The Scottish east coast fishery has been in existence for more than a thousand years, spanning the Viking Age right up to the present day.
A brief history The fishery has always been for both whitefish and herring. The Norsemen came to Scotland from the 9th to 11th centuries and settled in the Northern Isles, Western Isles and on the mainland. They had fish as a large part of their diet, and excavations of Viking sites in Orkney and Shetland have found middens (kitchen waste areas) containing large quantities of fish bones. These bones were mainly of cod, saithe and ling but herring, haddock and whiting bones were also found. They used the line fishing method with hooks and bait.
The Dutch had a near monopoly of the herring fishing from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The boats, called busses, were very large. They lay overnight with the drift nets set to catch the herring and were hauled by hand in the morning. The herring were salted and placed in barrels. These barrels were then transferred to small boats called jagers, which were tenders to the busses. These boats took the fish to the markets.
The 18th century saw some Scottish fishermen emulate this Dutch method of fishing. In 1718, the government introduced the bounty system to promote large scale fishing. This meant that the government paid a bounty to the boat owner based on the tonnage of the vessel and would also pay a bounty to anyone for simply building a fishing boat. This continued until 1820 and did much to encourage the growth of the fishery. The fishery was valuable and the fleets often came under attack from French and Spanish privateers. Because of this, armed ships were employed to accompany and defend the fishing boats. Despite this, the Dutch style of fishing didn't produce the results the government wanted. The bulk of the Scottish fishery was still using the line and bait method in inshore waters. However, in 1785 the government instituted barrel bounties, which meant that the bounties were payable based on the amount of cured herring produced. This encouraged the herring curers to enter into contracts with the fishermen whereby they would be guaranteed a price for their catch.
The 19th century saw the greatest growth in sea fishing on the Scottish east coast. In the early years of that century the boats were very small, made of wood and were either one or two masted. They were not expensive to build and small repairs were carried out by the fishermen themselves. These early boats needed to be light so they could be dragged up the beaches.
The fishermen did not venture far from the shore, as these boats were undecked and unstable under stormy conditions. In 1848, a violent storm hit the country and 124 boats were sunk, and 100 fishermen lost their lives. The government appointed Captain John Washington to enquire into the disaster and to make recommendations (the Washington Report). He pointed out that the boats were too small and being without decks prone to water inundation. However, not all of the fishermen were happy about larger decked boats. They felt that heavier boats would be harder to row and decks would make it easier for men to be washed overboard. Also beaching the boats would be impossible. But a good many fishermen took a contrary view and felt that the decked boats was a good idea. They realised that the boats could fish further from the shore and would be better in storm conditions. Larger boats could hold more fish and so profits would be greater. The first decked boat was built in Eyemouth in 1856 and this soon became the norm for the Scottish fishing fleet. These sail boats were of three main types: Skaffies, Fifies and Zulus. Common to all three types were the lug sails, which may have given rise to their name – luggers. The need for the larger boats spurred on the building of harbours all along the east coast, in the 1850s and 1860s. This heralded an enormous change in the size of the herring fishery. Initially, the market for the pickled herring was Ireland and the West Indies where it was fed to slaves. The market received a setback in the 1830s following the ending of slavery on British-owned plantations and, from 1845 to 1851 when the Great Irish Famine forced a mass emigration from Ireland. However, improvements in curing techniques produced a superior product and soon meant that new markets opened up in Russia and the Baltic countries.
The fishermen, with the support of the curers, invested in larger boats and additional nets. The fleet grew quickly but was still could only fish for herring during the two months when the fish were off the Scottish east coast. By 1880, there were around 7,000 Scottish boats involved in herring fishing so the fishing season needed to be extended. This led to a migration of a sizeable number of boats and curers to the west coast in May and June. By 1880, the numbers of boats fishing the west coast numbered more than 1,000. In the 1860s, Scottish boats were also to be found in East Anglian waters for the Autumn fishing. Initially, Scottish curers were not present in any great numbers in this fishery but by the end of the 19th century large numbers were represented in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. By this time, the Scottish fleet actually outnumbered the local one. The curers soon turned their attention to Shetland for the early summer fishing causing the local Shetland fishermen to adopt the drift net and larger boats. By the early 20th century, more than 1,800 boats fished the Shetland waters.
In 1884 the herring industry faced a crisis. The curers wanted an end to the contract system because they could not balance quantity and costs with market conditions and so wanted a move to an auction process. Fishermen wanted the status quo but reluctantly agreed and from 1887 the herring were auctioned.
