'You could cross the harbour on the decks': Edith remembers the herring seasons
13 July 2026
From time to time we publish short excerpts from the oral history archive, with the interviewee's or their family's blessing. This one comes from a recording made in 2010 with Edith, born on the east side in 1921, who worked the herring seasons as a girl. The transcript is lightly edited for length; the recording itself can be heard in full at the museum.
"You'd smell the season before you saw it. The carts came up from the quay all hours, and the whole east side was salt and smoke and fish — and nobody minded, because that was the smell of money. Father used to say Whitby only smelled poor in the spring.
"The Scots boats came down in the back end of the year, following the shoals, and the harbour would fill up till you couldn't see water. I'm not stretching it — you could cross the harbour on the decks, boat to boat, and the lads did it for a dare. Mother would've skinned me.
"The lassies came down with the boats — the Scots girls, the gutting crews. They lodged all up Church Street and Henrietta Street, three and four to a room. They worked in threes: two gutting, one packing, and the speed of it you wouldn't credit. They'd their fingers wrapped in cloots — bandages, like — because the knife slips when you're doing a fish a second. And singing, always singing, hymns mostly, in the Gaelic sometimes. I used to sit on the barrels and listen till I was sent home.
"I did two seasons packing myself, fifteen and sixteen. Hard money. Your hands cracked with the salt and you felt it all winter. But I'll tell you what — when the season finished and the boats went, and the harbour was empty, the town felt like a front room after a funeral. You missed the noise of it.
"It was finishing even then, mind. Come the war it was done altogether. My grandchildren don't believe me about walking across the boats. That's why I said yes to this recording, if you want the truth. Somebody ought to have it down."
The archive holds more than 400 recordings like Edith's. If someone in your family remembers the fishing, the yards, the jet or the war years, we will gladly come to them — recorder, biscuits and all. Get in touch via the contact page.