The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places and Picturesque Scenery of Great Britain Vol. 1Finden, W. (William)
History
The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places and Picturesque Scenery of Great Britain Vol. 1
Finden, W. (William)
Coasts -- Great Britain -- Pictorial works; Great Britain -- Pictorial works
These hardy and industrious men follow an occupation in which the
hazards and dangers are but poorly recompensed by their gains; and the
sums they occasionally obtain from the owners of colliers and other
coasting vessels, form rich prizes in the humble lottery of their life.
Having in our remarks on "Bambrough, from the north-west," described the
principal features of this sea-girt fortress, we cannot better employ
the present page than in a notice of the fishery which is carried on in
its vicinity. The boats principally used for this purpose are called
cobles, and their fishing ground is from eight to sixteen miles from the
shore. In winter, however, they do not venture so far out as in summer,
but usually shoot their lines between six and ten miles from the shore.
There are usually three men to a coble. When the wind is not favourable
and they cannot set their sail, they use their oars; the two men seated
nearest the head of the boat row each a single large oar, while the man
on the thwart nearest the stern rows a pair of smaller size. The fish
are not caught, as on some parts of the south-western coast of England,
by hand-lines, which are suspended over the side of the boat, and pulled
up when the fisherman feels that he has a bite. The mode of proceeding
is to make fast a number of lines together, and shoot them across the
tide; and after they have lain extended at the bottom of the sea for
several hours--usually during the time of a tide's ebbing or flowing,
that is about six hours--they are hauled in. While the lines are shot,
one man keeps a look-out, and the other two usually wrap themselves in
the sail, and go to sleep in the bottom of the coble. Each man has three
lines, and each line is from 200 to 240 fathoms long. The hooks, of
which there are from 240 to 300 to each line, are tied, or _whipped_, as
the fishermen term it, to lengths of twisted horse-hair called _snoods_;
each snood is about two feet and a half long, and they are fastened to
the line at about five feet apart. Each man's lines, when baited, are
regularly coiled upon an oval piece of wicker work, something like the
bottom of a clothes-basket, called by the Yorkshire fishermen a _skep_,
at Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, the same thing is called a
_rip_. In this mode of fishing the hooks are all baited, generally by
the fishermen's wives and children, before the coble proceeds to sea.
The lines when shot are all fastened together; and when each is 240
fathoms long, the length of the whole is nearly two miles and a half.
There is an anchor and a buoy at the first end of the line, and the same
at the end of each man's set of lines. There are thus four anchors and
four buoys to each coble's entire line. The buoys at the extremities of
the line are usually formed of tanned dog-skin, inflated in the manner
of a bladder, and having a slight pole, like the handle of a mop,
passing through them, to the top of which a small flag is attached to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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