A herring buss ( nl, Haringbuis) was a type of seagoing

fishing vessel A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to catch fish in the sea, or on a lake or river. Many different kinds of vessels are used in commercial, artisanal and recreational fishing. The total number of fishing vessels in the world in 2016 was ...

, mostly used by Dutch and Flemish

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean ...

fishermen in the 15th through early 19th centuries. The buss ship type has a long history. It was already known around the time of the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

as a cargo vessel (called ''buzza'', ''bucia'' or ''bucius''), and we see it around 1000 AD as a more robust development of the

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

longship Longships were a type of specialised Scandinavian warships that have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by the Nor ...

Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and S ...

, known as a ''bǘza''. The Dutch ''Buis'' was probably developed from this Scandinavian ship type. The ''Buis'' was first adapted for use as a fishing vessel in the Netherlands, after the invention of gibbing made it possible to preserve herring at sea.De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 244 This made longer voyages feasible, and hence enabled Dutch fishermen to follow the herring

shoals In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material and rises from the bed of a body of water to near the surface. It ...

far from the coasts. The first herring buss was probably built in

Hoorn Hoorn () is a city and municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the largest town and the traditional capital of the region of West Friesland. Hoorn is located on the Markermeer, 20 kilometers ...

around 1415. The last one was built in

Vlaardingen Vlaardingen () is a city in South Holland in the Netherlands. It is located on the north bank of the Nieuwe Maas river at the confluence with the Oude Maas. The municipality administers an area of , of which is land, with residents in . Geog ...

in 1841.

Construction

The wooden ship was about 20 meters in length and displaced between 60 and 100 tons. The ratio of length to beam was between 2.5:1 and 4.5:1, which made for a relatively nimble ship, though still sufficiently stable to be seaworthy. It was a round-

bilge The bilge of a ship or boat is the part of the hull that would rest on the ground if the vessel were unsupported by water. The "turn of the bilge" is the transition from the bottom of a hull to the sides of a hull. Internally, the bilges (usu ...

keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...

ship with a round bow and

stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Or ...

, the latter relatively high, and with a gallery. The broad deck provided space to process the catch on board. The ship had two or three masts. The mainmast and foremast (if present) could be lowered during fishing, leaving only the

mizzen The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation l ...

mast upright. It was

square rig Square rig is a generic type of sail and rigging arrangement in which the primary driving sails are carried on horizontal spars which are perpendicular, or square, to the keel of the vessel and to the masts. These spars are called '' yards'' ...

ged on the main mast, with a

gaff rig Gaff rig is a sailing rig (configuration of sails, mast and stays) in which the sail is four-cornered, fore-and-aft rigged, controlled at its peak and, usually, its entire head by a spar (pole) called the ''gaff''. Because of the size and shap ...

on the mizzen. It had a long bow sprit with jibboom and up to three

headsail A sail plan is a description of the specific ways that a sailing craft is rigged. Also, the term "sail plan" is a graphic depiction of the arrangement of the sails for a given sailing craft.> In the English language, ships were usually describe ...

s. The main course and topsail could be reefed.

Herring fleets

The ships sailed in large fleets of 400 to 500 ships to the fishing grounds at the

Dogger Bank Dogger Bank ( Dutch: ''Doggersbank'', German: ''Doggerbank'', Danish: ''Doggerbanke'') is a large sandbank in a shallow area of the North Sea about off the east coast of England. During the last ice age the bank was part of a large landmass ...

and the

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the n ...

isles. They were usually escorted by naval vessels, because the English looked askance at what they considered "poaching" in waters they claimed, and were prone to arrest unescorted Dutch fishing vessels. In wartime the risk of fishing vessels being taken by

privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

s was also large. The fleet would stay at sea for weeks at a time. The catch would sometimes be brought home by special ships (called ''ventjagers'') while the fleet would still be at sea (the picture at the top shows a ''ventjager'' in the distance). The busses used long drift nets to catch the herring. Such nets hang like curtains across the travel paths of the herring schools. The fish would catch with their

gill A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they ar ...

s behind the meshes of the net (which is therefore a type of

gillnet Gillnetting is a fishing method that uses gillnets: vertical panels of netting that hang from a line with regularly spaced floaters that hold the line on the surface of the water. The floats are sometimes called "corks" and the line with corks is ...

