The herring fishery composed of three distinct seasons; summer, autumn and winter, each with individual features. During the summer season herring would shoal along the outlying east coast for the months of June to August.(Pollock, per.com) This fishery was characterised by travelling boats from mainland Britain. McCaughan has stated that during the nineteenth century boats were;
“Outnumbered by the sum of fleets from the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Scotland.” (122,1981)
For example, in 1877 a total of 876 boats worked out of Howth, a major landing station. Of these 876 boats 26 per cent were Irish-owned, 20 per cent Manx-owned, 26 per cent Scottish-owned and 28 per cent Cornish-owned. (R.I.I.F, 127,1878) Englishmen engaged in the summer herring fishery in Ardglass;
“About one hundred boats from Penzance are at Ardglass every season for the channel herring fishery. They remain about three months, arrive in June and depart on the close of August for the pilchard fishery.”(Saunders, R.C.S.I.F, 19,1835)
In the later part of the nineteenth century many offshore fisheries developed around the east Down coast, such examples included the ports of Kilkeel and secondary port of Annalong. Unlike the historic County Down harbour of Ardglass, Kilkeel was a newcomer to large-scale fishing activity. Situated at the southern extremity of the county on the coastal plain between the Mourne Mountains and the Irish Sea, the town’s commercial life, until the 1860’s were based on the scenery and agriculture of its hinterland. However, there was an extensive small boat fishery on the nearby coast and the practice existed of shopkeepers extending credit to fishermen for tackle and gear. (R.C.S.I.F, 1837,77) By the 1860’s Kilkeel was made into a fishery station with vast improvements made to the pier and harbour. But by 1880 it was recognised that the harbour was inadequate to accommodate locally owned fishing boats as well as foreign fleets attracted to Kilkeel due to its ideal location to fishing grounds. (McCaughan, 126,1989) During a public meeting in 1880 the harbour Master Thomas Grills declared that;
“…They had only accommodation for twenty-one fishing boats in the basin and that was quite insufficient for their fleet during the summer. He had often witnessed boats in stormy weather beating about the channel to the pier, but the harbour was filled up and the crews were obliged to go to Arglass or Howth. If Kilkeel harbour were enlarged they might have got into Kilkeel as a harbour of safety. They had as many as 400 boats coming in during the herring fishery…there were very large takes of herring brought to Kilkeel.” (Downpatrick Recorder, 1880)
By the middle of the 1880s government acknowledged that Kilkeel had developed into one of the most important centres for the herring fishery on the east coast and that the existing harbour did not meet the requirements of the district. (McCaughan, 126,1989) A major extension and improvement was undertaken by the Board of Works and was completed in 1887. These included a new wharf and jetty along with deepening the basin of the harbour. In conclusion, during the nineteenth century a substantial infrastructure had been developed in a bid to create the right conditions for the progression of the offshore herring industry in Kilkeel, Ardglass, Annalong and along the Down coastline. The autumn fishery began in early September when the shoals came very close to the county’s southern shores. This was of great local importance but was in comparison to the summer season, a small boat enterprise. This can be characterised by south Down men in skiffs who balanced fishing and agriculture together, fishing only when the herrings were in the area. (Pollock, per.com.) The winter season was in contrast highly predictable with shoals occasionally located in Carlingford, Belfast and Strangford during the months of January and February. (Pollock, per.com.) The nature of the herring fisheries created a great deal of productivity. Official figures between 1864 and 1919 showed 225,000 tons of herring were landed at ports in County Down giving an average annual return for the fishery of over 4,000 tons of fish, worth over £30,000 in quayside value. (Pollock, 1988,statistical abstract) Pollock argues that these figures under-represent the full extent of the local fishery as they fail to take into account boats which fished from the county’s harbours but landed their catches elsewhere, such as Liverpool, Hollyhead and Glasgow. (409,1997) Pollock also maintains that figures fail to consider the earnings of local boats and crews who were working as well as landing fish elsewhere. (410,1997) The travelling fleet was an important means of employment;
“…For the last five or six years about twenty of the young fishermen get employment for the months of June and July in Ansthruther in Scotland to assist in the herring fishery; they each get a share , one-twelve, in a boat.” (R.C.S.I.F, 798,1859)
Herring were traditionally followed from harbours along the length of the Down coast; their main visits favoured the county’s southern shores. By the middle of the nineteenth century certain ports emerged as the key centres of the industry. Kilkeel and Annalong, mentioned previously, developed as fishing ports and fishery harbours and were bases for many of the Down travelling fleet. (Pollock, per.com.) Ardglass which had first developed, as a fishery harbour in the Middle Ages also became a principal herring port during the nineteenth century. Despite the fame as a port, Ardglass never produced a community of fishermen. Even at the turn of the century when hundreds of boats from Portavogie, Kilkeel, the Isle of Man and the Scottish ports, there were never more than half a dozen local boats. (Fitzpatrick, 46,1971) For example, in July 1876 over 200 boats fished from Ardglass made up of 140 Scottish, 20 Manx, 42 Irish and 19 Cornish illustrating the magnitude of the travelling fleet. (Fitzpatrick, 46,1971) The locality and development of the ports of Ardglass, Kilkeel and Annalong provided the appropriate conditions for a new fishing industry to emerge.
