The Release of - Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings - Fishupdate.com - FISHupdate The Release of – Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings – Fishupdate.com Posted on by systemwyvex • 0 Comments The Release of – Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings Published: 24 May, 2011 The history of the herring and those whose lives have been devoted to getting it to the tables of the masses. The story of herring is entwined in the history of commercial fishing. For over two millennia, herring have been commercially caught and its importance to the coastal peoples of Britain cannot be measured. At one point tens of thousands were involved in the catching, processing and sale of herring. They followed the shoals around the coast from Stornoway to Penzance and many towns on Britains East Coast grew rich on the backs of the silver darlings. Fishing historian Mike Smylie looks at the effects of herring on the people who caught them, their unique ways of life, the superstitions of the fisher folk, their boats and the communities who lived for the silver darlings.

The trouble with Herring is that it doesnt have a good public image. It was regarded once as food of the poor and fresh Herring is considered to be bony and unpalatable. If the British public were persuaded to eat at least two Herring a week then there would almost certainly be an improvement in the publics health. The book includes: * Revealing the fascinating yet little-known history of the herring. * Documenting its importance and versatility. * Illustrated with a variety of maps and photographs, both black and white and colour. * Mouth watering recipes including Baked Buttered Bloaters, Salmagundy and Super Sgadan. Mike Smylie, also known as Kipperman, has been researching the history of the herring for nearly three decades. He has written extensively on fishing vessels and the fishing industry, including Fishing Around Morecambe Bay, Fishing in Cornwall and Fishing the European Coast for The History Press. He divides his time between Bristol and Greece and can often be spotted at fishing festivals manning his herring smoker.

Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings Mike Smylie Published 13th June 2011, £12.99 hardback ISBN: 978-0-7524-5951-6 Silver Darlings are hallmark of fishing heritage Tourism and Business Silver Darlings are hallmark of fishing heritage A small silver creature is swimming back into the hearts – and stomachs – of a seaside town where it once fed a fishing boom. The humble herring is woven into the history of Great Yarmouth, where millions of them were hauled ashore by a fleet of “drifter” boats that filled the harbour. By the early 20th century the fishing grounds off Great Yarmouth were the most productive in the world and the port was the most important in the country. That fleet is now down to a handful, but the fish – known as Silver Darlings – are again proving a popular, healthy dish that provides an authentic taste of the area's seafaring heritage.

Visitors and locals alike savour them at special festivals and events staged during the year, harking back to the 1100s when the port was home to a herring fair attracting merchants from all over Europe. Fisherman Paul Williams is one of the remaining herring fishermen, who nets, catches, smokes them into kippers, and sells them – four or six for £1 depending on supplies – at the family's wet fish shop in town. A lot of people enjoyed them as a local delicacy, and they were bought by local hotels for the breakfast menu, he said: “Most of our customers are 50-plus, but youngsters also tuck into them at festivals where they outsell burgers twice over. “We just need to find more ways of promoting them,” added Mr Williams, whose father worked on the drifters.

His favourite way of enjoying a herring is “fried in dripping with salt, vinegar and bread” and he added: “Great Yarmouth herring taste the best.” Herring were championed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on his Friday Night Feast TV show, when he encouraged people to “ditch the cod and embrace the humble herring” which was tasty and rich in healthy Omega 3 oil, but had fallen out of fashion. He came up with three ways of eating herring in linguine, tacos or picked as a starter or main course salad. The Prom Hotel, Great Yarmouth, believes there is genuine interest in the revival of the historic herring and is planning a cooking and comedy fundraising event for a local charity this summer. Herring will feature in all the dishes. James Docwra, operations manager, said: "We would love to see Yarmouth as closely associated with the herring as Cromer is with its lovely crabs, and we hope that our summer event will become an annual fixture in the town's culinary calendar." Herring features on the menu at Great Yarmouth's renowned Seafood Restaurant on North Quay.

Owner for the past 36 years Miriam Kikis said: “Herring is a wonderful nutritious food filled with vitamins and oils that are good for your heart and brain, but fashion changes and it is not in big demand which is a shame.” She loves herring and serves it pan-fried with lemon, or with mustard and says herring roe on toast with capers is a tasty starter. Stocks of herring were now huge compared with 20 years ago, said Mr Williams, so there was plenty of scope to feed any increase in demand. But due to the drop in demand for the human dinner table much of catch currently goes to zoos to feed penguins or as bait for other fishing. Greater Yarmouth Tourism and Business Improvement Area Limited is campaigning to bring in more visitors to the area by promoting its attractions and events, which include a Maritime Festival where herring sizzle on the quayside barbecues.

