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!”