Blankenberghe has one branch of native industry, and one only. From
time immemorial it has been a fishing station. The local paper declares
that there has been no change in the boats, the costumes, or the
implements of this industry since the sixteenth century, with the
exception noticed below. One can quite believe it, as far as the boats
are concerned. They are very strongly built tubs, ranging from twenty to
thirty tons, flat-bottomed, the same breadth of beam fore and aft, built
I should think on the model of the first duck which was seen off this
coast, and a most sensible model too. They have no bowsprit, but a short
foremast in the bows, carrying one small sail, and a strong mainmast
amidships, carrying one big sail. Each of these sails is run up by a
single rope, rigged through a pulley in the top of the masts, and of
other rigging there is none. The boats are all of a uniform russet-brown
colour, the tint of old age, looking as if they had been once varnished,
in the time, let us say, of William the Silent, and had never been
touched since. There is not a scrap of paint on the whole fleet. In
short, I am convinced that the local paper by no means exaggerates their
antiquity. Instead of finding it hard to believe that sixteenth-century
men went to sea in them, I should not be startled to hear that our first
parents were the original proprietors, or at any rate that the present
fleet was laid down by Japhet, when the Ark was broken up. The habits of
the fleet are as quaint as their looks. There is no scrap of anchorage
or shelter of any kind here, the sands lie perfectly open to the north
and west, and the surf seems about as rough as it is elsewhere. But the
Blankenberghe fishermen are perfectly indifferent, convinced no doubt
that neither sea nor sand will do anything to hurt them or their boats,
for old acquaintance’ sake. To me, accustomed to the scrambling,
and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of
naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew
when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the
comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As
one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she
scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man
quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two
sails. Sometimes the anchor begins to hold before the boat grounds, but
just as often she touches before the anchor bites, but nobody cares. The
only notice taken is to unship the rudder and haul it aboard; then comes
a wave which swings her round, and leaves her broadside to the surf.
Nobody moves. Bang comes the next breaker, lifting her for a moment, and
bumping her down again on the sand, her bows perhaps a trifle more to
sea, but the crew only smoke and hold on. And so it goes on, bang, bump,
thump, till sooner or later she swings right round and settles into her
place on the sand. When she has adjusted this to her own satisfaction
one of the crew just drops over the stern with another anchor on his
shoulder, which he fixes in the sand, and then he and the rest leave
her and walk up to the Digue, and generally on to vespers at the church,
which is often three parts filled with these jolly fellows. Getting off
again is much the same happy-go-lucky business. The men shoulder the
anchor which is out at the stern, or, as often as not, leave it on shore
with their cable coiled, ready for their return. Then they clamber into
their tub, which is bumping away, held only by the anchor out at the
bows. They wait for the first wave that floats them, then up go the
sails, on goes the rudder, they get a haul on the anchor, and after
heading one or two different ways get fairly off.
Their costume is picturesque,--thick red flannel shirts, the collars of
which fold over their tightly buttoned blue jackets, and give a tidy,
uniform appearance to a group of them. The old stagers still wear huge
loose red knickerbockers and pilot boots, but the younger generation are
degenerating into the common blue trousers and sabots, the latter almost
big enough to come ashore on in case of wreck. Altogether they are
the most well-to-do set of fishermen to look at that I have ever seen,
though where their money comes from I cannot guess, as they seem to take
little but small flounders and skate. There used to be good cod-fishing
in the winter, they say, but of late years it has fallen off. The elder
fishermen attribute this to the disgust of the cod at an innovation
in the good old ways of fishing. Formerly two boats worked together,
dragging a net with large meshes between them, but this has been of late
superseded by the English bag-net system, which brings up everything
small and great, and disturbs the _pâture accoutumée_ of the cod,
whereupon he has emigrated.
Disastrous islanders that we are, who never touch anything, from Japan
to Blankenberghe, without setting honest folk by the ears and bringing
trouble! The “Corporation of Fishers,” a close and privileged body, who
hold their heads very high here, are looking into the matter, and it
seems likely that this destructive _chalut, d’origine Anglaise_, may yet
be superseded. It remains to be seen whether the cod will come back.