GYTABIA cafe and restaurant group chairman Tony Smith said: “Herring have been part of local life for centuries - not just as a food, but as an important part of the tourism economy because landlords' letting seasons were lengthened when the Scottish fishergirls arrived after the summer holidaymakers went home. “We would encourage visitors to sample our local seafood as part of their trip to get a flavour of the area's past, and present.” Herring Events Chasing the silver darlings - Scottish Fishing : Scotland Magazine Issue 69 NEW! Tablet Edition This article is 3 years old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements. Copyright Scotland Magazine © 1999-2017. All rights reserved. To use or reproduce part or all of this article please contact us for details of how you can do so legally.

Chasing the silver darlings - Scottish Fishing Tweet John Hannavy explores the story of Scotland's fishing industry Standing on the quayside at Newhaven harbour on the Firth of Forth as dusk falls and the lights of Granton brighten against a dramatic late autumn evening sky, it is hard to imagine that the area was once right at the heart of one of Scotland’s major industries. It is even harder when it is one of those magical placid nights on the river when there appears to be hardly a ripple on the water. Fishing boats started using Granton harbour in the mid 1880s, and eventually numbering about eighty. If Granton was their port of registration, the trawlers carried the registration letters ‘GN’. Newhaven, on the other hand, can trace its fishing heritage back more than five centuries, and by the time of the development of the herring industry, was a busy port supporting a thriving community.

A century ago, more than 600,000 tons of herring alone were landed at British fishing ports each year – a quarter of a million tons of them by Scottish boats – the majority of which were destined to be gutted, cleaned, salted or pickled, and packed in barrels by an industry which predominantly employed women – and women in their thousands. These women were following a tradition of supporting their fishermen husbands which can be traced back for centuries. At its peak, around 1906-7, two and a half million barrels of herring alone were exported each year from Scotland, and the fishing industry was one of the country’s most important employers. While men caught the fish and landed them on the quayside, the majority of the work thereafter was undertaken by a huge workforce of women, traditionally the female members of the fishermen’s families, but as the herring industry grew exponentially in the closing decades of the 19th century, and was increasingly concentrated in larger centres, many of them had to adopt an itinerant lifestyle and travel and work where the fish were.

That industrialisation of the fish processing industry effectively sounded the deathknell of many of Scotland’s smaller ports, taking away not just the work on the boats, but the women’s employment in processing and selling of the fish. It also created a group of almost legendary women – ‘The Scotch Fisher Lassies’ as Edwardian postcards invariably described them – who travelled the length of the east coast each year following the fish. The industry employed huge numbers of people, but the herring was a fickle fish. If the huge shoals of ‘silver darlings’ did not appear off shore at the appointed season, then there was very real hardship around the coasts of Scotland and in the many industries which depended on the success of the fishing for their own success – including the barrel-makers and ship chandlers. Duncan Macara, a photographer and stationer in late Victorian Edinburgh was just one of many photographers to take and market photographs of the fisherwomen – the most famous being the pioneer photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the 1840s.

On the back of one of Macara’s cards, he told his customers a version of the history of the Newhaven women:- They keep themselves entirely aloof from their neighbours, and literally dwell apart though hemmed in by the suburbs of Edinburgh and Leith. Generally supposed to be of Flemish or Dutch descent, intermarrying with “the Scotch” was, not many years before, looked upon as little short of a crime; and though recent years have greatly lessened this strong caste prejudice, such marriages are still looked down upon. The women sell the fish – their husbands’, fathers’, or that of other fishermen – in Edinburgh, each fishwife generally having her own round in the city. Oysters are heralded at night with the well-known melodious cry of “Caller On”. The fishwife’s dress consists of a cotton jacket, of a vivid red and yellow mixed pattern, tied round the waist by her apron strings, and tucked round in front; two striped petticoats – one kilted up in front, the other hung in the usual way – of the same bright colours as the jacket; blue stockings; and high-quartered shoes.

