84
BARBARA E. WARD
went out fishing, nearly all took in out-work for city-based manufacturies, making plastic flowers or hand-bags or stringing beads for cheap costume jewellery. At the same time, with the new methods purse-seining was tending to become more and more a man's job: of course it was still better to use family women than engage hired men, but family women were not quite so much needed for fishing as they had been when the older methods were in use. However, a crew of 6 to 8 able-bodied men could hardly be provided by the ordinary nuclear family, especially as education was now valued enough to keep 10- or even 12- and 14-year-olds at school. So inshore purse-seining remained essentially an extended rather than a nuclear family business, and where even the extended family unit was quite small women were still likely to be called upon to take an active part.
Generally speaking, the family situation on small long-liners and others was straightforward: as we have seen, the group comprised either a nuclear or a stem family. In the latter case, it was almost always the eldest son who continued to live on board his father's boat with his wife and young children, his younger brothers remaining there only while they were still too young to find paid employment elsewhere. A younger son on a small liner could get a job as a hired hand on a purse-seiner or other type of fishing boat, either locally or in one of the larger fishing centres, at the age of about 16. It was usually more profitable for a small liner family to put its younger sons out to work than to continue to feed them at home where their contribution to the fishing operations would be at best superfluous. This topic is discussed at fuller length in the section on hired labour below.
Purse-seine arrangements were usually more complicated, especially in the days when purse-seiners worked in pairs. Most commonly the pair was run as a joint venture by members of an undivided, agnatically extended family. Thus for many years after 1939-40 when his old father Shek Ch'uen Foon (who died in 1956 aged 87) retired, Shek Kwai Hoi and his son Shek Cheung Hei ran a pair of purse-seiners together until in 1960 Kwai Hoi in his turn retired also and decided to move ashore, whereupon his second son, Cheung Woh, took his place. A little
84
BARBARA E. WARD
went out fishing, nearly all took in out-work for city based manufacturies, making plastic flowers or hand-bags or stringing beads for cheap costume jewellery. At the same time, with the new methods purse-seining was tending to become more and more a man's job: of course it was still better to use family women than engage hired men, but family women were not quite so much needed for fishing as they had been when the older methods were in use. However, a crew of 6 to 8 able-bodied men could hardly be provided by the ordinary nuclear family, especially as education was now valued enough to keep 10- or even 12- and 14-year-olds at school. So inshore purse-seining remained essentially an extended rather than a nuclear family business, and where even the extended family unit was quite small women were still likely to be called upon to take an active part.
Generally speaking, the family situation on small long-liners and others was straight forward: as we have seen, the group comprised either a nuclear or a stem family. In the latter case, it was almost always the eldest son who continued to live on board his father's boat with his wife and young children, his younger brothers remaining there only while they were still too young to find paid employment elsewhere. A younger son on a small liner could get a job as a hired hand on a purse-seiner or other type of fishing boat, either locally or in one of the larger fishing centres, at the age of about 16. It was usually more profitable for a small liner family to put its younger sons out to work than to continue to feed them at home where their contribution to the fishing operations would be at best superfluous. This topic is discussed at fuller length in the section on hired labour below.
Purse-seine arrangements were usually more complicated, especially in the days when purse-seiners worked in pairs. Most commonly the pair was run as a joint venture by members of an undivided, agnatically extended family. Thus for many years after 1939-40 when his old father Shek Ch'uen Foon (who died in 1956 aged 87) retired, Shek Kwai Hoi and his son Shek Cheung Hei ran a pair of purse-seiners together until in 1960 Kwai Hoi in his turn retired also and decided to move ashore, whereupon his second son, Cheung Woh, took his place. A little
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.