The Curing of Herring.
The herring was not only an “exceptionally mobile fish but also an extremely perishable one.”(Pollock, 411,1997) This means that within a short time of being caught it had to be processed for market. During the fifthteenth and sixteenth centuries travelling commercial herring fishing vessels were equipped for both catching and curing. (De Courcy, 1992) The techniques involved in salt-curing herring were first formulated by the Dutch, whose superiority in the European herring trade from the fourteenth century owed partly to their perfection of drift-net fishing techniques and partly to their adoption of the ‘van Beukels’ method of preserving herring whereby the fish were gutted before being laid down in salt. This produced a better quality and longer-keeping cure, and allowed Dutch enterprises to operate from summer as well as autumn herring resources. Their method of sea-based curing, perfected in the sixteenth century, was modified slightly by the shift shore-based industry; it became generally known as the ‘Scotch cure’ in the nineteenth century, in recognition of Scottish prominence in the British herring trade. It continued to be used up until the middle of the twentieth century, for the preservation of herring in brine. (Wood, 1956) The ‘Scotch cure’ was predominantly used in County Down and its basic procedure included the fresh herrings being gutted, sorted according to size and quality, roused and laid in barrels in closely packed, head to tail alternating layers, with each layer sprinkled again with salt. The barrels were then lidded and the fish left to ‘pine’ for ten days, during which a chemical change occurred between the ‘juices’ of the fish and the surrounding salt. The resultant known as ‘blood pickle’ was run off through a small hole in the barrel. The herring shrank as they pined so each barrel had to be ‘headed-up’ by adding more layers of fish and salt until it was completely full. It was then sealed, or ‘coopered’ and sufficient fresh pickle poured into the hole in the barrel. This drove out all the air that remained in the barrel, then the hole was covered and the herrings were ready for branding and shipment. (Hodson, 1957) By the eighteenth century curing and catching were two separate features of the herring fishery. Herring curing like herring fishing was an extremely mobile operation. Pollock states that it required no permanent industrial structures and the material equipment including barrels, timber and salt was easily shipped from region to region. (per.com.) A small piece of land was required to erect a ‘coopering’ shed and ‘farlans’. More importantly the curing industry required the appropriate workforce. This was highly skilled and contained ‘coopers’ and ‘gutters’. The coopers were knowledgeable in the specialized craft of constructing the barrels in which fish were cured for export. These pickling barrels were,
“…Almost as important as the herrings themselves.” (Hodgson, 55)
Strict specifications governed their size, shape and construction. Only dry, heavy wood could be used to make them and faulty barrels were destroyed. Barrels which failed to make the requirements not only let pickle leak out but also let air leak in therefore contaminating the fish and spoiling the cure. The other component of the curing workforce were those who gutted and packed the herring, this was a predominately female occupation. Plate 1.1 captures this division of labour. This labour was not local but comprised of Scottish and Donegal girls and in the curing harbours of Ardglass and Kilkeel this was evident. (Pollock,per.com.) The women did not hire individually but organised themselves into groups of three to join up as a crew of two gutters and a packer. (Mrs. E.Moore, oral evidence.) The system of payment employed by the curing industry imbursed the crew as a whole according to the number of barrels it filled. (Oral evidence.) Each finished barrel held a cran of herring. (March, 1970) The conditions that the gutting women worked left a lot to be desired! The only equipment they owned was a short, sharp curing knife and their only protection against the harmful effects of the trade was a strip of cotton wound like bandages around their fingers and thumbs. To make matters worse they worked outside on the open key, with no shelter from what Mother Nature hurled at them. (Oral evidence.) By the early nineteen hundreds a loss of demand in fresh caused the County Down fishing industry to suffer. However the existence in Down of two herring industries helped to shelter local fishermen from the wider effects of the industry’s general decline. (Pollock, per.com.) In conclusion the fishing industry in the County Down area during the nineteenth century is a period epitomised by progress and change. The offshore fishery for herring proved highly successful, and greater trade links were created between the mainland and the region. Also the curing industry flourished during this period, illustrating the economic productivity that County Down generated in her fishing industry.