She wears a spotted handkerchief round her neck, and, in the maturer matron, an old-fashioned white cap on her head. But by the time Macara was photographing the fisherwomen of the Firth of Forth, the industry had changed from one where locally caught fish were cleaned and sold by local women, to an industry where an itinerant workforce went where the work was. The catalyst for this change was the huge growth in Britain’s fishing fleets – and in the catches they brought ashore – which came with the advent of steam trawlers. It was said that the labours of every fishing boat which went to sea in search of either herring or white fish supported the employment of up to a hundred people. So, if that is anywhere close to the truth, the million or so tons of mixed fish landed in Britain in each of the opening years of the twentieth century – when there were about two thousand steam trawlers and at least fours times that number of sailing smacks – must have supported a workforce close to one million people. But then fish stocks started to diminish, and many of the fishing ports lost all but the smallest of their fishing boats, as bigger vessels were concentrated in fewer larger ports.

Today the days of plentiful North Sea herring are little more than a distant memory. For many of the smaller ports, the great days never returned, and their picturesque harbours largely became home to pleasure craft rather than working boats. Peterhead bucked the trend for a time – it has been the largest fishing port in Europe since the 1970s – but the days in the 80s when the port had over five hundred trawlers working out of it, staying at sea for a week each trip, are now also gone. With fish stocks diminishing further, quotas reducing, and regulations on sustainable fishing increasing, the lot of the deep sea trawlerman does not get any easier. Inshore fishing still takes place around much of Scotland’s shores, but what goes on today is a far cry from the days when several Scottish ports boasted that they were so busy that at times it was possible to walk from one side of the harbour to the other simply by stepping from one boat to another.

Memories of Scotland’s once-great fishing industry are preserved in places such as the superb Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther in Fife, the Aberdeen Maritime Museum, the Fraserburgh Heritage Centre, Peterhead’s Maritime Heritage Centre and Unst Boat Haven in Shetland – as well as in the countless images taken by generations of photographers. A visit to the Anstruther museum is especially recommended. Even my own photographs, taken over the last fifty years, tell part of the story – the solitary trawler making its way into Scrabster harbour on a grey summer morning in 1972, that picture itself now more than forty years old, offers a striking contrast to Alexander Johnson’s image of hundreds of herring boats in Wick’s Poultenay Harbour a century earlier. Silver Darlings | Frostys ramblings a left look at life Home PETER FROST licks his lips at the news that outstanding conservation work has meant his beloved nosh has, once again, become a regular culinary delight. Today the most sustainable fish from British waters is the herring (Clupea harengus). That’s the news from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the international organisation established to promote sustainable fishing and safeguard future seafood supplies.

It is an amazing and heart warming bit of news, especially for people who like me love a breakfast kipper or a bismark herring or rollmop for my tea. It is also good news for the health of the nation — herring is an oily fish packed with omega oils. Our North Sea herring spawn near the coast in small and well defined areas where the seabed consists of gravel and small stones. The eggs are attached to the gravel and hatch after about three weeks depending on temperature. Herring stocks are central to the North Sea ecosystem both as predator and as prey. Herring feeds mainly on plankton and juvenile fish. In turn they are an important part of the food chain for cod, saithe, whiting, mackerel as well as sea birds and marine mammals. The history of the British herring industry is a roller coaster of glut and famine. The very name of the fish that once existed in unbelievable abundance comes from the Old German for “multitude.” No wonder our fisherfolk named the easy to catch and profitable herring the silver darlings. At the peak of the herring boom, Britain exported a quarter of a million tons a year. They were exported in many forms.

Most common were barrels of herrings packed in salt. They would go to Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe as well as to British and particularly Scottish emigrants in all corners of the Empire. At home fresh herring was popular, healthy and relatively cheap while smoke houses in places like Craster, Great Yarmouth, Fleetwood and the Isle of Man produced kippers, bloaters and good red herrings for the breakfast tables of the nation. Ports from Lerwick in Shetland to Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast had vast herring fleets and as the shoals of herring moved south over the season the fleets followed them down the east coast. It was said that when the herring fleet was in port you could walk right across huge harbours on the decks of the drifters. Following the fleets came the large army of Scottish women many from Shetland and the north Scottish ports, who travelled south each season to gut and pack the herring in barrels of salt. The women, some as young as 15, travelled throughout the season for generations from Stornoway, Lerwick and Peterhead as far south as Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

