the Dutch fishery re-
celVed a fatal blow by the destruction by
the French of 400 of the busses il. Bressay
sound, in the Shetlands But it is nor 100
much to say that the glorious page Of the
history OF Europe written by the Dutch.
their successful struggles with Spantard
and Frenchman and E1glishman. their
maritime trade with the far east was
I