It was a depressing sight, I must own, even in the bright sunshine of this most picturesque of English harbours, and Sam Weller’s earnest inquiry to his master, “Ain’t somebody to be wopped for this?” rose vividly in my mind as the fittest comment on the whole business. Just then a tug which had been getting up steam was ready to leave the harbour, and two Hartlepool smacks, whose freights of herrings were still unsold, hitched on, to be towed out to sea and then run home, in the hope of finding a better market in the Durham port. An old salt stood next me, whose fishing days were well over, and who had just taken a good bite of the blackest kind of pigtail to comfort himself. I looked inquiringly at him as the tug steamed out between the two lighthouses, with the smacks in tow; but he shook his head sorrowfully. “Well, but they can’t do worse than here,” I remonstrated; “herrings maybe scarcer in the colliery district.” He jerked his head towards the little group of brokers and buyers,--“They’d know the prices at Hartlepool in five minutes,” he said. This telegraphing was to his mind the worst thing that had happened for fishermen in his time. “Did prices often go up and down like this?” I asked. “Yes,” and worse than this. He had known them as low as 15s. and as high as £15 within a few days. No, he couldn’t see what was “to odds it” much for the better. Last time he was across at Liverpool he had stopped at a big fish-shop where he saw barrels standing which he recognised. “What’s the price of those herrings?” he asked. “Eight for 6d.” the man answered. “So I told him I saw they was from Whitby, and that he got them at Whitby for 6d. a hundred.” Whitby and the Herring Trade, 31st August 1888.