Herring brought them hard work but also adventure, escape from home and a chance at an independent income. In the early 19th century, the British government subsidised the catches of herring boats larger than 60 tons and paid a bounty on all herring sold abroad. The coming of the railways, as a means of faster transport, gave an opportunity to fishermen to deliver their catches to markets much more quickly than in the past. Now fresh rather than preserved fish became a major part of inland town and industrial city diets. At the industry’s peak there were as many as 30,000 vessels involved in herring fishing off the east coast, not to mention others in the Irish Sea. They were joined by 10,000 boats from all over Europe. At the peak of the herring boom in 1907, 2.5 million barrels of fish were cured and exported. For the poorer people of Britain in the 19th and early 20th century, herring was absolutely crucial — tens of thousands of jobs and the nutrition of millions were dependent on the fish. That level of fishing would, of course, in time prove unsustainable as overfishing reduced stocks.

The silver darlings became increasingly harder to find and catch. WWI interrupted the growth of the industry with many fishermen becoming the backbone of the Royal Naval Reserve. After the war they returned to a declining industry, which was further interrupted by WWII in 1939. By 1970 continuing overfishing saw the almost total collapse of the British North Sea herring fishery and for four years it was banned completely. Now after many years of tight controls, the silver darlings seem at last to be returning. A small fishery based in Hastings in East Sussex has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council for 10 years. Other herring fisheries around Britain and Ireland have recently been MSC-certified and more are in the pipeline. Frosty can again enjoy a guilt-free kipper or even occasionally a gamey bloater, stronger than a kipper and smoked with all its innards intact. German budget supermarkets and even Ikea often offer herring fillets in exotic pickles. They can be delicious. So, however you enjoy your silver darling, just make sure you check the packs for that important MSC label. First published in the Morning Star 1 April 2016.

Share this: BBC News - Recalling a black day in Wick's herring history Recalling a black day in Wick's herring history So much fish was landed at Wick it made it Europe's largest herring port As talks begin in Brussels on European Union rules on fishing, far north-based historical researcher Ed Campbell looks back at a boom time for Scottish fishing that brought wealth but also disaster. The herring industry of yesteryear has been the subject for many an exposition, and rightly so. It was a boom time of unparalleled employment, wealth and fame for the far north. Environmentalists may point out the obvious effect that the industry had on the stocks of herring, affectionately known by fishing communities as "silver darlings". Sad stories However when we try to imagine the 18th, 19th and arguably the early part of the 20th Century without the income it afforded the north, it is difficult to see how emigration and poverty would not have emptied the coastal regions to an extent that would have devastated the culture irreparably.

It was during this period that the Caithness county town of Wick was referred to as "the chief seat of the herring fishing industry in Scotland" as well as the higher sounding "largest herring port in Europe". There is little doubt that Wick deserved these accolades. So much herring was landed there that it was said that your nose would pick up Wick many miles before reaching the Royal Burgh. This had much to do with the highly efficient processing that took place immediately upon the boats - known as drifters - delivering the fish to the harbour. Fisher-lassies would gut the herring then packers salted and barrelled them quickly. Aside from the decline of fish stocks and eventual death of the industry there are countless other sad stories to be told of this truly remarkable time in Scottish history. One ordinary day during a time of plenty in August 1848 the fleet prepared itself for another productive sortie into the North Sea. Eight hundred drifters set sail from Wick on 19 August 1848 More than 30 years later veteran fisherman John Cruickshank, of Pulteneytown, Wick, reported his memories of 19 August. Eight hundred drifters set sail from Wick harbour.

It was just another day's fishing in an industry that lasted almost 200 years. The prospects were for good fishing and so the fleet set out windward mostly to the south of Wick Bay. It was the fall of the Lammas Stream. This was the high tide around Lammas Day on 1 August. As night began to fall the wind abated and turned westward. Many of the boats now were tempted to shoot their nets. The sun set and ominous grey clouds grew thick and dark over the north-east coast. Some of the boats recognised the climate indicators and hauled in their nets and made for shore. Those who had heeded the early signs of the coming storm reached the harbour before darkness set in and while the tide had not yet ebbed from the harbour basin. By midnight the wind veered again and worked itself up into a gale. This vast column of air moving swiftly over the sea, the dense darkness, the ebbing tide and an unlighted, waterless harbour combined to create a terrible destructive situation. The fleet had all but returned north to the mouth of Wick bay and many tried to run the harbour in the dark and were driven behind the old north quay to perish on the rocks.