We have had abominable weather here, but nothing in the shape of a
storm. I confess to have been looking out for a good north-wester with
much interest. Assuming that the effect as to breakers and surf would
be much the same as elsewhere, one is curious to ascertain whether these
fishing boats are left to bump it out on the sands. If so, and no harm
comes to them, the sooner our fishermen adopt the Blankenberghe model of
boat the better. I fear, however, that with all their good looks and old
traditions, the seafaring folk on this coast are wanting in the splendid
daring of our own ’long-shore people. On Monday night the mail packet
from Ostend to Dover went out in a stiffish breeze, but nothing which
‘we should call a gale, at eight o’clock. By some curious mismanagement
both her engines got out of order and came to a dead stop almost
immediately. Strange to say, her anchors were down in the hold under the
luggage (the boats are Belgian, not English manned), and she had a very
narrow escape of drifting right on shore. Luckily the crew, managed to
get up an anchor in time to prevent this catastrophe, and there she
lay right off the harbour, perfectly helpless, throwing up rockets and
burning blue lights for hours. Neither tug, nor lifeboat, nor pilot boat
stirred, and she rode at anchor till morning, when the wind went down. I
venture to think that such a case is unheard of on our coasts. It occurs
to one to ask whether there is such an official as a harbourmaster at
the port of Ostend, and if so, what his duties are. There were sailors
enough in harbour to have manned fifty lifeboats, for the Ostend fishing
fleet of 200 boats had come back from their three months’ cruise on that
very afternoon. The contingency of riding out a stormy night in a mail
packet within a few hundred yards of a lee shore, in front of a great
port full of seamen, is scarcely one of those on which we holiday folk
reckon when we book ourselves for the Continent.
Coming out on the Digue one night, soon after my arrival, I was brought
to a stand-still by the appearance of the sea. It was low water, so
that I was about 200 yards off, and at first I could scarcely believe
my eyes, which seemed to tell me that every breaker was a flood of pale
fire. I went down close to the water to confirm or disenchant myself,
and found it more beautiful the nearer I got. Of course one has seen the
ordinary phosphorescence of the sea in a hundred places, but this was
quite a different affair. The sand under one’s feet even was molten
silver. The scientific doctor says it is simply the effect of the
constant presence on this coast of great numbers of an animalcule which
can only be seen through a microscope, called the _Noctiluca miliaris_.
It looked on that evening as if huge fiery serpents were constantly
rising and dashing along. People here say that they have it always, but
this is certainly not so. On several other evenings the breaking waves
were slightly luminous, but scarcely enough to attract attention. If you
could only make sure of seeing sea and shore ablaze as it was on
that particular night, you ought at once, sir, to pack traps and off,
notwithstanding these abominably high winds. I cannot help thinking
that, besides a monster gathering--probably a Reform League meeting--of
the Noctiluca miliaris, there must have been something very unusual in
the atmosphere on that particular night. It was a kind of “eldritch”
night, in which you felt as if you had got into the atmosphere of
Tennyson’s _Morte d’Arthur_, and a great hand might come up out of the
water without giving you a start. There was light right up in the
sky above one’s head, a succession of half luminous rain clouds were
drifting rapidly across at a very low elevation from the northwest, not
fifty yards high, as it seemed, while the smoke of my cigar floated
away slowly almost in the opposite direction. Luckily, sir, my American
friend was with me on the night in question, to whom I can appeal as
to the truth of my facts, and we had had nothing but one bottle of
very moderately strong _vin ordinaire_ at the _table d’hote_. If your
scientific readers say that the thing is impossible, I can only answer
that so it was.
Parson Wilbur, when he is considering the question whether the ability
to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more
good than evil, esteems his own ignorance of all tongues except Yankee
and the dead languages as “a kind of martello tower, in which I am safe
from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity.” There is something
comforting and fascinating in this doctrine, but still on the whole
it is decidedly disagreeable to be reduced to signs for purposes of
intercourse, as is generally the case here. Not one soul in a hundred
can speak French. Their talk sounds like a sewing machine, with an
occasional word of English interspersed in the clicking. I am told that
if you will only talk broad Durham or Yorkshire they will understand
you, but I do not believe it, as the sounds are quite unlike. The
names of these people are wonderful. For instance, those on the bathing
machines just opposite my hotel are, Yan Yooren, Yan Yulpen, Siska
Deneve, Sandelays, and Colette Claes, abbreviated into Clotty by two
English schoolboys who have lately appeared, and are the worst dressed
and the best bathers of all the young folk here. They are fast friends,
I see, with a young Russian, whose father, an old officer, sits near me
at the _table d’hôte_. Poor old boy! I never saw a man so bored, in fact
he has disclosed to me that he can stand it no longer. Blankenberghe
has been quite too much for him. Lest it should also prove so to your
readers, I will end with his last words (though I by no means endorse
his judgment of the little Flemish watering-place), “_Maintenant je n’y
puis plus!_”