). The nets would be taken aboard at night and then the crews of eighteen to thirty men would start the gibbing, salting and barrelling immediately. Buis (schip) 2

There would be three to four voyages per season (depending on the weather and the catch). In the off-season the busses were used as normal cargo vessels, for instance to transport grain from the Baltic, or salt from Portugal. This multi-mode business model made the Great Fishery (as the herring fishery was called) especially profitable, as there was far less downtime than with exclusive use as fishing vessel. A contemporary (1614) English account illustrates the efficiency and profitability of the business: Herring2

The same author (

Tobias Gentleman Tobias Gentleman (floruit, fl. 1614) was an English mariner and writer, known for his book ''England's way to win wealth'', recommending development of the herring fishery, herring fisheries in England. Life Gentleman was a son of Thomas and Joan G ...

) in 1614 estimated the cost of fitting out a Dutch herring buss for three voyages (four months) in Summer (including wages for the crew at £88, barrels for 100 ''

last A last is a mechanical form shaped like a human foot. It is used by shoemakers and cordwainers in the manufacture and repair of shoes. Lasts typically come in pairs and have been made from various materials, including hardwoods, cast iron ...

'' of herring at £78, beer at £42, bread at £21, butter and bacon at £18, peas at £3, billet at £3, and wear and tear on ship and nets at £100) at £435. One hundred last of herring (at £10) would bring £1000 in his opinion, for a clear profit of £565. In his pamphlet (in which he holds up the Dutch fisheries for English emulation) he states that at the end of May a fleet of a thousand busses would sail, with 20,000 sailors aboard. They would sail to Shetland, but wait till after 14 June (herring being unfit for consumption before that) before starting to follow the shoals. He estimates the value of the catch at more than a million pounds sterling.Gentleman, ''op. cit'', p. 253 This illustrates how important the herring fisheries were in bringing about the Dutch

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

Gallery

File:Groenewegen.D3.Buis.jpg, ''Herring buss taking aboard its drift net'', by (G. Groenewegen). File:Uithangbord, aan weerszijden beschilderd met een haringbuis Rijksmuseum SK-C-1582.jpeg, Two herring buss at sea. File:Uitrusten en bevoorraden van de haringbuis, ca. 1725 Toemaaken en Fictaljeeren van de Buysch The Preparing and Victualling of the herring Busse (titel op object) Groote Vissery (serietitel), BI-1915-0107-4.jpg, Equipping and supplying the herring buss, ca.1725. File:Haringbuis zeilt huiswaarts, ca. 1725 De Buysen loopen in Zee The Herring Busse put out to Sea (titel op object) Groote Vissery (serietitel), BI-1915-0107-11.jpg, Herring Busses put out to sea, c. 1725. File:Haringbuis op de nering, ca. 1725 De Buys op de Neeringh The Herring Busse or Barke upon the herring Fishing place (titel op object) Groote Vissery (serietitel), BI-1915-0107-7.jpg, The Herring Buss or Bark on the herring fishing place.

Notes

Sources

* (German) (1987), ''Lexikon der Segelschiffstypen.'' Gräfelfing (Urbes), * (German) "Büse", in: (1995) '' Das große Buch der Schiffstypen. Schiffe, Boote, Flöße unter Riemen und Segel, Dampfschiffe, Motorschiffe, Meerestechnik'', Augsburg * (1978), ''Dutch Shipbuilding Before 1800'', Amsterdam * , "The European Fisheries in Early Modern History", in: (1977), ''Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. 5. The Economic Organization of Early Modern Europe'', Cambridge * (1997), ''The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815'', Cambridge University Press,

External links

* (Dutch
Fishing vessels

B. Poulsen, ''Sources for Dutch herring fishery in the North Sea (1600-1850)''
{{Authority control Sailing ships Types of fishing vessels Ship designs of the Dutch Republic Dutch inventions Tall ships