Casting Shadows Fish And Fishing In Britain

In his cultural history of fishing, Tom Fort charts the rise and decline of eel trapping in Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland

Lough Neagh was fished for its eels from the time of the first human occupation several thousand years ago. But until the middle of the 19th-century consumption was local and trade minimal. The growth of the rail network changed all that, as so much else. The fish merchants at Billingsgate in London began shipping live eels over to Liverpool from Coleraine, the port near the mouth of the Bann, and then by train to London. The trade was much helped by the eel’s remarkable tenacity in clinging to life — kept cool and damp, they comfortably survived transportation, and on arrival could be kept in good condition in tanks for weeks.

Quite suddenly Lough Neagh’s eels became a valuable commodity. I told the long and complicated story of the struggle between the fishermen and the landowners over who had the rights to take them in The Book of Eels, and I do not propose to retell it here. Suffice to say that — as any student of history would expect — the courts and the judges consistently favored the landowning and capitalist class over the working class. The upshot in modern times was the acquisition in 1959 of the company that controlled the fishing by a consortium of Billingsgate merchants. It was headed by a Dutchman, Hans Kuijten, whose company, based at Maldon on the Essex coast, had been a major customer for Lough Neagh eels for many years.