Breadwinners perished Dawn revealed an angry North Sea and a town of cold spectators, praying and watching from the shore. In the bay the remainder of the fleet were still waiting for the incoming tide to reach the safety of home and family. One by one they ran the briny gauntlet, some with more sail than others. Collisions were unavoidable and they fouled on each other and were driven into the boulders behind the quay. Ladders and lifebuoys were yet years away and the population of Wick and Pulteneytown watched in horror as their breadwinners perished at their feet. Some foundered at sea before reaching land. One swamped off the small cove at Sarclet and four swamped to the south of Wick Bay, another perished off Helman Head and another in the fierce tideway of Noss Head. Some ran into creeks along the coast with more or less success but many lives were lost right there in Wick Bay where they expected to reach safety. Thirty-seven men from Wick alone drowned leaving 17 widows and 63 children. Eighteen boats were lost on the rocks.

However, the total loss of life in the whole of the far north that day was 94 lives and 30 boats. Disaster's anniversary A public inquiry revealed the weaknesses of the fleet. Each boat only had 30ft of keel and was open apart from a little den at the fore peak. One of the frailest craft in the fleet rode at her nets until the gale had subsided and limped into the harbour at high tide the next day, demonstrating that survival chances would have increased had the fleet attempted to weather the storm than make a frantic bid to reach Wick. For many years after the disaster only the most daring fisherman would venture to sea on the disaster's anniversary. Wick's "Black Saturday" stayed deeply engraved on the memories of the fishing community of the east of Caithness for a long time. Fathers and grandfathers told their sons of the morning that brought grief to so many. No monument marks the tragedy and the only marker is a painting by Robert Anderson depicting the disaster that hangs in the council chambers in Wick.

Bookmark with: HistoryShelf.org :: The Silver Darlings Herring Home | Fishing for herring | Next Overfishing From the 1920s, there was a big decline in the herring fishing industry. The problem of overfishing was recognised in the 1950s. Catches fell dramatically in the 1960s. Smaller catches encouraged the fishermen to look for new ways to catch herring. This led to the introduction of new types of netting. There were also advances in technology . These only worsened the problem. In 1972 Britain joined the European Economic Community. Many Scottish fishermen worried about the effect this would have on their fishing. The EEC developed a Common Fisheries Policy. At a simplistic level, it uses quotas to share out the fish catch between the member states. The North Sea catch declined from 500 000 tonnes in 1972 to less than 170 000 tonnes in 1976.

In 1976 the North East stock of herring had fallen from 1.2 million tonnes to 300 000 tonnes, of which only about 50% were capable of breeding. In December 1977, the British herring catch was at its lowest for a century. A ban on herring fishing was introduced on the East Coast in 1977. The ban was only supposed to last for a short time, but it actually lasted for four years. Selective fishing was reintroduced in 1981 and it was strictly regulated. Since the 1970s there have been many different schemes and agreements to try to control the fisheries. For example quotas have been introduced and there have been programmes of fishing boat decommissioning. There have been many disagreements about how to divide quotas fairly. There have also been problems of countries not sticking to quotas and of illegal fishing. In all this, politics has played a major part. However, this is an area far too lengthy and complex to enter into here! Much has changed. The seas are now over-exploited. The fishing industry used to depend on the development of technology and human effort. This is no longer the case.

Careful management of fish stocks is now most important. Stocks of herring have made some recovery since the worst period in 1977, but are still at only a fraction of former levels. At the turn of the century, the greatest concern has shifted to white fish. Drastic measures to control white fish stocks were agreed at the end of 2002. Herring Tales: How the Silver Darlings Shaped Human Taste and History: Amazon.es: Donald S. Murray: Libros en idiomas extranjeros DescripciÃ³n del producto Críticas The story is told with great charm, and tinged with a spirit of loss and yearning. Philip Marsden, The Spectator Mr Murray is a gregarious and engaging raconteur as he flips between the diverse aspects of this versatile little creature. The Economist This is a splendid book, filled with passion, wit, and wonderful facts. Geographical magazine ...a fine, scholarly, restless and keen-brained work. -- John Macleod Scottish Review of Books It's a fascinating book and worth a read. The Glasgow Herald Like the herring, this is a book that darts across time and oceans. It gleams with story.

