The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

ingenious use of this kind of source in order to establish a good insight
into the fishing activities in the Meuse estuary around 1600. The data is
often not of a serial nature.
For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it is easier to collect data.
Beaujon, for instance, as early as 1885 provided his readers with figures
concerning the quantities of herring (gutted and ungutted) brought
ashore from 1814 (1823) to 1883 or the tons of salted fish exported to
Belgium and Germany.
Some Materials for a Thematic Approach
Boelmans Kranenburg and to a large degree Van Vliet are the sole
authors who have studied the fisheries in a wide economic and social
context. The first for a period of two centuries, the latter for a time span
of almost eighty years, and both for the early modern period. Van Vliet
has refined and improved Kranenburg’s findings. In the following I
would like to make a few observations about perhaps typical Dutch
aspects and also to present some results of on-going or recently
completed research.
Employment
In a previous section I have given a few figures about the number of
fishing vessels in use over the past four centuries. There are fairly
reliable data available on the manpower on board. The most detailed
figures for the early modern period are provided by Van Vliet. In the
1630’s one eighth (4,700) of the total population of 35,000 in the five
main cities in the Meuse estuary (Rotterdam, Delfshaven, Schiedam,
Vlaardingen and Maassluis) could be considered fishermen. For the
Dutch population at large (less than 2 million) the number of fishermen
must have been c10,000. The herring fishery was responsible for about
two-thirds of total employment. The overall number of seamen and
fishermen is estimated at c50,000 to 55,000. 185 Nearly all fishermen
were locally recruited by the skippers, either in an inn or in the skipper’s
home. The people involved in supplying and fish processing have not
been quantified.
No such elaborate information exists for later periods. A fair guess for
c1770 would suggest about 5,500 fishermen. Only two-fifths of them
185 Van Vliet, Vissers, 41, 139 and 161; Maritieme Geschiedenis, vol II, 131-32; Bruijn
and Van Eyck van Heslinga, ‘Seamen’s employment’, 10-11.
112