1. Mackerel Fishing by Seine Boat
in southern Ireland,
c. 1880’s - 1920's, with particular
reference to the role of women
Local History MA, seine fishing and the role of women,
Mary McGillicuddy, 2008

2. The Voices in the Archive
• The ‘fundamental task of the
historian is the retrieval of traces,
the rescuing of voices, the
expansion of the archive’ (Whelan).

3. Presentation
1. Acknowledgements & intro
2. Seine fishing
3. Women’s role
4. Conclusion

4. Focus
• This study explored aspects of
mackerel fishing in southwest
Ireland during the 1880’s to
1920’s.
• Salt-cured mackerel was a key
export from the locality.

5. Females & Fishing
• The research included a gender-
specific focus on the role and
function of females within the
fish curing industry as it operated
at the time.

6. Location
• The geographic area studied
includes coastal sites such as
Valentia and Caherciveen in south
Kerry and Castletownberehaven
and Baltimore in west Cork.

7. Roles of Women
• Historically, fishing is predominantly
a male occupation, but on-shore
work often involved women, e.g fish
processing, fish sales, book-keeping,
bait digging, net mending,
agricultural labour and domestic
and emotional support.

8. Methodology
• Primary and secondary sources
were located and examined to
identify if and how they recorded
the work of women within the
context of the mackerel fishing
activity of the region.

9. Overlooked?
• Marginalisation of women within
the historiographical consensus,
they are ‘outside history’ (Whelan).

10. Traces
• Scant documentation and thus
virtual historical ‘invisibility’ of
the female workers provided an
opportunity to uncover further
evidence of their presence during
the period selected for study.

11. Sources
• RIIF Annual Reports
• Congested Districts Board (CDB) records
• 1901 Census records
• Contemporary newspapers
• Folklore records
• Oral interviews/questionnaires
• hotographs

12. Research

13. Remote?
• Region could be considered
peripheral geographically, but its
location conversely positioned it
close to water based trade
routes, foreign markets and other
countries.

14. Portmagee, Kerry

15. ‘His’ story?
• Historians of women are used to
‘reading against the grain’,
interpreting silences and
utilising ephemeral sources
(Abrams et al).

16. Seafish Types
1. Shellfish, molluscs- oysters, scallops /
crustaceans- shrimps, lobsters and crabs
2. Demersal fish- live on or near seabed,
e.g. cod, haddock, whiting, plaice
3. Pelagic- (form shoals), i.e. plankton
eating surface feeders, swim near to
surface -‘oily’ fish e.g. pilchards, herring,
mackerel

17. Innovation
• Seine boats were introduced c.
17th century… Boats and supplies
required initial capital outlay, as
well as provision of the fishing
‘pallace’ or curing house, and
employees to process the catch
and then sell it on.

18. Purse seine/nets

19. Colonisation
• First Earl of Cork set up curing
stations or ‘pallaces’ in Baltimore,
Cork, for pilchards in the early
1600’s.

20. Fishery Development
• ‘…no shortage of energetic and
greedy landowners and
merchants who planned fisheries
to enrich themselves and
Anglicise the native Irish’
(Barnard).

21. Bantry, Cork
• O’Carroll states that during the
period 1625 to 1766 there were
seven proto-industrial fish ‘curing
houses’ around Bantry Harbour
alone. He asserts that there was
an average of ten women
working to each man fishing.

22. Global Factors
• The industry was part of the
larger capitalistic economy and
fishing now termed ‘traditional’
was actually adaptive response to
that economy
(www.everyculture.com).

23. Dependent Development
• Reynolds : British didn’t provide
adequate facilities for Irish to own/
compete in larger craft and 19th
century Scottish artisanal fisheries
were managed in the same manner-
to protect capital investment by
London companies and their more
advanced fishing vessels.

24. Post-famine
• 1874- the number of fishing
boats was reduced overall to
nearly a third of what they had
been in 1846 and crews reduced
to less than a quarter (Cusack).

25. Exception
• An exception to the decline was
that after 1862 came the
offshore, deep sea mackerel
fishery based initially on the Cork
harbor of Kinsale and then
Baltimore (Fitzgerald).

26. 2 Main Types of Fishing
• ‘Offshore’ Summer- crew
followed the fishing out of an
area, regularly spending long
periods away
• ‘Inshore’ Autumn- fishermen did
not travel far from their home
ports.

27. Feeding the World’s ‘Workshops’
• Industrial production under
capitalism transformed the
industrialising areas, with equally
powerful forces changing the
lives of people in the ‘supply
zones’ of the globe (Wolf).

28. A Seine Crew
• 2 open, carvel-built wooden boats.
The larger one:25-35 ft in length,
maximum beam of 7 ft. Up to 12
oarsmen on double-banked oars sat
in the larger boat, which carried a
captain, or helmsman, and a ‘hewer’,
or fish spotter, in the bow.

