The spread of bottom trawling in the British Isles, c.1700–1860

Abstract

Widespread bottom trawling in British waters has traditionally been dated from the last decades of the 18th century, and its early heartland has most commonly been identified as the Torbay area of Devon. This article shows that, in fact, by the time Torbay became known as a centre for the industry, bottom trawling was already well-known and relatively widespread around much of England and Wales, as well as large parts of Eastern and Southern Ireland. Following on from an earlier contribution in this journal, it also demonstrates that bottom trawling’s unbroken history, going back to at least the first decades of the 17th century, has always been beset by controversy, but that the middle decades of the 19th century saw a sea-change in official attitudes that, in effect, ushered in an era of unfettered expansion in industrial beam trawling by the 1890s.