Coopers, c.1889. © Scottish Fisheries Museum
Photograph of coopers, probably taken in Fife, c.1889 (Fisheries Museum)
The production of thousands of barrels was essential to Scotland’s fishing industry. This photograph shows a scene that would have been familiar in many of Scotland’s fishing towns from the 1820s to the 1930s. Coopers along with the women who gutted and packed the herrings were the land workers who transformed the bounty of local fishing fleets into a preserved, transportable commodity.
In 1808 the Scotch Board of Commissioners of Herring Fisheries was established in order to regulate and improve methods of curing.[1] In 1819 the new ‘Scotch cure’ improved on its Dutch predecessor by allowing the packing of herring on land rather than at sea.[2] By the time this photograph was taken Shetland’s industry alone supported 459 boats, 4,484 men and production of 104,795 barrels.[3]
Cooper was a skilled trade and the men in this photograph would have learned their trade through a system of traditional apprenticeship. According to Bremner’s Industries of Scotland there were almost 2000 coopers serving the fishing industry in the 1860s.[4] The boom years came 40 years later when, in the early twentieth century, herring workers, both men and women, travelled to follow the shoals from south to north and sometimes even as far as England.
Handmade wooden barrels are no longer used in Scotland’s fishing industry but they are still in demand for another famous Scottish export. Skilled coopers make the barrels and casks used in Scotland’s whisky industry.
[1] Reported in The Athenaeum, Journal of Literature, Science and the Fine Arts, 1837,p.411
[2] Angus McLeod, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Herring Industry’ http://www.angusmacleodarchive.org.uk/view/index.php?path=%2F8.+The+Fishing+Industry+in+Lewis+and+Scotland%2F1.+Background+and+Overview%2F3.+The+Rise+and+Fall+of+the+Herring+Fishery.pdf [accessed 12.03.16]
[3] http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2009/12/31/the-days-when-the-herring-fishery-had-us-all-or-nearly-all-of-us-over-a-barrel [accessed 12.03.16]
[4] David Bremner, The Industries of Scotland: Their Rise, Progress and Present Condition,(David and Charles, 1969 (reprint)) p.519
Artisans and the Craft Economy in Scotland 