A wonderful read. -- Sally Magnusson These herring tales are far more tasty than you might expect. The Scotsman Donald S. Murray takes us to places we've never been before as he explores the world of herring in a sweet, pellucid, often poetic prose. -- Jay Parini Herring Tales offers a fascinating view of the coastal cultures of northern Europe, of how a 12-inch fish has affected human activity there for hundreds of years. Philip Marsden, The Spectator Murray's account of the herring industry has almost as many facets as his slippery subjects have scales ... and offers fillets of history, culture and zoology, with an emphasis on the eclectic. The Economist Herring Tales is the story of close-knit communities based around a particular kind of fishing, a world that is both present and, alas, fading. I strongly recommend this eloquent and finely detailed book. -- Jay Parini Murray is one of my favourite authors in any genre, and this quirky book on how the "silver darlings" shaped human taste and history doesn't disappoint. Guardian Murray mixes folklore, personal reminiscence, cookery... and intertwines herring culture with political history.

-- Brian Morton Times Literary Supplement After reading author, poet and Gaelic playwright Donald S Murray's quirky book you may never look at the humble herring in quite the same way! Countryside It provides interesting facts and observations about the fish and fishing industry, it's historical and economic impact, some amusing anecdotes, and even a couple of Woody Allen jokes. Countryside Who knew fermented fish could be so much fun? -- Anna Burnside Daily Record The herring is an unsung hero in the tale of the land and the sea. Its trade brought prosperity, but herring fishing brought misery and loss too. In his lyrical voice Donald Murray sings this tale so we can fathom its depths. And, as is always the case with good poetry, all of it is true. -- Huib Stam, author of Herring: A Love Story Search as you might, you may be reasonably assured that no other subject of the Emperor Herring will publish a better book about the reign of the silver darlings. 'Herring Tales' is a glorious piece of non-fiction ... a fast, lively, funny and altogether irresistible book. 'Herring Tales' is a tour de force. It may not bring the shoals back, but it will immortalise their memory.

West Highland Free Press Donald weaves a herring tapestry as beautiful and as intricate as a piece of Harris Tweed. The New Shetlander Coated in oatmeal and fried, kippered or pickled or eaten raw, the herring is the best of fish, and Donald Murray's social, economic and cultural history of the herring fisheries of northern Europe is worthy of it, rich in observation, reflection and anecdote. It's an entrancing work in which learning is worn lightly and an all but vanished way of life is brought vividly before us. There's the taste of the sea in the herring and in this book. -- Allan Massie A rare and precious book which is both erudite and humane. Herring Tales takes a humble, overlooked phenomenon and shows how all of life is interwoven with it. Totally life-affirming and inspirational. -- Ewan Morrison A fascinating, vividly written account of the role of the herring in the history, culture, folklore, festivities as well as cuisine of life all over the North Sea. The canvas is wide, and the author looks at Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Norway, Holland, with an unexpected glance at Italy thrown in.

An informative work and an enthralling read. Donald Murray shows that there is more to the herring than an accompaniment to a plate of chips on a Saturday night after an evening at the pub. -- Joseph Farrell It is a fascinating read - written with wit and a deep rooted understanding of the subject. fallonsangler.net This delightful book celebrates the strong cultural bond between herring and human. Daily Mail Reseña del editor Scots like to smoke or salt them. The Dutch love them raw. Swedes look on with relish as they open bulging, foul-smelling cans to find them curdling within. Jamaicans prefer them with a dash of chilli pepper. Germans and the English enjoy their taste best when accompanied by pickle's bite and brine. Throughout the long centuries men have fished around their coastlines and beyond, the herring has done much to shape both human taste and history. Men have co-operated and come into conflict over its shoals, setting out in boats to catch them, straying, too, from their home ports to bring full nets to shore.

Women have also often been at the centre of the industry, gutting and salting the catch when the annual harvest had taken place, knitting, too, the garments fishermen wore to protect them from the ocean's chill. Following a journey from the western edge of Norway to the east of England, from Shetland and the Outer Hebrides to the fishing ports of the Baltic coast of Germany and the Netherlands, culminating in a visit to Iceland's Herring Era Museum, Donald S. Murray has stitched together tales of the fish that was of central importance to the lives of our ancestors, noting how both it - and those involved in their capture - were celebrated in the art, literature, craft, music and folklore of life in northern Europe. Blending together politics, science, history, religious and commercial life, Donald contemplates, too, the possibility of restoring the silver darlings of legend to these shores. No es necesario ningÃºn dispositivo Kindle. DescÃ¡rgate una de las apps de Kindle gratuitas para comenzar a leer libros Kindle en tu smartphone, tablet u ordenador.

