No maritime library will be complete without a copy of this volume on its shelves, for the Yorkshire fishing coble and the Yorkshire smack of the past century were among the finest examples of English sea-going craft ever devised, and none more fitted for the rugged coast to which they belonged or for the stormy seas on which they used to sail. - Peter F. Anson, 1933
First published in 1933, this book of a hundred of Ernest Dade's delightful pen and ink sketches of the North Sea fishing fleet in the latter part of the nineteenth century is not only a significant artistic achievement, but also an invaluable historical record. Observed either from his own boat or from onboard the fishing boats themselves, the drawings have an immediacy rare in work of this kind - epitomised by the sketch on page 37 where it may not be too fanciful to imagine that the yawl in the foreground is Dade sailing out to meet the returning fishing fleet with pen and pad to hand.
