Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring

aka The Herripedia

Themes is for...

SMOKEHOUSE TALES: WILL BUCKENHAM

One of the last red herring smokers, Will Buckenham in Lowestoft produces these, along with bloaters and kippers in the country's oldest working smokehouse

SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS

Charles I, The Stuarts, Maritime sovereignty, the herring and the building of a flagship

SPAWNING

On the spawning preferences of the herring, together with a list of the spawning grounds for the main Eastern Atlantic populations

SURSTRÖMMING

On the Swedish herring delicacy which defies delicacy, insisting upon schnapps and communal singing in the face of its intimations of mortality

SVETOVIDOV

On the Russian fish systematist who, having dealt the gadoid species, turned his great mind to the clupeidae

SWIFT, JONATHAN

Jonathan Swift' reply to Francis Grant, on a proposed Anglo-Irish herring fishery scheme (There is not virtue enough left among mankind)

TAXONOMY

On the biological classification of the herring and the taxonomic can of worms it opens up at species level and below

TOURISM: MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

On AC Hardy's proposal for a herring research centre and William Hodgson's brief vision of what might have been a formidable tourist attraction

TRAWLING

On the development of beam trawling which doesn't target herring (but destroys their spawning grounds) and pelagic trawling which does

ULLAPOOL

The story of a herring port, built with what seemed the best of intentions, but without consideration for the fish's noted unreliability

VENTJAGER

How they got the good new herring from somewhere off the coast of Scotland to wealthy Dutch burghers fresh from a hard day of being painted by Rembrandt

WEDGWOOD

In which we lust after that object of desire, the Wedgwood Queen's Ware herring dish (c 1780)

WHITE HERRING

On the nature of white herring, its international markets and its historical underachievement with the Great British public

WITCHCRAFT

The role of herrings in England's penultimate witch trial and the subsequent part the narrative played in shaping the hysteria in Salem

X, CRUX OR KRUIS BRAND

An entry that possibly should have been filed under C, but which spuriously allows alphabetic completism

YAWL

On the nature of the boat known as a yawl and the difference between the Norwegian and Scarborough versions

ZOOLOGY

Heavily reliant on the zoological description of the Soviet systematist AN Svetovidov, an account of what a herring is

ZULU

A compromise between the Fifie and the Scaffie, a boat with a popular design which didn't adapt well to the introduction of steam

ZUYDERZEE

Home to a once distinct population of inshore herrings lost to the dyke building tendencies of The Netherlands

Search