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Book Review: Trawling: The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery

A history of the adoption of trawling and the legitimisation of the technique that has been so destructive offish stocks is a useful addition to the literature on the fishing industry. Much of the technical detail will be fairly familiar to readers but it will seldom be presented by an author who is so much at one with his subject. This narrative of the growth and collapse of trawling will interest many readers, and the combination of technical history of fishing has been skilfully combined within a general framework of economic change. The episodic arrangement of its layout presents a number of topics informatively, and the author's easy style will help historians, as well as general readers, to recall events that made news headlines several decades ago. In the 1990s, for example, it is easy to forget that one of the Royal Navy's most frustrating and inconclusive campaigns was against a NATO ally: the four Cod Wars with Iceland in the 1950s and 1960s marked one phase of the decline of the British fishing industry. Even more astounding, in viewof recent events, was the enthusiasm in the early 1970s by part of the industry at least for entry into the Common Market! Episodes highlighting the gradual development of the industry in the nineteenth century form the first nine chapters of the book. They explain the growth of fleeting, the application of steam power to fishing vessels, the impact of ice and the importance of rail connections. Dr Robinson is at his best when explaining the industry's politics in chapter five. Free-trade policies were imposed upon a confusion of local inshore interests that feared the impact on fish stocks of the new gear and larger vessels. This use of laissez-faire policies to force competition into the catching of demersal fish contrasted strongly with the industry's attempt to retain control over its labour force by outdated and highly regulated means. The labour disputes of the later nineteenth century were aggravated by the persistence of the apprenticeship system at TheJournal of Transport History