Apple Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings: Amazon.co.uk: Mike Smylie: 9780752459516: Books By Mw Puleston on 22 Jun. 2013 Format: Hardcover Been reading this book avidly since getting it a couple of days ago. If like me you have a fascination with the sea and in particular fish then - "the little darlings is an asorbing read". Smythe clearly knows his subject inside out and his passion for the species and the history of the people over the centuries who caught, processed and sold herring comes though on every page. Of particular merit is the layout of the book, into short focussed chapters and the copious well produced photos and pictures that are well placed throughout the text. The inclusion of (very good recipies) works well, as does fascilimies of old advertisements, and the use of poems all add to the detail and passion for the subject. Mike Smythe has produced a scolarly work which is both detailed and highly readable. Anyone interested in seafish,fishing and eating food, or like me a student of marine biology will find this a great buy. Totally recommended.

Here be herrings: the return of the silver darlings | Life and style | The Guardian Fish Here be herrings: the return of the silver darlings Herring once provided millions of Britons with their main source of protein, but overfishing caused stocks to collapse. Now sustainable fisheries are reappearing – and one Danish-born chef is putting the fish on the menu in her UK sushi restaurants Silla Bjerrum with herrings on Bornholm, Denmark. Photograph: David Trood/Marine Stewardship Council Wednesday 12 November 2014 08.15 EST Last modified on Wednesday 12 November 2014 19.03 EST Share on Messenger Close An autumn storm is grumbling through the Baltic, the sky as dark and troubled as the sea. On the little Danish island of Bornholm, fresh herrings are being salted for the winter, as they have been for thousands of years, to keep humans going during the hungry months ahead. Kim Rømer and his five staff have been working since before dawn to get a tonne of the fish, newly caught in the Kattegat, into barrels of brine and vinegar while they are still firm and fresh.

Silla Bjerrum dips her finger into a brimming barrel to taste the curing liquid – she’s surprised by how strong it is. Danish by birth, Bjerrum is head chef and chief executive of Feng Sushi , a chain of inventive sushi restaurants in London that, since she co-founded it in 1999, has always promoted sustainable fish and the work of the Marine Stewardship Council. We’re here so she can see how sustainable herring might make it on to a sushi restaurant’s menu. “In traditional Japanese cuisine, every wild fish eaten raw, except tuna, is cured. That makes them healthy and brings out flavour,” she explains. “I want to take these Danish traditional cures and give them a Japanese twist.” The little factory is so close to the sea, the storm-spray is marinating the roof. Inside, spices are packed into tubs of cured herring, all headed for Denmark’s Christmas tables, where sild is as crucial as mince pies. British people now know herring chiefly as kippers or tongue-curling pickles. But in the Nordic states, cured, spiced herring is a celebration food.

Like air-cured ham in the mountains of Spain and Italy or potted shrimp in Morecambe bay, a processed food born of seasonal pressures and lack of refrigeration has become a treasured delicacy. Pinterest Herring: the word comes from the Old German for ‘multitude’. Photograph: David Trood/Marine Stewardship Council The Christiansøpigen cure that Bjerrum wants to track down makes something very different from the industrial-vinegar herring we get in Britain, skewered with a toothpick in jars marked Bismarck. Sweet, spicy, softly chewy to the bite and paprika-red, these are a treat. In the factory, we scoff them with Rømer’s staff for lunch. “If I tell you the recipe, I will have to kill you,” says Rømer, a former fisherman who bought the secret off its original owner for a million Danish krone (£100,000). “Only two people in the whole of Denmark know it.” But the overwhelming smell of clove and allspice as you enter the shed tells you a bit about what’s going on.

The story goes that in the 1890s, a Danish sailor returned from east Asia to Christiansø, a tiny herring-fishing island just off Bornholm, with a present for his sister. Curing the herring catch one day, she put aside the usual bay leaf and dill to try the packet of foreign spices her brother had brought – sandalwood, allspice, pepper, paprika and nutmeg. The recipe is the one Rømer bought, and now “herrings of the girl from Christiansø” are served in most of Denmark’s Michelin-starred restaurants, and sought out by food-hounds from across the world (you can buy them on a Danish-language site via tinyurl.com/nxvvlqm ). In Danish shops, a 500g tub of Kim’s Christiansøpigen rød kryddersild sells for about £8. From the middle ages on, herring and cod provided Atlantic Europe with most of its protein. But now, herrings are one of Britain’s lost foods. We used to call them the silver darlings.

