Tracing the coastal trades of our ancestors
With a 19,491 mile coastline many of our ancestors made a living on the shores of the British Isles. Here Adèle Emm explores what they got up to
The 1907 music hall song ‘I Do Like to Beside the Seaside’ was as popular as the pursuit it depicted and Reginald Dixon’s signature tune when resident organist at Blackpool Tower (19301970). Northern millworkers flocked to the seaside – boarding houses accommodated them, arcades and piers entertained them, restaurants and tradesmen fed and serviced town and holiday maker alike.
However, the coast has more to offer than candy floss one week a year.
You shall have a fishy…
With 19,491 miles (31,368 km) of UK coastline, many made their living from it.
Fishermen
Fishermen required boats which required maintenance plus sails, ropes, nets, merchants, processors and a market. Victorians ate Fleetwood fish in Manchester. The world’s largest fishing port in 1900, Grimsby, still exports fish globally.
Until the advent of the railway, fishermen couldn’t sell their catch far from home. Their customer base was restricted to locals or how far a cart travelled before fish spoilt. For many coastal communities, fishing was a subsistence activity with farming more important but if land erosion turned agrarian areas into the coast, occupations diversified and vice versa. Conceived as a seaside resort in 1831, Fleetwood’s holidaymakers jumped ship (sorry!) to brazen Blackpool while Fleetwood morphed into one of the UK’S most significant fishing towns. It even imported fishermen from nearby Southport which was silting up. By the late 1880s, Manchester’s Victoria
Station received tons of fish from both Fleetwood and the east coast but never on Monday. Fishermen didn’t work Sundays so any fishmonger open on Monday sold Saturday’s stale produce.
The catch depended on local supply. Hull went a-whaling from 1598. From 1815 to 1825 over 60 whaling vessels employed 2,000+ men – the largest whaling fleet in Britain. The more familiar UK catch included cod, herring (silver darlins) and mackerel. For information on Great Yarmouth’s silver darlins see www. great-yarmouth.co.uk/things-to-do/ maritime-heritage.aspx.
Even today, freshest fish earns the highest premium. Fishermen raced to deliver their fish early morning to beat off competition, a race literally of time. Producing 1,200 tons of ice a day, Grimsby’s Ice Company (1900-1990) was the largest in the world. See www.ggift.co.uk/historyof-the-grimsby-ice-factory and the National Archives (TNA) at https:// discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
although records are held in North East Lincolnshire Archives. Some boats retained their catch, still alive, in nets alongside the boat. Fleetwood shrimpers boiled their shrimp on board, selling it to holidaymakers once boats landed. At the end of market day (even today) leftover fish was sold at a fraction of the price.
Another method of preserving fish was smoking it. There’re many stories about the invention of the kipper (smoked herring) but preserving fish over the fire has been practiced since pre-history. Northumberland smokehouses are mid-nineteenth century and the Isle of Man smokehouses date from the 1880s.
Hastings’ Fishermen’s Museum www.ohps.org.uk/hastingsfishermans-museum is based at a former fishermen’s church. This town is famous for tall, narrow wooden huts where fishermen dried nets.
Martin Wilcox’s 2009 book Fishing and Fishermen, Pen and Sword, may be helpful.
Mariners & seamen
In 1861, George Wright was a Bridlington mariner. In 1871, living at 13 Garden Walk, he was a fisherman, many neighbours also fishermen or mariners. Neighbouring 9 Garden Walk is a listed building see https://britishlistedbuildings. co.uk/101083697-9-garden-walkbridlington
Elsewhere, you find the term seaman. What’s the difference?
John Trusler (1735-1820) explains, ‘Seaman, agrees best, with regard to the superior class of the ship’s company, such as, the officers, boatswain, gunner, &c. Mariner, relates, more, to those, who gain their livelihood at sea, but, who are, generally, their own masters; as fishermen,’ adding mariners hugged the coast whereas seamen took long voyages.
For relatives in the National Union of Seamen 1851-1994, try Warwick University’s Modern Records Centre (MRC) https://mrc-catalogue. warwick.ac.uk/records/nus.
For crew lists, log books of merchant ships etc. see TNA. Simon
Wills’ book Tracing your Seafaring Ancestors, Pen and Sword, 2016, is useful.
