Heavy cost of a rich haul

'Protect Me' - A cutting from the Dundee Evening Telegraph

It seems we like our history to be like our newspaper headlines – dramatic, sudden and exciting. Maybe that has its roots in the fact that all of creation has been condensed to just six days in the opening verses of Genesis?

There’s probably a popular misconception that the age of dinosaurs ended with a big bang overnight. While on the grand scale of time the extinction period was certainly swift, it created a necessary evolution so, while dramatic, it was still gradual. That concept is so much duller when it comes to storytelling.

Likewise, on a local level, Fife’s thriving fishing industry didn’t just stop as one day everyone hoisted empty nets. The decline featured times of “glut and famine” over decades, with the squeeze tightening as the lows became more dominant than the highs.

According to Peter Smith’s The Lammas Drave and the Winter Herrin’ the spring of 1934 delivered the best landings since 1902 and that unexpected boom would continue up until the start of the war.

But March 1935 would produce a harvest that proved troublesome in its abundance, possibly best illustrated by the St Monans yawl ‘Protect Me’ which made the columns of the Dundee Evening Telegraph with its mixed fortunes.

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By mid-March, the winter fishing was again producing poor catches but fresh shoals were arriving with the ‘Hakes’ fishing ground providing a particularly rich reward for the nets.

“Many boats returned to the Fife ports heavy with herring,” reported the Telegraph.

“The crews had a hard struggle to get the nets, which in some cases were absolutely full of fish, on board. The spots in some areas were extraordinary and nets were swept away or torn to ribbons by the weight of the fish.”

The ‘Protect Me’ was forced to lie ashore on Friday, March 22, because of damage to its gear caused by hauling in its laden nets.

According to the newspaper the boat had to take on extra crew and it still took nearly six hours to get the bulging nets on board.

“The gear recovered, which was badly torn, yielded about 50 crans, while a number of nets were carried away. Other crews encountered dense shoals and found that they had also netted too big a catch and their nets were destroyed.”

It was also reported that feelings were running high between the Fife crews and the ring-net vessels which were believed to have caused a lot of damage to the anchored nets.

‘Protect Me’, according to Smith’s listings of landings, continued to fare well through 1936 and 1937 but would appear to have been fortunate to do so, having made the news in January 1934. It had been caught in a gale off the May Isle when she lost her mast and rigging.

The newspapers then reported that she was being carried towards the island when, in response to flares, she was taken in tow by another St Monans vessel, ‘The Endeavour’.