fishing vessels registered at Grimsby were as follows:—
| No. of Vessels | Tonnage | Average No. of Crew per Vessel | Total No. of Hands | |
| Steam Line Vessels | 41 | 3,466 | 13 | 533 |
| Sailing Line Vessels | 11 | 668 | 9 | 99 |
| Steam Trawlers | 448 | 27,553 | 9 | 4,032 |
| Sailing Trawlers | 27 | 1,054 | 5 | 135 |
| Total | 527 | 32,741 | – | 4,799 |
Forty-two thousand and ten men and boys (not including coopers, packers, curers, and net-makers) are returned as plying their trade here; more than half of them come from six ports, of which five are on the east coast. Grimsby records a total of 4,823 resident in the port, 3,967 being engaged in trawling (except for shrimps), and 856 in other modes of fishing. In the 'floating' fish returns for England and Wales, herrings predominate, the total in 1904 being 3,199,303 cwt. Grimsby's contribution being 391,819 cwt.[1]
At special seasons, during holy week for instance, it is not unusual for as many as 200 to 300 fish-wagons to be dispatched, carrying 700 to 800 tons. The traffic in small parcels of fish has attained, especially in recent years, to remarkable proportions, thousands of these being now sent away daily.
Prior to the supersession of sail by steam, the fishing-grounds of Iceland and the Faroe Islands[2] had been regularly visited by the Grimsby fishermen. It was in 1891 that the first steam-trawler fished the familiar ground of Ingol's Hoof, making, it is recorded, a good catch of plaice and haddock. In 1892 the number had risen to fourteen; by 1899 there were fifty-five steam-liners, and from sixty to seventy trawlers at work, each vessel making from twenty to thirty voyages in a year, the take being from twenty to a hundred tons per voyage. In the years 1900 to 1902 three Grimsby fleets made 206 voyages, their average catch being six tons of fish per voyage—a fifth of the whole. Boston, which has the distinction of being the only other English port engaged in the Iceland fishery, records, from 1897 to 1903, thirteen to fourteen tons per voyage.
During 1904 English fishing vessels from Grimsby fished not only the Bay of Biscay and off the coast of Portugal, but proceeded to extent their operations still further afield. Trawling, especially for soles, was successfully carried on off the coast of Morocco.[3] One Grimsby vessel, in the early autumn of 1904, landed at Lisbon 18 tons of fish, on which duty was paid at the rate of 10 reis per kilo. (say ½d. per 2¼ lb.)
The future of ice as an indispensable factor in the successful transport of fish by rail is said to have first occurred to Mr. Samuel Hewett of Grimsby, who, beginning life as a boy on a trawler, lived to see fifty or sixty vessels owned by him on the seas. No less than 25,000 tons were being imported from Norway every year when, in 1898, a factory for the manufacture of artificial ice was projected, being the joint undertaking of the Grimsby Ice Company and the Grimsby Co-operative Ice Company.[4] This factory has been working since 9 October, 1901, and is capable of producing 300 tons of block ice per day. Built upon land alongside the fish dock, the factory can supply the fishing fleet direct by overhead appliances, the ice, after having been crushed, being conveyed down a sloping shaft to the waiting ships.
In addition to the manufacture of ice, several smoke-houses have been established for the curing of herrings and haddocks. The Grimsby curers have long since wrested the palm from their Dutch competitors of the seventeenth century. The salting and drying of cod is now by no means an unimportant feature of the trade in fish. The 'Grimsby cod-chests,' of which as many as 400 were formerly to be seen in use at the docks, have gone out of fashion with much that was once in vogue in the direction of the fisheries, though it is still possible to count 80 to 100 floating in their old quarters any time between October and January. These chests are 7 ft. long and 2 ft. deep; the bottom is made of stout battens, placed a short distance apart, so that the water penetrates freely to the interior, as it does also between the planks of which the side and ends are built up. The top is wholly planted over, except in the centre, where there is an oblong opening, for putting in and taking out the fish. This opening is closed by a cover when the chest is in the water. Two ropes or chains are fixed in the ends of each chest for convenience in moving it about or hoisting it out of the water. About forty good-sized cod, or nearly 100 smaller ones, may be put into one of these chests, and will live there without much deterioration for over a fortnight.[5]
- ↑ The above figures are from the Annual Report of proceedings under the Fisheries Act, 1904; and also have been supplied by the courtesy of Captain Barwick, port-master at Grimsby Docks.
- ↑ Dr. Ch. Parkins, in a letter to Lord Burghley, states that, 'at the writer's going into Denmark, he was told that there was an agreement allowing Englishmen to fish in Iceland under certain conditions.' Cal. S. P. Dom. 1591–4, p. 247.
- ↑ Annual Report on the Sea Fisheries of England and Wales, 1904, 21.
- ↑ In 1890 the amount of ice imported at Grimsby was 62,279 tons.
- ↑ E. H. W. Holdsworth, Sea Fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland, 83. The idea of the cod-chests seems to have been a Lincolnshire tradition.
