Notwithstanding the great success which had hitherto attended these competitors with Lowestoft for the herring fishery, yet it was but of short continuance; for the large size of their herrings, and the fat and oily quality they possessed, though perhaps in a lesser degree than those caught on the coast of Scotland, were such great obstacles to their being properly cured, as could not be surmounted, and evidently proved that they were wholly unfit for exportation, and could only be sent to our English markets, and were not saleable even there, unless they were brought for immediate consumption; and consequently the herring fishery established at Liverpool and the Isle of Man experienced the same ill success as attended that at Dunbar and Caithness, that of being totally abolished, at least so far as respected the curing or making red herrings. The attempts of these new adventurers have evidently demonstrated that the herrings caught on the eastern coast are the only ones that are capable of being properly cured for red herrings; the colour and flavour of these herrings are superior to those from any other place, and they retain their excellent qualities to a longer period and are preferable to any others either for a foreign or home consumption. The second cause, which, about the year 1777, greatly retarded the success of the herring fishery at Lowestoft, as well as embarrassed the merchants was the war with France and Spain. By this event the intercourse which the English merchants had formerly maintained with the different ports in the Mediterranean was greatly interrupted, and particularly at the time when the siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards was turned into a blockade. The usual methods formerly made use of by the merchants at Lowestoft in exporting herrings to the Italian and other ports in the Mediterranean, when we were engaged in a war with France or Spain, was, to convey them to those ports in foreign bottoms; particularly in ships from Holland; but the Dutch, at this time being suspected of carrying English property, were more narrowly watched than formerly as they passed the Straights of Gibraltar and consequently were in the most imminent danger of being captured. But in the year 1780 this difficulty was in a great measure, removed by the treaty of “The Armed Neutrality.” This treaty was entered into by most of the commercial powers on the Continent, in order to protect any ships belonging to those powers from the interruptions and depredations they had lately been exposed to, under the pretence of carrying warlike stores, etc. By this treaty foreign vessels were permitted to pass the Straights of Gibraltar without being searched, or suffering any other interruption, but unhappily for the Lowestoft merchants, they not being apprized of the treaty being ratified before the usual time of selling their herrings, and consequently were apprehensive of being liable to the same dangers