INDUSTRIES Porthleven, 80 from Newly n, 50 from Mouse- hole, 80 from St. Ives, and 270, of which the majority (more than 200) were steamers, from Lowestoft, Yarmouth, and the other east coast ports. In quantities of fish the season of 1905 was unprecedented. The total value of fish of all kinds landed at Newlyn for the three months March, April, and May was 168,000. This includes trawl fish, but the mackerel represent probably at least three-quarters of the total, and this would mean about 30,000 tons of fish, giving an average of 400 tons or 600,000 fish per day. 1 In consequence of the enormous catches, the fish were selling on several occasions in May at is. per I2O, 3 and large quantities were carted off for use as manure. In addition to the fish landed it was estimated that not less than 500,000, for which no sale could be obtained, in consequence of the glutted condition of the market, were thrown overboard from the fishing- boats into the sea. This spring mackerel fishery, which has now become one of the great industries of England, is carried on by drift nets exclusively, and the habits of the fish which lead them to congregate in enormous numbers off the extreme south- western coast make Newlyn in Mount's Bay the natural headquarters and the fish market. The fish appear first at the end of February or the beginning of March to the south of the Lizard, and gradually move westward, until at the end of May they are found to the south and west of the isles of Scilly. Mr. Pezzack reported that in the middle of May, 1905, the fish extended over an area of more than 100 miles west-south-west of the Wolf, and in such quantities that although the catches were enormous and continuous the shoal did not appear to diminish. In addition to the fish caught on the south and west which are landed at Newlyn, a considerable quantity are taken in the mouth of the Bristol Channel to the north-west of St. Ives by drift boats from that port. The season comes to an end with the month of May, when the great mass of fish disappears. In some years they come off the coast again in the autumn in sufficient quantities to enable the large boats to use their drift nets. There are altogether in the ports of Cornwall about 300 boats engaged in the mackerel drift- net fishery, of which about sixty are east of the Lizard, 150 in Mount's Bay, and eighty at St. Ives. 3 Mackerel appear in considerable quantities 1 These figures are from the report of Mr. J. Pezzack, the fishery officer of Cornwall County Council.
- Mackerel are always counted by the 'hundred,'
which contains 1 20 fish, or in large quantities by the 'last,' which contains 10,000. They are sold by the 'hundred.'
- Mr. Pezzack' s Report.
near the shore in the bays on the south coast during the summer in small schools, each of which is a number of fish from 5,000 down, travelling in a crowd huddled together. They are then caught in seines made and kept for the purpose. Unlike the drift fishery, most of the mackerel seine fishery is to the east of the Lizard, and out of some forty-seven seines thirty- one are at these ports and sixteen in Mount's Bay, 4 and none at St. Ives. In addition to these large industries mackerel, which are to be caught all the year round, are taken on hand lines, but the quantity landed from this source is insignifi- cant, and is readily absorbed in the locality where they are caught. The pilchard fishery, which is now second in importance to the spring mackerel fishery, was until about thirty years ago the most important, as it is by far the oldest. There is no record of its origin, but in 1594 it was of sufficient im- portance to be recognized in an Act of Parlia- ment (35 Eliz. c. xi), which provided that no stranger should transport any ' pilchers ' or other fish in cask unless such person should previously have brought in a proportionate amount of ' Clapboard fit for cask or else of Cask.' Richard Carew 6 mentions that in his time pilchards were exported to France, Spain, and Italy. He gives no figures of the quantity of fish caught or exported, but he states clearly that 'the deare Sale beyond the seas' affected both the supply and the prices in the local markets. In more recent times the bulk of the export trade has been to Italy. The fishery flourished steadily through the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and Dr. Borlase, in 1758, after a short account of the method in which the fish were caught, wrote concerning the pilchard that 'ships are often freighted hither with salt, and into foreign Countries with the fish carrying off at the same time part of our tin. ' The usual produce of this beneficial article in money is as follows : By an exact computation of the number of hogsheads exported each year for ten years, from 1747 to 1756 inclusive, from the four ports of Fawy, Falmouth, Penzance, and St. Ives, it appears that Fawy has exported yearly 1,732 hogsheads, Falmouth 14,631^, Penzance and Mount's Bay 12,149^, St. Ives 1,282; in all amounting to 29,795 hogsheads. Every hogs- head for ten years last past, together with the bounty allowed for each hogshead exported, and the oyl made out of each hogshead, has amounted, one year with another at an average, to the price of one Pound sixteen shillings and threepence, so that the cash paid for pilchards exported has at a medium annually amounted to the Sum of Pilchards have always been counted by the hogshead, and the uncertainty as to the exact 4 Ibid. 5 R. Carew, Surv. ofCornto. 33.
- Borlase, Nat. Hist. 273.
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