They were small and tasty, whether fried, smoked or cured, and full of the healthy oils we now buy in expensive food supplements. They are indeed silver, as slick and bright as mercury. They once existed in unbelievable abundance – the word herring comes from the Old German for “multitude”. In 1913, it was estimated that 10,000 boats from all over Europe fished herring in Scottish waters. At the peak of the herring boom, Britain exported a quarter of a million tonnes a year. Herring processing plant on Bornholm, Denmark. Photograph: David Trood/Marine Stewardship Council For the poorer people of Britain in the 19th and early 20th century, herring was absolutely crucial – tens of thousands of jobs and the nutrition of millions were dependent on the fish. For generations of young women, who travelled to work in the sea ports when the season was at its height, herring brought adventure, escape from home and a chance at an independent income.

Scotland is full of songs about herring and recipes for cooking them: “caller” or fresh ones rolled in oatmeal and fried in dripping, potted in vinegar with a bay leaf, or the classic tatties and herring: salt herring slow-stewed with potatoes (far tastier than it sounds). But though most of the herring now eaten in Scandinavia come from the North Sea, overfishing saw the collapse of the British North Sea herring fishery by the 1970s, and for four years it was banned completely. After many years of tight controls, the silver darlings may be at last returning. A small fishery based in Hastings in East Sussex, which has been certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council for 10 years, held its annual fair earlier this month, though it is permitted to catch just 10 tonnes a year. Five other revived herring fisheries around Britain and Ireland have recently been MSC-certified, and more are in the pipeline. Bjerrum’s investigation paid off: the menu at Feng Sushi now features sashimi of herring and mackerel, cured in salt, sugar and rice vinegar , with shredded daikon, mirin and beetroot.

But the recipe her eight-year-old daughter really likes merges the many northern herring cooking traditions: Scots, Danish and Japanese. She gently poaches the fish in soy sauce, water and daikon, then uses the liquid as the basis of a herring and soba noodle soup . “I want to see if I, a Japanese chef with Danish roots, can reinvent herring,” Bjerrum says. Her efforts are welcome – though most of us would just be happy to see the return of the silver darlings. Cured herrings with spices. Photograph: David Trood/Marine Stewardship Council • The Marine Stewardship Council has details of herring conservation efforts and some recipes .

Silla Bjerrum’s herring soba noodles (Serves 4) 1 medium-sized daikon (also known as mooli), peeled and sliced into 1cm discs 30ml soy sauce 1 tbsp hondashi (Japanese fish stock made from cured and smoked bonito) 1 tbsp honey 1kg fresh spinach, washed and stalks removed A kettle of boiling water Salt, to season 8 fresh herring fillets, pinboned (preferably MSC-certified) Freshly ground pepper, to season 4 spring onions, chopped extra-finely on the diagonal Put the mooli pieces in a medium saucepan and add soy, mirin, hondashi, honey and 500ml water. Leave to simmer on a gentle heat for about 10-12 minutes, until the daikon is tender. Put the spinach in a large bowl and pour over boiling water. Add a pinch of salt and leave to soak for 8-10 minutes, until blanched. Put another saucepan on the stove, bring salty water to the boil and cook soba noodles for up to seven minutes, until al dente.

Drain in a colander and rinse in cold water for one minute to add a nice shine to the noodles, then return to saucepan. Drain the spinach of the hot water, leave in a colander for a few minutes, then squeeze out all of the liquid. Unravel a large piece of cling film, add the spinach and roll into a chunky sausage shape to ensure all excess water has been squeezed out. Add the herring to the daikon liquid and poach for for three minutes (handle the herring gently, as they break easily). Season with pepper, then take off the heat. Using a ladle, pour all the poaching liquid over the noodles to reheat for one minute. Divide the noodles and liquid into four large bowls, and top up with boiling water so they are fully covered. Unroll the spinach and cut into four portions. Add one to each bowl, plus two or three pieces of mooli and two herring fillets. Sprinkle with spring onions and serve. • Silla Bjerrum’s Simple Japanese has some mackerel recipes that can be easily adapted to herring.

Question: Which fish is known in the British fishing industry as 'Silver Darlings'?
Answer: Herring