Appledore Draft Boat
Generally these salmon boats were 18 feet in length, clinker then later carvel built and had four or five thwarts for the four fishermen to row, the fifth being used to hold the net at the stern. Each builder built his boat slightly different to the other as there were no drawings. These ‘North Devon salmon boats’, as they are also known, were mostly owned by Appledore fishermen and used to fish the salmon drafts on both the Taw and the Torridge rivers. It’s close to Appledore that both rivers meet before flowing out into Bideford Bay and Appledore had been a port of substance since the Middle Ages.
A draft is fishing ground, normally a pool, within a river where it is possible to lay out a net from the riverbank by boat and bring it back to the shore. On these two rivers they were worked twice a day just before low water, through the period of slack water and into the first of the flood tide. Too much current makes the net drift away whilst the salmon would be less likely swimming. Both rivers had their own drafts and these stretched along the river to the town but seldom beyond though they did, at one time, fish all the tidal part of each river. So that the licensed fishermen all have an equal chance they fish each draft in rota, the order traditionally decided by taking names from a hat at the start of the fishing season in March, though, until the demise of the fishery in 2018, they were limited to three months in the summer (July to August).
Licences were given out to the net used for the fishery, a numbered label having to be fixed to the net as well as being painted on the sides of the salmon boat used. The nets were usually made up by the fishermen themselves – each seine-net would employ four fishers. One man, the shoreman, would stay on the bank holding the shore rope to which the end of the net was attached whilst the other three stayed in the boat. The amount of rope he paid out from the shore depended on the strength of the tide and the nature of the riverbank. Two aboard the boat would then row around in a semi-circle with the third man paying out the net and then the head rope and foot rope, whilst the shoreman began ‘walking’ the net in the same direction as the net (or tide) was going. Once they were close to the shore once again, this third man would throw the pole staff (a five foot staff attached at either end of the net that stuck into the mud) into the water and leap in to hold it. The other oarsmen would secure the boat and quickly come and help him before the net was hauled in by its head and foot rope, being careful not to let any fish escape by jumping over the head rope.
Sources: 7
If you would like to see the Author’s notes and sources, please download the PDF below.
If you would like to return to the list of boats, please click HERE