page_title: Traditional fishing boat
section_title: European boats
hierarchical_section_title: Traditional fishing boat / European boats
caption_attribution_description: English: Norse Herring Boat, fig 2 of article on Rigging, from 1911 Enc. Brit.
context_page_description: Traditionally, many different kinds of boats have been used as fishing boats to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Even today, many traditional fishing boats are still in use. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, at the end of 2004, the world fishing fleet consisted of about 4 million vessels, of which 2.7 million were undecked boats. While nearly all decked vessels were mechanised, only one-third of the undecked fishing boats were powered, usually with outboard engines. The remaining 1.8 million boats were traditional craft of various types, operated by sail and oars.
context_section_description: Boats in South East Asia and Polynesia centred on canoes, outriggers and multihull boats. By contrast, boats in Europe centred on framed and keeled monohulls.
  The Scandinavians were building innovative boats millennia ago, as shown by the many petroglyph images of Nordic Bronze Age boats. The oldest archaeological find of a wooden Nordic boat is the Hjortspring boat, built about 350 BC. This is the oldest known boat to use clinker planking, where the planks overlap one another. It was designed as a large canoe, 19 m long and crewed by 22–23 men using paddles. Scandinavians continued to develop better boats, incorporating iron and other metal into the design, adding keels, and developing oars for propulsion. Another Nordic shipfind is the Nydam boat, found preserved in the Nydam Mose bog in Sundeved, Denmark. It has been dendro dated to 310-320 AD. Built of oak, it is also clinker-built, is 23 metres long and was rowed by thirty men.
  By 1000 A.D. the Norsemen were pre-eminent on the oceans. They were skilled seamen and boat builders, with clinker-built boat designs that varied according to the type of boat. Trading boats, such as the knarrs, were wide to allow large cargo storage. Raiding boats, such as the longship, were long and narrow and very fast. The vessels they used for fishing were scaled down versions of their cargo boats. The Scandinavian innovations influenced fishing boat design long after the Viking period came to an end. For example, yoles from the Orkney Island of Stroma were built in the same way as the Norse boats, as were  the Shetland yoals and the sgoths of the Outer Hebrides..
  In the 15th century, the Dutch developed a type of sea-going herring drifter that became a blueprint for subsequent European fishing boats. This was the herring buss, used by Dutch herring fishermen until the early 19th centuries. The ship type buss has a long history. It was known around 1000 AD in Scandinavia as a bǘza, a robust variant of the Viking longship. The first herring buss was probably built in Hoorn around 1415. The last one was built in Vlaardingen in 1841. The ship was about 20 metres long and displaced between 60 and 100 tons. It was a massive round-bilged keel ship with a bluff bow and stern, the latter relatively high, and with a gallery. The busses used long drifting gill nets to catch the herring. The nets would be retrieved at night and the crews of eighteen to thirty men would set to gibbing, salting and barrelling the catch on the broad deck. The ships sailed in fleets of 400 to 500 ships to the Dogger Bank fishing grounds and the Shetland isles. They were usually escorted by naval vessels, because the English considered they were "poaching". The fleet would stay at sea for weeks at a time. The catch would sometimes be transferred to special ships (called ventjagers), and taken home while the fleet would still be at sea (the picture shows a ventjager in the distance).
  During the 17th century, the British developed the dogger, an early type of sailing trawler or longliner, which commonly operated in the North Sea. The dogger takes its name from the Dutch word dogger, meaning a fishing vessel which tows a trawl. Dutch trawling boats were common in the North Sea, and the word dogger was given to the area where they often fished, which became known as the Dogger Bank. Doggers were slow but sturdy, capable of fishing in the rough conditions of the North Sea. Like the herring buss, they were wide-beamed and bluff-bowed, but considerably smaller, about 15 metres long, a maximum beam of 4.5 m, a draught of 1.5 m, and displacing about 13 tonnes. They could carry a tonne of bait, three tonnes of salt, half a tonne each of food and firewood for the crew, and return with six tonnes of fish.  Decked areas forward and aft probably provided accommodation, storage and a cooking area. An anchor would have allowed extended periods fishing in the same spot, in waters up to 18 m deep. The dogger would also have carried a small open boat for maintaining lines and rowing ashore.
  During the same period, small boats were also un
caption: Norse herring boat
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