Abstract
This book offers a small but intriguing window onto the daily reality of fishing communities at the early modern Scottish coast. It is a heavily source-based study. The main sources consist of a series of eight burgh court books from the years 1552–1559 of the town of Crail that have survived in the University Library of St. Andrews and some Protocol Books (custom books) from the period 1575–1600, from the harbours of Anstruther, Crail and Pittenween, preserved in the National Archives of Scotland. The documentation concerns a variety of juridical texts, including loans, registers of sasines, real estate, receipts, obligations, marriage contracts and probate records. Thomas Riss uses this rich (and for the period rare) set of sources very effectively for research into the social-economic history of the fisheries of Crail, and in particular into the organization of fisheries.
The fisheries turn out to be connected to both local and long distance shipping. Fishermen and mariners sailed to the wild seas of the north and west of Scotland in the stormy months of autumn, and returned before Christmas with herring and cod. They sold their catch in Scotland but also traded it off to markets in England, France and the Baltic. On the return journey they might carry wood from Norway for making herring barrels or salt from France for curing the fish (which was of better quality then the Scottish salt), and a limited amount of other goods including wine. The boats they sailed in were called crears, half decked vessel of up to 30 tons. Crails was probably the main fishing centre at the Firth of Forth at the time, but quite a number of smaller ones existed.
The narrative of the book is arranged thematically. It contains two introductory chapters on the resources and equipment (barrels, salt, nets, lines) and on the fishing grounds and seasons. Remarkably, by calling at different places, a full-time mariner would be able to fish almost all year round. Chapter 3 is on the catch, its methods and quantities. It shows that the type of sources used are not very useful for estimating quantities. Chapter 4 deals with the financial technicalities of the costs of the fishing, indemnities and interests. For this topic, the sources are very useful – even the costs of a last of herring can be reconstructed fairly convincingly. The profit mounted to between 100 and 200 per cent during the production phase (catch, cure and packing) (p. 41). Chapter 5 describes the several types of people or professions involved. This is the most substantial chapter, and the comparison that the author makes between his study and the famous study of Montaillou by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (p. 81), is best realized herein. He presents the mariner contractors, who conducted the fishing with the help of other seamen, and the merchants who commissioned the voyages and sold the fish received. Thanks to digital tools, he combines very precise data on details of journeys and details of contracts to reconstruct journeys, and even full business careers of seven people representing different professions and social strata.
Curiously, fishing was undertaken only for a number of years. People shifted a lot between activities – flexibility is characteristic of Scottish mariners. But also the coopers were active at many fronts. They furnished a certain quantity of barrels to the merchants, they took part in trade as merchants when they fetched timber in Norway, or even engaged in fishing themselves. A similar argument applies to credit. The whole fishing business depended on credit, as did all trade and commerce in the early modern period. Many people were involved in supplying credit, and whoever had some money was able to invest it. This may also be a factor accounting for the flexibility of people at that time.
For whom is this book of interest? It is too detailed for junior or bachelor students, but for advanced students it offers a great example of what can be done with the investigated juridical and financial sources, which may seem dull at first glance and only reveal their great value when the gold dust is concentrated into gold lumps by a systematic approach. And of course it is a great contribution to Scottish history, to the history of the Scottish business world before the Union of the Crowns. Scotland in the century of the Reformation was not all wild preachers and vain nobility, as T.C. Smout remarks in the Foreword to the book.