Fishwives
As soon as fishing boats arrived at the quayside, their highly perishable commodity was processed before sale, the task of the fishwife/fishlass (in this context wife meant woman) or fish quine – a migrant labour force which followed the herring season gutting and filleting fish around the country. Clothing was heavy duty and hats or bonnets protected hair. In parts of Scotland and elsewhere, fishwives wore bright blouses, blue duffle coats and fabulously ornate striped petticoats. Fishwives also scoured beaches for crabs, mussels and sandworms and the wicker creels they carried on their backs weighed several stone. In Great Yarmouth during the turn of the 20th century, there
might be 6,000 quines working for 100 Scottish curing companies filleting 30 to 50 herring a minute. Her fearsome reputation was probably justified! For more information, read www.mcjazz.f2s.com/fish Quines.htm
Boat builders, shipwrights & ships’ carpenters
Wherever there’s a coast, there are boats and builders. Boats had regional differences and names depending on vagaries of coastline, tide and fish; for instance drifters in Great Yarmouth and luggers in Scotland. Clovelly, Devon, had picarooners – herring boats about 18ft long powered by sail and oar. The fishermen tossed small nets over the boat’s side. At one point in Clovelly’s history, 200 men worked 80 picarooners, the boats, naturally, locally built.
Obviously, a shipwright built a boat for the purpose of which it was required; ships at sea for long periods of time needed living, storage and working quarters let alone cannons and firearms. Fishermen’s boats only required storage for nets and catch, perhaps a hammock or bunk or two.
Wood was generally oak (historians suggest Tudor shipbuilding depleted oak supplies almost to eradication). Oakum (untwisted old rope picked by prisoners in jail) caulked gaps between timbers for waterproofing. In 1827, a labouring quarterman (foreman in a shipbuilding yard) earned about 15s£2 a week.
A ship’s carpenter didn’t make boats. He went to sea repairing them in situ. It wasn’t unusual for successive censuses to record him as land-based carpenter one year and ship’s carpenter another.
Many shipbuilders belonged to trade unions; archives stored locally or with the MRC. Anthony Burton’s book Tracing your Shipbuilding Ancestors, Pen and Sword, 2010, explains boats’ development, lives of boat builders and archive locations.
Underfall Yard, Bristol www. underfallyard.co.uk, has a working boat yard with Victorian workshop dating from the 1880s.
Ships’ chandlers
Ships’ chandlers procured ships’ essentials, sourcing and supplying seagoing commodities of rope, sailcloths and sailors’ provisions etc. Don’t confuse him with candle-maker (also chandler) although, of course, ships’ chandlers supplied boats with candles and oil. Ships’ chandlers could be located anywhere. Arthur Beale, a long way from the sea in Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden, London, established as rope maker c1500 has never moved. See Grace’s Guide www. gracesguide.co.uk/arthur_beale.
Chandlers weren’t always local men. German brothers Edward and Heinrich (anglicised to Henry) Ramm had by 1881 set up shop at 34 Parliament Street, Toxteth, Liverpool (now the A562) with Norwegian-born mother, Elizabeth (mistranscribed as Elise) and their German-born housekeeper. Enumerated on the same census page is a mariner’s wife from the Shetlands, and overleaf, a master mariner from Nova Scotia. By its very nature, seafarers were multi-national.
Ropemakers
As a typical large sailing ship needed 21 miles of rope for rigging alone, (HMS Victory required 31 miles of rope in total) ropemakers had a long job. The standard length for a British naval rope was 1,000ft (300m) so ropewalks were, of necessity, long – up to a quarter of a mile and therefore easily spotted on old maps. The 1881 Fleetwood map at https://maps.nls. uk/view/102343850 clearly shows two ropewalks plus oyster and mussel beds, docks, fish warehouse and railway lines. If a ropemaking ancestor lived near one, that’s where he worked.
A ropemaker fastened one end of two threads of hemp or flax to his waist and the other end to two wheel spindles and walked backwards (later he perhaps used a bicycle) to the end of the room twisting hemp as he went. The number of strands determined thickness; thinner cord for fishing nets etc; rope for rigging. It was finally twisted together and tarred. Ropemaking was hard, sweated labour working 6am to dusk and fire a constant hazard from ever-present dust. There’s a longer explanation in the 1827 edition of The Book of Trades https://archive.org/details/ bookofenglishtra00unse/page/274/ mode/2up.
The Rope Yard at Chatham Docks was run by the Clerk of the Ropeyard as a separate business from naval Chatham Docks https://thedockyard. co.uk/explore/history-buildings/ historic-buildings/ropemaking.
Sailcloth/sail makers
Due to water absorption, seawater’s high salt level and UV from the sun, sails were constantly repaired or replaced.
Sailcloth (often called duck from doek, Dutch for cloth) was made of linen (flax), dressed hemp or cotton from the 19th century (although linen was stronger). Because sails were large, so were lofts where sailcloth and sails were produced. The labour force often included women and working hours were long, commonly early morning to sunset. An alternative name for sailmaker was sail-tailor.
