Following Fish and Fighting for Cod

Copyright to the author

by Jo Byrne

Following Fish and Fighting for Cod

Hull’s fish trail is a perfect way to discover an elusive city.  Since 1992, the silvery pathway has wound through hidden lanes that echo with a maritime past. It is fitting that Hull’s streets should be paved with fish.  From the nineteenth century, Hull’s name was synonymous with distant-water trawling, with its ships departing for northern waters. Trawling was predominantly for cod destined for fish and chip shops serving up Britain’s national dish.  Fish was extracted in maximum quantities, exploiting a seemingly endless bounty of the sea.  While supply and demand continued there seemed little reason to change.   

By the 1970s, patterns of trawling from Hull had existed for decades.  Sociologist Jeremy Tunstall, who published an account of the life of Hull trawlermen in the1950s, wrote: 

 'The absolute and unchanging quality which pervades group-life on a trawler is made all the more marked by the fact that with minor variations, it is the same as old fishermen remember.  This gives the fisherman a certain feeling that whatsoever exists in the life on a trawler is somehow permanent and ordained’. [i]

Hull trawlermen fished in the challenging waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic, particularly around Iceland.  They were casually employed, with pay depending upon the fluctuating price of fish. Work related accident and death rates were high.  The distant-water industry had grown up around the 21-day trip – the time required for the traditional side trawler to travel to distant fishing grounds and return with the catch still fresh. 

Over time, this repeated pattern influenced life both at sea and ashore. Tunstall observed that ‘fishermen see themselves in a curious way as working in Hull’.  Although fishing more than a thousand miles from the city, vessels and processing facilities were Hull owned and based.  Trawlers sailed from and returned to the city.  92% of fishermen in 1955 lived within 4 miles of the fish dock, and with just 3 days ashore between trips, to minimize time spent travelling many lived much closer.  Hull’s fishing district of Hessle Road can be thought of as Trawlertown – a landscape of distinct activity connected to the Arctic trawl, where, in the words of geographer GW Horobin, ‘everything was geared to the rhythm of fishing’.[ii]   

Returning to Hull’s fish trail, it is apt that the cod fish is missing.  In August 2023, the chrome and bronze sculpture was the victim of a puzzling removal that remains unresolved. Less mysterious, however, are the circumstances that led to the loss of Hull’s industry that had cod at its core.  Throughout the 1970s, distant-water fishing faced a string of adversity that forced it into a remarkably rapid contraction and decline.

From the 1960s, the stern freezer trawler was introducing new ways of operating.  Safer and more comfortable, these vessels travelled further afield, stayed at sea longer, and enjoyed longer time in port.  For the first time in generations, life aboard a trawler was no longer the same as the old fisherman remembered.  The new freezer trawler saw vessels and catch size increase, bringing with it the spectre of overfishing.

Overfishing had long haunted the UK trawl fisheries.  It had been an impetus for Hull’s large-scale engagement with Arctic fishing in the first place, with firms seeking new grounds as stocks diminished in home waters.[iii] For decades, British trawlers had made their money from the coastlines of other nations.  But by the 1960s, new fleets were fishing in waters that the British industry had come to see as their grounds.  Eastern Bloc vessels joined those fishing around Iceland, which in combination with the increased efficiency of the new freezer vessels, intensified the threat to cod stocks.  

The threat of overfishing was a factor in Iceland’s decision to gradually expand their territorial waters up to a 200-mile limit in 1975-76.  Britain protested but was defeated in a series of sea-based conflicts known as the Cod Wars.  As 200-mile limits spread globally, Britain’s distant-water fleet faced ejection from traditional fishing grounds. 

The exclusion coincided with other challenges during the 1970s, including OPEC oil crises and wage inflation.  Most substantially, as Britain had been contesting the Iceland limits, it had in parallel been preparing to extend its own 200-mile fishing limit, which occurred in January 1977.  Some hoped that the move could compensate for fishing losses at Iceland.  However, Britain’s 200-mile limit was to be part of a European ‘community pond’ directed by the policies of the European Economic Community (EEC). It took a further seven years to revise the existing European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to share Community waters via a new system of fishing quotas.  The EEC also led the negotiation of fishing agreements with other nations and for non-Community members fishing within Community waters.  The uncertainty that surrounded the introduction of these new approaches continued into the 1980s and hampered industry attempts to adapt and recover from the loss of traditional grounds.

The British distant-water fishery had sailed into a perfect storm, and the consequences were to be substantial.  The Hull fishery relied upon unrestricted access to Icelandic and other Arctic fishing grounds and neither the industry nor the fishing community anticipated the speed and impact of their loss.  Ron[iv], a trawler skipper, recalls the difficulty of accepting the new circumstances:  ‘We didn’t think it was possible… that one country could suddenly declare that amount of seas within their limits,’ he reflects ‘it was unbelievable that someone could just say ‘well, this chunk of water is ours and nobody else is going to come into it.’  Other former trawlermen reflect on contemporary feelings of shock and anger alongside a retrospective realisation of the need for some degree of change.  Deckhand Thomas draws the blunt conclusion, ‘we was catching miles too much fish.’   

