It is since the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 that all fishing vessels have been compelled to be registered and licensed, and then in 1886 was instituted a Fishery Department in the Board of Trade. The twentieth century has been notable for the way steam and motors have gradually begun to take the place of sailing craft. The steam drifters are able to follow the herring down the coast, but the big steam trawlers are the principal fishing craft in the British Isles to-day. During the war most of the British steam fishing craft were taken up by the Admiralty for mine-sweeping or anti-submarine work, but by the year 1921 the national fishing had recovered so much that the total landings amounted to over £16,000,000. It is from the North Sea trawlers that most of the fish still comes, and of this a considerable quantity is caught by the trawlers from Hull and Grimsby. One unfortunate result of the war has been the loss of the Russian and much of the German trade; for in 1913 the United Kingdom exported £5,500,000 worth of cured and salted herring, of which Russia and Germany together took 80 per cent. To-day from Hull alone there are about 250 steam trawlers fishing and employing about 3000 hands aboard. If you add to this the number of steam, motor and sailing fishing craft from the other ports, it is at once obvious that these fleets form a very considerable portion of the Mercantile Marine. We may take Hull as representative of modern fishing, but it is only as the result of centuries of experience. Certainly as far back as 1535 the quantity of fish there landed was considered so important as to require an Act of Parliament to regulate the trade. Perhaps the least known was the very important Hull whaling trade, which was carried on for two and a half centuries until about 1868, when, owing to the scarcity of whales, the industry died out, the last whaling voyage being made by the _Truelove_, which had been built in Philadelphia 104 years previously. This vessel made seventy-two whaling voyages, during which she took about 500 whales, and besides these activities filled in the time by general trading, in the Oporto wine trade, and even as a “Letter of Marque.” Other whalers also went to the Arctic from Whitby, Scarborough and London. You may guess how important was the industry when we state that in the year 1821 no fewer than sixty-one whalers left Hull, thirty-two for the area between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and twenty-nine for the Davis Straits.