Salt Herring on Saturday : The Fishertown of Nairn Last Century

Nairn in the 1920s and 1930s was a town of about 4500 people divided between the Fishertown and the Uptown. The author remembers life in the Fishertown, where the fishing provided work and support for as many as 250 Nairn men and their 1500 or so dependants. Before World War I, 75 locally owned boats were engaged in either line or drift-net fishing, and in 1920, when the European market for salt herring was shrinking fast, the Mariner's Almanac for that year showed there were still 30 steam drifters and 42 fishing boats powered by sail belonging to Nairn fishermen. Even in 1931 there were still 210 men employed in the industry, notwithstanding a degree of emigration. By 1951 the census enumerated only 80 fishermen and today there is but a handful, none of them based in the town. The fisher folk had a distinctive way of life, being to some extent detached from the rest of the townspeople by the nature of their exacting trade. They lived like a large family, observing a code of behaviour and set of customs and values prescribed by their seagoing forebears and handed down through generations. Their traditions were nurtured and sustained by a united and unswerving devotion to the ceaseless demands of the fishing industry. A stable pattern of life was established through close working partnerships and strong family ties, as boats were operated by groups of relatives who spent all their working lives together. The women shared equally in this solidarity in their closely packed Fishertown houses, communicating daily with each other over the men's work and their own connected duties.