The combined impact of these factors was a terminal downward spiral with the loss of ships and jobs.  There was a human cost to the adjustment, and the consequences were felt by thousands.  After the Cod Wars, Ron recalls that ‘people were leaving in the droves… they had nowhere to go, they had no ships.’  Ships too fell victim to the cull, with the older side trawlers sent to the Drapers slipway on the River Humber to be dismantled.  Thomas reflects with emotion, ‘it really did hurt, y’ know, because I’d come up through the ranks on these ships.’  He describes the process as ‘soul destroying.’  Trawlers had been scrapped regularly in the past, as older vessels made way for the new.  But after the Cod Wars, they were not to be replaced and from the mid-1970s the move was followed by the sale and conversion of Hull’s advanced freezer fleet. In popular memory, the collective exodus from the fish dock serves as a potent symbol of the end.       

After 1976, Hull’s fleet continued to work old grounds with an emerging system of quotas.  But distant water quotas were small compared with established catch levels.  Left with a fleet of large fish-hungry ships, Hull’s trawling firms sought rapid diversification, often bringing with them their trusted Hull crews. 

Mackerelling  

One key opportunity for the Hull trawling fleet came from the Cornish coast, where large shoals of mackerel had appeared from the mid-1960s.  With fishing in the North-East Atlantic under threat, the diversion to South-West England was welcomed by the distant water industry, if less so by the local inshore sector.  By the late 1970s, all Hull fishing firms had trawlers working the mackerel grounds.   

With the mackerel fishery, for the first time in its history, the Hull fleet fished for an export rather than a domestic market.  In 1977, the European CFP worked to Hull’s advantage by excluding Eastern Bloc fishing fleets from the newly created EEC waters.  In response, a practice known as klondyking was developed, where mackerel caught by British ships was transferred for processing aboard large Eastern Bloc factory vessels anchored off the coast.  Mackerel frozen at sea by Hull vessels was also transshipped for export.  Hull vessel owners rented facilities in the Welsh port of Milford Haven and for the first time ever, the arrival and departure of Hull trawlers took place away from Hull’s own fish dock, with crews and support teams leaving and returning to Hull by coach or taxi.  

However, by the 1980s, the heavy fishing effort brought the threat of overfishing.  Once again, regulation required to protect fish stocks eventually made the fishery unviable for the Hull fleet.  But for almost a decade after the final Cod War, the British mackerel fishery kept Hull trawlers at sea.  It was a break with the rhythms of the past.  In Hull the term ‘Mackerelling’ suggests something different to ‘fishing’.  Fishing was from Hull to northern seas and to cod.    

Experimental Fishing

Alongside mackerel, the UK fishing industry was exploring other new species.  Distant-water trawlers were involved in highly experimental voyages, trawling in the very deep waters off the British continental shelf in the hope of discovering a viable new fishery.  But the experiments met with multiple problems.  The boney and sometimes quite unattractive fish were hard to catch, gut and process. It appealed to neither the industry nor to the conservative fish-eating tastes of the British consumer

Ultimately the experiments did not result in the hoped for long-term opportunity, and in the late 1970s, losses from experimental fishing came on top of other crises that made it untenable to continue.    Yet it was precisely these circumstances that had spurred new thinking.  In the absence of crisis, attempts to shift from cod may never have happened at all. 

The Gift of Oil  

In the 1970s, in home waters, came a new prospect that was not about fish.  In the mid-1960s Britain discovered North Sea gas and oil.  The offshore industry developed rapidly in the 1970s and to support it, a fleet was needed for supply, safety, standby and survey work.  Offshore support centres developed at Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Aberdeen and Peterhead. These ports, like Hull, had suffered from the changing dynamics of fishing and had ships to spare.  Until specifically designed support craft were commissioned, redundant distant-water trawlers filled the gap.  

Hull’s trawling firms offered vessels for charter or for conversion to survey ships. The impact of this lifeline is widely observed, as former skipper Ken reflects:  

‘you could sit and think that if [the oil] industry wasn’t there, it would’ve been a complete disaster.  We would’ve had something like four, five thousand fishermen around with nothing to do... so it really was an answer to everybody’s problems.’2    

The older side trawlers were well-suited for standby work, which meant being on hand in case of an emergency on an oil platform.  Yet standby contracts did not always deliver job satisfaction.  For deckhand Bill it was:  

‘Boring!  Absolutely boring.  Believe me, I’ve never been so bored in my life.  Just sat there waiting... for summat not to happen… That won’t for us.  We was used to work.  We all the time was working – catching fish, putting it away.  That was earning money.’  

Others express greater satisfaction working on supply ships.  While Michael, who skippered survey vessels, enjoyed varied projects that took him to Vietnam, America and India. After the Cod Wars, rather than move into home waters, Michael became one of a number of Hull trawlermen and trawling firms who found themselves scattered all over the world, working for or partnering with global fisheries or working in the overseas oil industry, often in the Gulf.  

