"The town of Dunbar is a fisher-town, famous for the herring fishing, which are caught thereabout and brought thither, and afterwards cured and barrelled up, either for merchandise or sale to the country people who come thither, far and near at the season, which is from about the middle of August to the latter end Sept."
Oliver Cromwell 1656

Until the end of the eighteenth century, great Dutch ships or busses monopolised the fishing industry. Political stability and changes in the law, such as the shifting of the bounty to barrels of herring caught, opened the way for small boat fishing. Hence the huge growth seen in Scottish fishing during the next hundred years. Shellfish, ling, cod, haddock and herring were caught in our east coast waters and sold to local markets or shipped abroad.

Local fishermen practised line fishing. Long lines of up to 1000 hooks were baited by the men and their families and coiled, ready for use, in baskets or sculls.

Drift netting, while more expensive, was a more efficient and profitable method of catching the large shoals which migrated around the Scottish coast.

By 1858, the Chief Boatman at Dunbar's Coastguard station reported that Having occasion to count the boats attending the Herring fishing off Dunbar, I have frequently counted from seven to eight hundred.

Catches were measured in crans with four baskets to a cran. In 1820 the daily catch was from thirty to sixty crans per boat at 4 shillings to 5 shillings per cran. By 1893, the average catch per boat was twenty-three crans for nine weeks. In 1900 the herring was described by the Haddingtonshire Courier as sparse. Prices now ranged from 10 shillings to 30 shillings per cran.

The herring followed a migratory pattern around the Scottish coast down to the north east of England, finishing in East Anglia in December. The season at Dunbar lasted for six to eight weeks from August. Boats from around the coast followed the shoals and swelled the numbers of local fishermen.

Crews consisted of three to four men with up to six men on the bigger boats. The system of shared ownership involved whole families and knitted the shore community closer together. Occasionally, a skipper would be beholden to the fish curer or merchant who could afford to purchase a boat.

The small open boats, usually Fifies, which sailed from Dunbar were less safe than the decked luggers which followed. Steam drifters first appeared at the turn of the century, but sailboats could be seen in Dunbar Harbour into the 1930s.

The First World War put an end to centuries of fishing and trade links between Dunbar and Europe. By the 1950s the herring had all but disappeared. Crabs, lobsters and prawns became the main catch either for the home markets or for export to the tables of the continent.