fishing

fishing. Ireland occupies a position of rare advantage in relation to the fertile fishing grounds of the North Atlantic. Opportunities existed for several different types of fishery pursuit, including land‐based operations involving the capture of crabs and lobsters; land and seafisheries for shellfish and molluscs, the latter important as a source of bait for the line‐fishing industry as well as a source of saleable food; seasonal pelagic fishing for migratory species such as mackerel, herring, and, in southern waters, pilchards; and all‐year‐round boat fishing for demersal species of round and flat fish. However, the development of an Irish fishing industry was shaped by a number of inherent constraints. The sea is an open resource which, apart from coastal waters, must be shared with fishermen of other nationalities. Fish stocks themselves are highly mobile and so subject to localized fluctuations in availability and quality. Most important of all, particularly in the period before refrigeration, has been the highly perishable nature of the product, affecting both the length of time a boat could remain at sea and the marketing of the fish caught.

Evidence from prehistoric kitchen middens testifies to the exploitation of sea and coast by the earliest settlers, while the recognized status accorded to fishermen in early Irish laws and institutions, the Norse origin of Irish words pertaining to types of fish, boats, and fishing lines, medieval descriptions of the south coast whale fishery, and Gaelic chronicles of western sea cod fisheries indicate the establishment and development over centuries of specialized fishery pursuit. From at least the 14th century Irish boats, merchants, and mariners were highly active in supplying British and European demand for fish and fish products.

Both this trade and the various fishery enterprises which supported it grew apace during the 15th and 16th centuries to make sea fishing one of the key sectors of the early modern Irish economy. In the 17th century, however, commercial sea fishing declined, due both to political upheaval and to unhelpful government policy (for example in relation to Irish duties on the importation of salt). Irish fishermen were nevertheless sufficiently dynamic to be able to exploit the Newfoundland fisheries once the statutory embargo on their participation was lifted in 1704. The 18th century saw the introduction of a series of government bounties, which particularly benefited the herring industry, with exports of cured herring showing marked increases towards the end of the century. However, herring fishing contracted sharply following the withdrawal of bounties in 1829. Export‐based whitefishing in Irish offshore grounds, meanwhile, was very largely carried on by foreign vessels. A parliamentary commission of inquiry in 1836 found an industry in profound decline, its workforce poorly equipped, poorly rewarded, and mostly part‐time. A partial exception was the east coast, where the expansion of Dublin supported the establishment of a small whitefishing industry. But overall domestic demand for Irish‐caught fish was extremely weak, particularly in inland regions, which were increasingly being supplied from external sources. By 1819 Ireland had become a fish importer.

The mid‐19th century saw a ‘revolution in the trade in fish’, based on the application of steam to land and sea travel, refrigeration to fish carriage, and the trawl to fish capture, and underpinned by population growth and the move towards urbanization. In Ireland, however, severe imbalances between levels of domestic demand and the productivity of local fisheries meant that Irish quayside buyers generally found it more expedient to send their purchases for final sale in Scotland and England, while Irish provincial fish markets, such as Belfast, looked to sources outside Ireland for regular supplies. The exception was Dublin, where the expansion of the whitefishing fleet in the 1830s enabled local fishermen not only to land fish in increasing quantities, but also to hold their own as the major suppliers of the local fish trade. Elsewhere development was limited by weak local demand and the ease with which this could be met within what was now a highly integrated United Kingdom market for fresh fish.

On the east coast a new period of prosperity was heralded by the revival in the 1860s of the Irish Sea herring industry. Unlike earlier herring fisheries, which had been underpinned by the curing sector, this nationally significant enterprise, which attracted vessels from all parts of the British Isles, was directed at supplying domestic fresh markets, particularly in England. Based at first at the two major herring stations of Ardglass, Co. Down, and Howth, Co. Dublin, within a few years participation in this fishery had increased to include most of the fishing harbours on the Irish east coast. The establishment in the 1880s of a similarly cosmopolitan spring mackerel fishery at Kinsale, directed at the export of cured fish to the United States, strengthened the commercial basis of the Irish sea fisheries along the southern Irish coast. At the same time, the efforts of the newly formed Congested Districts Board were instrumental in the revival at the end of the 19th century of herring curing enterprise in Donegal; by 1906 curers had also re‐established bases in Co. Down for the production of fish for export to America and Europe. In the first decades of the 20th century Ireland became a fish exporter, albeit on a modest scale, with a balance of trade which rose from £0.15 million in 1904–7 to £0.45 million in 1915–18.

During the First World War the withdrawal of British trawl fleets from the North Sea, along with a generous system of government loans and grants directed specifically at the inshore fisheries, brought great improvements in capacity and infrastructure. After 1918, however, the cured herring industry went into steady decline after losing first its Russian and then its German markets. The cured mackerel trade was similarly affected by the loss of American demand during the Depression. The Irish Sea fresh herring trade, however, remained viable. An important new whitefishery based on the Danish seine net and made possible by the previous upgrading of the fleet and the move to engine propulsion emerged on the east coast in the 1920s, and by 1935 had become Northern Ireland's single most valuable fishery.

Vivienne Pollock