Tag: well boats

As a child growing up in Cheekpoint, there
were a number of curious features off the main quay known as Eel boxes.
 The Eels which were fished from the village were placed into the boxes to
be kept alive, and when the buyers came the eels were removed, weighed and
placed aboard a truck with aeriated tanks. When I started fishing eels commercially
in the early 80’s, the boxes had gone.  Only recently I realised that they
probably represented a medieval method of keeping fish, and possibly quite
common in the harbour.

The eel boxes at
Cheekpoint were a basic construct.  A rectangular box made of sturdy
timbers, with holes bored into the sides, to allow river water to circulate.
 The boxes were placed into the river in the late spring and the tops
floated just above the water line.  They were fixed in place and eels were
deposited after fishing through a top side hatch.  Once the summer ended,
the boxes were placed on Cheekpoint quay, the green and the Rookery where they dried out
for the following season.  It never occurred to me to ask, but I’d imagine
no one could have told me just how old they were. As for a photo, alas, I have
never seen one.

Recently I came
across an old book on seafaring on the English east coast[i], and was surprised, if not
shocked to find mention of just such boxes, and employed from medieval times in
the keeping of fish for markets.

The boxes in
question had many local names including chests, boxes, Corf, Corves, Korb and Koff.
Surprisingly to me I managed to find an online link to one such phrase.
 The Corf or Koff words derive from Germany or Holland and are taken from the Latin Corbis for a basket.

The boxes were
used to keep fish fresh for market, and not just hardy creatures such as eel.
 Flats, sole and turbot are mentioned, as were haddock and cod.  In
some cases the boxes were housed locally for storage, but they were also towed
astern of sailing craft, to bring fish to market. 

I’m speculating
that it was a progression on the practice when boats developed to incorporate
the boxes.  Over time it seems that boats of various local names but
commonly referred to as well boats, i.e. a well was created inboard for the
storage of live fish, developed. At their more sophisticated these well boats were used to
bring live Cod from Iceland to England and in particular the London market, and led to the curious practice known, and sometimes assigned to the boats as Cod Bangers!

A common
destination it seems was the fish chests of Gravesend on the Thames in London.
Apparently at Gravesend a vast quantity of fish chests were kept to supply
fresh fish to the city of London, and this included (at least) shellfish from the Irish
coast including oysters, whelks, cockles and periwinkles.  The Thames
became too polluted by the mid 1800’s and the practice was moved onto the
coast, but by then trains and steam boats led to faster delivery times in any case.

Accessed from Wikipedia

I can’t say I ever
heard, or read about craft such as well boats operating from the harbour, but
isn’t it conceivable that they did. And perhaps the eel boxes at
Cheekpoint suggest that the practices on the English coast did operate on the Irish
coast and harbours too? The eel boxes at Cheekpoint died out in the late
seventies because locally it was found that hand stitched bags were much easier
when it came to storing and handling eel. But the practice still exists
in the keeping of lobster and crab, albeit in much smaller boxes. And if you think the well boats are extinct, google Livewell. You can even buy the technology on ebay!