29. Seine & fuilear

30. Second Boat
• The smaller fuilear / ‘follower’,
would carry the bulk of the catch;
it carried a maximum of 6
oarsmen and a helmsman.

32. ‘Indigenous’ Craft
• Almost every village in coastal
south Kerry and the Beara
peninsula had a seine crew at the
end of the 19th century
(MacCarthaigh).

33. Oilean Baoi Crew

34. Rev. S. Green
• ‘The first men who came across and
started were Americans, … utilized
intelligent local people they found
already on the west coast in the
fishing business…told these men
how the thing should be done, and
then… they cured the mackerel in
that way.’ (CDB testimony)

35. Royal Commission
• ‘Every man, woman, and child is
employed when the fishing is
regularly on... I have known the
difficulty to be sometimes to get
labour. The whole countryside is
swept; you could not get help
sometimes to get through the
amount of fish landed by the boats-
all row boats’ (Green).

36. Coonana, Caherciveen

37. Income from Fishing
• Cullen states that change for the
better was evident in the 1890’s;
cash incomes rose appreciably,
deposits in post office savings
banks in counties (e.g.Kerry)
rising between 1881 and 1912.

38. Local Social System
• The social system and local
economy on which mackerel
fishing/curing was based formed
the basis of the community and
gave the inhabitants a sense of
self and identity, a way of life.

39. ‘Pluriactivity'
• i.e. diverse economic activities,
on land and at sea, often
supplemented by craft
production, where women and
men engaged in a variety of
production tasks.

40. Women in Maritime Communities
1. women’s labour makes direct
productive contribution (to the
fishing industry),
2. they fulfil the function of
reproducing the next generation,
3. they perform special responsibilities
due to the absence of men away at
sea (Thompson).

41. Cape Clear, Cork

42. Categorisation
• Division: male=breadwinner / female
= homemaker- little relevance
• Interdependent
• Some occupations male dominated,
• Others carried out predominantly by
women, giving females some
economic authority and a degree of
personal autonomy.

43. Fish curing, Valentia

44. 25/4/00 re: Valentia, Kerry
• ‘… alive with the business and very good
wages are paid to all employed in boxing
and removing the fish to the railway
station for conveyance to the English
markets. 2 Norwegian barges have come
with cargoes of ice. Valentia has
established itself as a great fishing
station.’ (Kerry Sentinel)

45. Valentia, Kerry

46. Westcove, Kerry

47. CDB:
• ‘Progress could only be achieved
by training menfolk in improved
methods of land cultivation and
in coastal areas, in fishing, and by
assisting women in better
standards of home-keeping’.

48. Joint Maritime Household
• Gendered perceptions of power
include consideration of women’s
role as producers and women’s
power within the household.
• The period under study cannot be
equated with current conditions.

49. Gender Analysis
• History informed by gender
analysis can question & reassess
dominant narratives & challenge
longstanding myths, i.e.
discursive construction of women
v.s. women’s actual lived
experience (Abrams et al).

50. Recent Studies
• Recently, great strides have been
made to address this gap and to
study work opportunities for
women, particularly in 19th
century Ireland.

51. to date
• largely, a focus on paid labour
market, the development of
home based industries and
unwaged domestic production of
women, with few studies
addressing seasonal employment.

52. Women’s Work
Bourke divides women’s work into
3 categories:
1. in the labour market
2. at home producing goods for
sale
3. housework.

53. However,
• CDB did identify women as the
‘more economic gender’ and
used pre-existing mechanisms to
enhance the role of women as
breadwinners and ensure they
were paid fairly and directly for
their labour (Breathnach).

54. Irish Census, 1871-1911
• Changing categorisations of
‘work’ resulted in numbers of
women listed in ‘indefinite and
non-productive’ class, e.g.
daughters of farmers / married
women, masking the real extent
of their economic participation.

55. Seasonal Work
**Census returns may not have
recorded the seasonal role
women played in locations where
fishing did take place, though
men were listed with the
occupation of fishermen.

56. v.s. Newfoundland
• Census of 1891, 1901, 1911,1921
did record all women as well as
men involved as either harvesters
or curers of fish. Women
comprised on average 33% to
38 %+.

57. RIIF Reports 1889/90/91
• Yearly earnings of the shore
based labour force of males and
females were listed for these
years (and the value of exports
from south Kerry and west Cork
locations). After this, categories
changed, no gender breakdown.

58. Portmagee, Kerry

59. RIIF Kerry, 1889

60. RIIF Cork, 1889

61. Scotland
• Whatley in Nadel-Klein: Many females
made ‘hidden’ contributions to
production in the context of the
family economy, as carriers,
sellers, organizers and dealers in
occupations apparently male
preserves, but in fact dependent
on female contribution.

62. Seasonal Workers
• Local women and migratory
workers, women from outside
the region, i.e. from other areas
of Ireland and Scotland were
employed in the seasonal fish
curing business (‘Herring girls’).

