British Motor Fishing Vessels

With a terrific array of rare and unpublished images, John McWilliams looks at some of the fishing boats that can be found around the coast of Britain.

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British traditional working boats are famous – Morecambe Bay prawners, Manx luggers, Scots fifies and zulus, Lowestoft and Yarmouth drifters, Yorkshire cobles, Colchester smacks, Hastings beach boats, Brixham trawlers, and many others.

Over a century ago, progressive fishermen began to install engines in their boats. Motor fishing boats have been part of our coastal scene since then. Local boatbuilders built local kinds of boat to suit each home port and its fisheries; examples include Cornish pilchard boats and long liners, Devon crabbers and beach boats, motor bawleys and cocklers, motor drifters and seiners, and the famous ring netters of the Clyde ports. These boats have gone or are fast disappearing. This book tells their story.