Abstract
In fisheries history, the port of Hull on the River Humber in England has played a significant role. The undisputed centre of the United Kingdom's distant-water fishing fleet from the early twentieth century onwards, Hull is known as an almost iconic case of concentration and industrialization in the history of the North Atlantic fisheries. Scholars like Jeremy Tunstall and Robb Robinson have written volumes on Hull's trawling industry that have become standard reading for anybody interested in the history of the United Kingdom and northern European fisheries. Moreover, Hull's fame is also built on the fact that its decline happened quite suddenly and dramatically following the so-called Cod Wars of the 1970s, eventually leading to the almost complete disappearance of fishing from the port.
With her well-written and original book, Beyond Trawlertown, historian Jo Byrne adds herself to the list of historians and social scientists illustrating the development of Hull as a fishing port. Like some of her predecessors, Byrne has a close personal relationship with her subject. She grew up in Hull as the daughter of a trawlerman, and one of the qualities of the book is the detailed insights into the locality of Hull and its fisheries quarters around Hessle Road, which she shows throughout. The reader is never in any doubt that Byrne has spent much more than the four years of her PhD programme in becoming familiar with the characteristics of Hull's fisheries history and heritage.
From the outset, the title Beyond Trawlertown is a sign that the book is not only about Hull as a fishing port; the author wants to take readers further back in time than the end of Hull's era as a dominant distant-water trawling centre. Indeed, her goal is to guide readers through and beyond the disruptive years of the 1970s, when 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones and new ways of managing fish stocks led to the fall of Hull's fishing industry. Two-thirds of the book unearths the post-1976 era and describes how the industry, the town and the local population tried to cope with the fact that the trawler industry no longer played a dominant role in the local economy. Anybody with an interest in history will find the book valuable and interesting for its well-researched analysis of the aftermath of the Cod Wars. As Byrne describes, Hull's fisheries sector was already undergoing a transition before the crisis hit; freezer trawlers and the modernization of the fish-processing industry were already underway to compete with the changing conditions of business caused by rising oil prices and Britain's membership of the European Economic Community. I learnt, for example, how Hull's trawler companies and trawlermen took several initiatives to continue fishing in international waters, and how they were moderately and temporarily successful in fishing for species like mackerel and blue whiting.
However, Byrne's interests go beyond producing a historical account of Hull's trawlers. To better understand the human experience, Byrne introduces the reader to discussions of a more cultural-analytical character. She wants to bring the reader closer to the lifeworld of the fisheries and Hessle Road. Subsequently, in addition to written sources like newspapers, archives from trawler companies and industry, and public reports, Byrne makes extensive use of 41 oral history interviews that she conducted with men and women who were part of Hull's fishing industry, and who experienced first-hand its decline and transformation over the following decades. Former trawlermen and their wives, sons and daughters, owners, dockers, factory workers and salesmen were interviewed, and their voices play a central part in Byrne's description and discussions throughout. Besides adding nuance to and personal perspectives on the vast changes in Hull's fishing industry, these interviews are used to produce a kind of ‘thick description’ of Hessle Road and the port of Hull at a time when the rhythm of fishing was the defining axis around which all activity was directly or indirectly centred, as well as throughout the disruptive years after 1976.
Place, memory and the concept of ‘taskscape’ are central to Byrne's ambition; the latter is a concept borrowed from Tim Ingold, which Byrne defines as ‘a means of understanding place as the located ensemble of collective tasks, sensations, sounds and encounters performed in the process of communal living’ (152). The oral history sources are thus used throughout the book's chapters as instruments to get a closer and more authentic understanding of what life in the sphere of fishing was like. The reader comes really close to experiencing the authentic port in the chapter entitled ‘Stepping into Trawlertown’, in which Byrne takes the reader on a trip not only back in time, but also into the local environments of Hessle Road and St. Andrew's Dock, to a degree that one can almost smell, hear and feel the ‘buzz of fishing’.
The latter part of the book is perhaps less relevant to the average maritime historian, although the process described by Byrne whereby ports adapted to sudden changes is very interesting. Here, the book crosses thematically into heritage studies as the author describes how buildings and structures from the days of fishing and the local population's loss of identity and loss of ‘taskscape’ are elements in more recent struggles over the public narrative of Hull. More than 40 years have passed since the decline of fishing; Byrne discusses how the city of Hull has gone through different phases in dealing with its trawling legacy. Similarly, across the North Sea from the River Humber, the Danish port of Esbjerg experienced an almost complete shift from fisheries to offshore oil and gas. Like Esbjerg, Hull tended to deliberately turn its back on its fisheries legacy throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Fish were thought of as an outdated aspect of the past in these former fishing ports. Instead, both Hull and Esbjerg looked at the potential of new businesses, whether oil and gas or retail stores and recreational activities. Readers interested in heritage studies, oral history and ports will enjoy how Byrne's book discusses at what point and how fisheries' past finally became a present-day asset. Perhaps more precisely, Byrne successfully lays out how competing post-fisheries narratives came to constitute a battlefield where only some memories and stories could break through into public communications and the city's branding strategy.
Beyond Trawlertown examines a limited geography – the fishing port of Hull – but in its ambition ponders a wider, cross-disciplinary set of questions and themes. Altogether, the book encapsulates the character of a fishing community and fisheries industry in a time of dramatic transformation. I feel that the book reaches its objective on three levels, which is highly commendable. First, it gives a focused historical account and analysis of the fishing industry, following the course of events before and after the Cod Wars. Second, it succeeds in using oral history to make the trawlermen's world come alive; in doing so, Byrne conveys life experiences and significant cultural changes in the aftermath of decline. And third, it presents a qualified academic perspective in the fields of cultural and heritage studies through its detailed account and critical examination of events and opinions leading up to the present-day status of fisheries in Hull's narrative concerning its own maritime legacy.