63. Scottish migratory labour
RIIF 1888: English buyer brought 9
women from Isle of Man to cure fish.
Cork local O’Dalaigh: ‘herring girls’,
employed by fish merchants,
followed fleet along coast, gutting
and salting the fish. E.g. in Baltimore
special ‘chalets’ were built for their
accommodation by the fish buyers.

64. Skilled Workers
• Vivienne Pollock refers to the
women who gutted and packed
cured fish as ‘expert workers’.
• Work could go late into the night
• Conditions often basic to harsh

65. High Level of Dexterity
• ‘Splitters’ on one of the table
opened the fish and received a
slightly higher wage,
• ‘Gutters’ on the other side removed
the innards of the catch.

66. Castletownbere, Cork, c. 1905

67. 1 per Second
• ‘Gutters’ gloves to be worn on both
hands… The only digit to be covered
was the thumb; other part of a glove
was to be ‘fingerless’. The work much
quicker with gloves as hands do not
get so slippery’ (Barclay, Southern
Star).

68. Curing Process
• Salt absorbs the internal moisture
in the fish and then when the fish
is placed in clean brine, it absorbs
the liquid into its flesh and is
preserved as ‘cured’.

69. Final Step
• 2 weeks after being caught, the
oily, slippery produce was
repacked into final barrels and
brine liquid then topped up twice
weekly til the barrels were sealed
when consignment shipped out.

70. Barrel stencil

71. U.S. Consul-General Fawsitt, 1920
• “…industrial classes throughout
America, principally those of
European origin, are the chief
consumers of imported cured fish.
Irish salt mackerel, especially the
Autumn catch, is much favored,
many restaurants featuring ‘Irish
Mackerel’ on their menu cards”.

72. Autumn Catch
• ‘There wasn’t a woman, a girl or
a child in the island who couldn’t
earn something in those days and
there was often so much to do
that the very fishermen
themselves had to lend a helping
hand….’ (O’Siochain).

73. Coonana, Kerry

74. Cultural Clash
• Rural subsistence lifestyle
offended many middleclass
travelers, was indicative of ‘low
state of civilisation’, unfeminine,
unwomanly behavior, contrasting
starkly with that of society elites
(Abrams).

75. Ideology
• The ideology of ‘domesticity’ and
‘separate spheres’ was of
relevance to the middle classes
and the landlord family cultures.
• Did it impact negatively upon the
smallholding family’s view of
themselves?

76. Imposition of Judgement
• Outsiders then and now could
regard women’s physical labour
as demeaning, when viewing it
from a particular perspective or
worldview. The dignity of such
endeavours was and often still is
discounted.

77. Winds of Change
• Dependence on rowing, sail and
wind power was ended by the
introduction of motor power
• Market crash (‘Black Thirties’).

78. CDB 1919
• ‘As the reaping hook cannot
compete with a modern
corncutting machine, it is obvious
that the sailing-boat cannot
remain as effective on the same
fishing grounds when the steam
or motor vessel appears’.

79. ...Utterly Gone
• ‘It would sadden the person who had
experience of that work if he were to
visit the harbour today; all the bustle
of the activity that was then… utterly
gone, and nothing at all to be seen
but the cold and empty quays’
(O’Siochain).

80. Vestiges
The work of women in fish curing
had contributed to survival of
essentially a socially pre-modern
community, but change from
subsistence to an industrial
economy was unavoidable.

81. Penetration of Cash Economy
• The cash economy increasingly
impinged upon the smallholding
livelihood, and fishing and fish
curing provided access to income
to enable an increase in
standards of living.

82. Rejection of Rural Society?
• Bell observes that women such as
Donegal migrant workers to
Scotland and the U.K. left in
greater numbers than the men
and asserts that this indicated a
rejection of rural society by many
farm women.

83. Life Chances & Status
• Bell highlights that while women’s
role as workers contributing to
the viability of a farm or
‘household economy’ was vital,
their status was relatively low.

84. Androcentrism
• ‘…reclaiming the past of Irish
women and integrating that work
into Irish history is a significant
challenge that all historians face’
(Luddy).

85. An Inclusive Record
• Contrasted with the work of
men, women’s role as workers
and income earners has not been
given equal weight in official
documents and subsequent
accounts (to date).

86. for the record...
• History can inform, empower and
liberate, be inclusive to everyone
and provide a recognisable and
usable past for all, though this
does not always occur.

87. Workers’ Memories
• ‘Witnessing the past through
workers’ memories, ...we learn to
ask what roles family and gender
relations played - questions that
business and economic history
have tended to neglect’ (Trettin).

88. A Memory
• ‘Oh, they were wonderful workers. They
could work from 8:00 in the morning ‘til
8:00 in the evening, often, if they
caught a lot of fish to split, you know.
…..They’d have a long, long day…. They
were the main workers…they were
wonderful. They could split fish,
like…one strip of the knife and it was
there.’ (Murphy)

89. Conclusion
• Women’s work has been
identified in this research. It was
clearly an important role in the
fish processing industry of the
time, and enabled them to earn
an income in the local economy.