The peak of the herring fishery industry and also its main decline came between 1900 and the First World War. Steam-powered fishing boats appeared towards the end of the 19th century and it was steam drifters that would take the volume of the catch to new heights. The powered winches allowed longer nets to be deployed and their speed enabled the boats to get to market quickly and to return to sea. In those early years of the 20th century, the Scottish catch reached 2 million barrels annually.
Before the First World War, Germany and Russia were the main market for British herring. After the war, however, Germany was racked by inflation and was impoverished. Russia underwent the 1917 Revolution and civil war. Other European countries started to compete strongly with the British fleets and for twenty years the industry went into a steep decline. The beginnings of the seine net fishing began in Scotland in 1921 but the use of the large inefficient steam boats greatly hindered this new whitefish fishery. After the Second World War, the Scottish east coast fleet, with government assistance, was totally regenerated becoming mainly a whitefish industry. This in turn declined in the 1970s and 1980s due to overfishing and the subsequent imposition of quotas by the European Union. The herring industry continued to shrink. From the 1960s, trawling and purse-netting were the main methods of pelagic fishing, which not only includes herring but also mackerel. Although a quota is placed on the total herring catch and with no limit on mackerel, this sector is now the healthiest in the Scottish fleet.
Fishing boat development
The Scandinavian influence
The Norsemen were skilled seamen and boat builders and their boat designs depended on their needs. Trading vessels were wide, to allow large cargo storage, while raiding boats were long and narrow and very fast. They all used the clinker fashion of planking, i.e. the planks overlapped one another. The boats used for fishing were scaled-down versions of their cargo boats. The Scandinavian influence affected boat building long after the Viking period came to an end. Yoles from the Orkney Island of Stroma were built in the same way as the Norse boats. Early Scottish boat builders copied the Scandinavian designs with their clinker planking and characteristic sharp stems and sterns.
The Skaffie From the beginning of the 19th century a class of boat called the Skaffie appeared. These were favoured mainly in the Moray Firth region. The early skaffie boats were small with rounded stems and raked sterns. They were two-masted with a tall dipping lugsail and a mizzen sail. Their short keel gave them good manoeuvrability in good weather, but they tended to be unstable in bad weather. They were usually crewed by around six people. Above all, though, they were light enough to be hauled up on to the beaches. The boats were un-decked and provided no shelter for the crew. Because of the vulnerability of the boats, they stayed only a few miles out to sea in full view of the land. These boats were gradually built bigger and could be around long, and partially decked. This came about because the harbours that were constructed from the mid to late 19th century meant that the boats no longer needed to be beached. Skaffies were not built in any great numbers after 1900.
The Fifie
The "Fifie" then became the predominant fishing boat on the Scottish east coast. They were used from the 1850s until well into the 20th century. Fifies had a vertical stem and stern with a broad beam, which made them very stable. Their long keel was a disadvantage, especially manoeuvring in confined spaces. These boats were two masted with a main dipping lugsail and a mizzen sail. The masts were set quite far forward and aft to release a good working space. Fifies built from 1860 onwards were all decked, and from the 1870s onwards the bigger boats were built with carvel planking, i.e. the planks were laid edge-to-edge instead of the overlapping clinker style of previous boats. Some boats were now being built up to about in length and were very fast.
The Zulu
In 1879, Lossiemouth fisherman, William "Dad" Campbell came up with a radical design for his new boat. It had the vertical stem of the Fifie and the steeply raked stern of the Skaffie, and he called this boat Nonesuch, registration number INS 2118. She was relatively small, overall with a . The Nonesuch had her registration closed on 12 January 1901 after having been broken up. The Zulu War raging in South Africa at the time gave the name to this new class of boat.Loftus, Tim, "The new age of sail: Moves to build a lug-rigged sail training ship for Scotland are underway", in Brodie, Sonja (ed.), Reforesting Scotland Issue 74: Autumn/Winter 2026, p. 22,
The Zulu boats were built to the carvel method of planking. The shape of the Zulus gave the boats a long deck but a shorter keel, which greatly improved their manoeuvrability. Zulus were two-masted boats and carried three sails – a dipping lug fore, a standing lug mizzen and a jib. The sails were very heavy and difficult to haul, and the masts had to be very long and strong. Masts could be tall on boats of in length. Their design produced very fast boats that became invaluable to herring fishing fleets. They got to the fishing grounds quickly and returned swiftly with the catch. Because of these qualities, the Zulus rapidly became very popular along the entire east coast. As the 20th century approached, steam capstans were introduced, and this made the hauling of the sails and nets much easier for the crews. One of the best of those was the capstans patented and built by MacDonald Brothers of Portsoy, in 1908.
The steam boat