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

qualitative and uncorroborated, the 1376 petition is largely typical of the
evidence available on the fisheries before 1700. As one author has
observed with regard to the fifteenth century:
the major impediment to study is the very frugal and random nature of the sources:
no medieval fisherman or fishmonger has left any letters or accounts which can
compare with those of the wool trading Cely family; ownership of boats is seldom
recorded in wills and we have no description and no certain pictures of the boats
used; no extant document locates the fishing grounds with any precision and the fish
aroused the curiosity of no medieval naturalist, if there was such a man; records of
fish prices are too widely dispersed chronologically and geographically to offer
much help. 199
In the face of these difficulties, historians have been obliged to presume
and to extrapolate from generally limited data bases to form an
impression of Britain’s fishing interests before the modern era.
Such an impression suggests that many features of the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century fisheries were evident in much earlier epochs. The
case of the wondyrechoun echoes recent concerns about the depletion of
fish stocks by intensive harvesting methods. It further implies that other
catching techniques were in use, that rivalries arose between competing
fishing interests and that, as the ‘subtily contrived instrument [entailed]
great damage to the commons of the realm’, the fisheries were of some
import to the national economy and therefore warranted the intervention
of the state. With regard to the types of fishery prosecuted in late
medieval and early modern times, there are strong and varied indications
that the structure of the industry was basically similar to that which
pertained in more recent times, with three principal fisheries conducted:
inshore, herring and distant-water. These sectors were not wholly
discrete, and fishermen, then as now, might shift from one to another
according to season, climate and fish abundance. Nevertheless, they
were distinguished by the inter-related factors of species caught, distance
of the catching grounds and capital requirements. It is therefore
convenient to consider them separately.
The inshore fisheries were a seemingly ubiquitous facet of maritime
activity around the coasts of the British Isles. Historical accounts of
Britain’s fishing interests, or indeed those of particular ports, estuaries or
regions, almost invariably refer to the ancient roots and commonplace
character of the activity. Such references generally imply that this
everyday, mundane business was of significance only to those it
199 Heath, ‘North Sea Fishing’, 53.
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