The Falklands  

In the late 1980s, there came a major opportunity to develop a new fishery in direct British control.   In 1976, an Economic Survey of the Falklands proposed the development of a new fishery that would increase the Islands’ economic potential.  However, due to economic and political circumstances, it was not until 1987 that Britain declared a 150-mile interim fishing limit around the islands.  Hull fishing firms Marr and Boyd Line took full advantage of the new prospects, engaging in the management and development of the fishery, whilst also sending their own ships to the South Atlantic.  In 1988, the World Fishing journal reported that the vessel Hill Cove had left ‘one of the world’s oldest fishing communities, Hull, to join one of the newest, Port Stanley’ and she took with her a skipper and crew from Hessle Road.   

The role of the Hull trawling firms in the South Atlantic was substantial and the fishing zone produced significant wealth.  In 1985/6 the income of the Falkland Islands Government was £6 million.  By 1988/89 fishing had boosted this to £35 million.  

Fish Trades: Less cause for concern  

Before the final Cod War, Hull-caught fish was always brought back to the city, and it was easy to believe that the fortunes of Hull’s catching sector and the associated fish merchant and processing trades were intrinsically entwined.  However, this proved to be an illusion.  As the Hull trawling fleet diminished, Hull’s fish trades certainly contacted, but they were able to adapt and continue due to their ability to source fish from other suppliers - particularly from Iceland.  Ultimately, they survived, because as fish merchant Chris observes: ‘there’s always somebody, somewhere wanting to send fish.’ The price was the fracture of the localised structures that had characterised the industry and an increased vulnerability to global economics.   

New Lives 

For the catching sector, despite tenacious acts of resilience, attempts to diversify brought mixed results and could not replace the stability of Arctic cod.  Hull’s once flourishing trawl industry experienced substantial collapse and the loss brought human as well economic consequences. Adjacent to the fish dock, Hessle Road – or Trawlertown - had physically and culturally evolved to support an extreme occupation. It was a place where shops opened with the tides, loans and backhanders boosted wages, where trawlermen’s pubs, dashing taxis, matriarchal networks and celebratory spending reflected a life tied to fishing. The collapse of the industry brought Trawlertown to an end, and the distinct associated rhythms that had endured for decades dissolved back into the wider city.

After 1976, life in all quarters of Hull’s fishery was altered forever.  Former structures had fractured, thousands had experienced unemployment, and where adaptation had taken place, a much-reduced industry was working in a much-expanded arena. For those who had struggled through the transition, big changes had imposed new lives. 

Some struggled with unemployment, and for some older fishermen the years after 1976 brought their working lives to a close.  Others had found permanent work ashore. Sometimes the shore job related to fishing, for others there was a clear break with the past. For some, staying at sea was important. For others new lives could fluctuate between sea and shore.  Many found work but sometimes experienced a more unsettled pattern of employment. Despite its casual basis, trawling had generally offered steady work and for the ambitious, the chance to make it to skipper.  In working lives after 1976, there were few such assurances.  

Working ashore, Ken was saddened by the sight of trawlers leaving and returning without him.  ‘I missed it,’ he says, ‘it took about four years before I thought, well it’s out of your system now.’ Yet for those who managed to secure a good job, there could be compensations, as Michael reflects:  

‘I was skipper for over twelve years, so you get used to it – the good and the bad – and you feel happy in yourself at what you’re doing.  So, I was really disappointed when we got thrown out of Iceland.  But after a while, it was like a novelty, meeting all these people on the [survey] ships who’d been to university, cos I’d never met people like that... so that was interesting.  And then when I went to Ghana and saw sunshine and palm trees, I wished I’d been there 50 years before.’   

Conclusion

In the decade after 1976, Hull made a sacrifice to the changing politics of fishing.  In the wake of the Cod Wars, the story is one of turbulence, loss and decline, but one also threaded with tenacity and adjustment. By 1985, despite rigorous efforts, only two of the numerous trawling firms that had once lined the fish dock remained.  Marr and Boyd Line had weathered the perfect storm and together with the remaining fish trades ensured that fish was still part of the life and economy of the city.  The loss of Hull’s fishing industry stemmed from a complex mix of factors. Environmental pressures brought by new technologies and increasing fishing effort was a contributor.  The global extension of territorial waters paved the way for better managed fisheries.  However, the transition was not smooth. Hull’s experience highlights the casualties in the pursuit of sustainable as well as profitable seas.

This article contains extracts from - Beyond Trawlertown: Memory, Life and Legacy in the Wake of the Cod Wars, by Jo Byrne:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Trawlertown-Studies-Maritime-History/dp/183764408X

[i] J. Tunstall, The Fishermen: The Sociology of an Extreme Occupation, 2nd edn (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1969)

[ii] G.W. Horobin, ‘Community and Occupation in the Hull Fishing Industry’, British Journal of Sociology, 8 (1957).

[iii] R. Robinson, Trawling: The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery, (Devon: University of Exeter Press, 1996).

[iv] The oral history extracts quoted in this article were conducted by the author between November 2012 and February 2015.

Image courtesy of the artist