Although steam powered fishing boats arrived from the 1870s such boats still sported sails and by the 20th century, fishing boats may have just one mast; the sails to steady boats whilst nets were out.
Founded in 1889, some Federation of Sailmakers of Great Britain and Ireland archives are held at the MRC; https://mrc-catalogue.warwick. ac.uk/records/fsm
Netmakers, beatsters & net menders
A fishing boat might have up to 100 nets, each about 54 yards long (50m) equalling two miles of netting per boat. At sea, it took hours to throw them out and bring back in. Small snags were mended afloat; larger holes repaired on land. There was a lot of work for net menders and makers who also sewed in floats and sinkers. The majority of the work-force were women; beatsters in East Anglia. In 1861 Norfolk, there were 948 beatsters ranging in age from 13-70+ with some living in Great Yarmouth at addresses like 1 Row 138 (Dorcas Wigg aged 57). The rows are a network of 145 narrow alleys unique to Great Yarmouth where many inhabitants worked in seafaring industries; see www.great-yarmouth. co.uk/things-to-do/the-rows.aspx.
Beatsters and netmakers needed good light so lofts had large windows; www.ourgreatyarmouth.org.uk/ page_id__67.aspx shows one.
Docks & dockers
As an island state, we import raw goods (eg for Manchester’s former cotton industry) and export what we produce. Thousands of dockers were employed by the day, occasionally half day, chosen often at the gaffer’s whim. It was hard, physical and dangerous, accidents common. Dockers and stevedores (estibador, Spanish, a packer; estibar, to stow) generally belonged to a union. The MRC holds records, largely uncatalogued, for eg National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers (formerly the Amalgamated Stevedores’ Labour Protection League, founded 1872) 1880-1982. Also useful is Tracing your Docker Ancestors, Alex Ombler, Pen and Sword, 2019.
For naval dockyards, see www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-withyour-research/research-guides/royalnaval-dockyard-staff.
Customs & excise men/ coast guards
Even today, smuggling wine, spirits and tobacco is tempting (although not yesteryear’s pursuit of ship wrecking) and Customs and Excise men were employed to prevent it. TNA holds records of this unpopularwith-smugglers occupation www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-withyour-research/research-guides/ excise-and-inland-revenue-officers. You may be interested in The Whole Law Relative to the Duty and Office of a Justice of the Peace, 1794, free online at https://play.google.com/books/ reader?id=-le8aaaayaaj&hl=en_ GB&PG=GBS.PA1.
Initially formed in 1822 to prevent smuggling, by 1856 the coastguard service defended the coast also providing a naval reserve. Housing (not necessarily the most pleasant) was provided for them eg Fleetwood where, in the 1850s, the chief coastguard was vicar’s son Royal Navy Captain Edward Wasey (b Buckinghamshire c1817).
For records, see TNA www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-withyour-research/research-guides/ coastguard-officers. Genuki’s www. genuki.org.uk/big/coastguards lists British coastguards 1841-1901.
Tourism
As the railway network expanded, so did day trips and seaside holidays. They were exceptionally popular with residents of textile towns during ‘wakes’ week.
Seaside landladies had the reputation of being battle-axes. My father, holidaying in the Isle of Wight in the early 1930s, told me you left the boarding house by 10am and returned at 4pm at the earliest presumably giving the landlady time to clean rooms, go shopping and prepare evening meals. Some holidaymakers stayed in apartment houses where, for an extra charge, they shopped for food in town and their landlady cooked it for their evening meal.
Hotels were dear for millworkers; the nearer the beach, the more expensive and swanky an establishment. A weekend stay circa 1900 cost 16s at the North Euston Hotel, Fleetwood.
Jostling with a town’s usual trades was an industry catering to the holidaymakers; theatres, concerts, photo booths and promenade photographers plus souvenirs to take home.
The fish and chip supper was conceived in the 1860s; various people and areas vie for inventing it. In the UK by 1910, over 25,000 outlets sold the dish. During both world wars, fish was amongst the few products not rationed.
So next time you munch fish and chips, remember the c1826 Northumberland folk tune ‘Dance to your daddy my little laddie; you shall have a fishy on your little dishy when the boat comes in’ and reflect on the men and women who put it on your plate.
About the author
Adèle Emm has been tracing her unusual surname since she was 17. Her books include ‘Tracing your Trade and Craftsman Ancestors’ (Pen and Sword 2015) and ‘My Ancestors Worked in Textile Mills’ (SOG 2020)
Read Adèle’s website and blog at www. adeleemm.com