A postcard showing the St. Abbs fishing fleet of Fifies putting to sea.

A sailing Fifie, lying in St. Abbs Harbour. This postcard illustrates the verticle stem and stern of the Fifie design.

The Fifie is a design of sailing boat developed on the Scottish East Coast. It was used from the 1850s until well into the 20th century, by Scottish fishermen. These boats were mainly used to fish for herring using drift nets. Boats working at this fishery were known as herring drifters. Family Clupeidae The herring is a type of small oily fish found in the temperate, shallow waters of the North Atlantic. ... Family Clupeidae The herring is a type of small oily fish found in the temperate, shallow waters of the North Atlantic. ...

While the boats varied in design, they can be catagorised by their vertical stem and stern, their long straight keel and wide beam. These attributes made the Fifies very stable in the water and allowed them to carry a very large set of sails. Aft of the Soleil Royal, by Jean Bérain the Elder. ...

Sailing Fifies had two masts with the standard rig consisted of a main dipping lugsail and a mizzen standing lug sail. A French lugger, beached and drying nets. ...

From about 1905 onwards sailing Fifies where gradually converted to motor vessels.

The Scottish Fisheries Museum based in Anstruther, Fife has restored and still sails a classic example of this type of vessel named the Reaper. Anstruther (Enster in Scots)is a small town in Fife, Scotland. ... Fife (Fìobh in Gaelic) is a council area of Scotland, situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with landward boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. ...

The Reaper

The Reaper was built by J. & G. Forbes of Sandhaven. She is of carvel construction, using larch planking on larch and oak frames. Reaper is the last authentic survivor of this once prolific type of vessel. She fished originally from Fraserburgh and Lerwick from 1902 to 1966. She holds the record catch for Shetland of 233 cran (= almost 250,000 herrings). She was restored by the Scottish Fisheries Museum to her traditional sailing configuration as a two-masted sailing lugger, much as she would have appeared when first going to sea. Carvel is an ice cream franchise owned by FOCUS Brands, Inc. ... Species About 12; see text Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, in the family Pinaceae. ... Species See List of Quercus species The term oak can be used as part of the common name of any of several hundred species of trees and shrubs in the genus Quercus, and some related genera, notably Cyclobalanopsis and Lithocarpus. ... Fraserburgh is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland on the extreme North East corner. ... Location within the British Isles The Market Cross,Central Lerwick Lerwick is the only town and main port of the Shetland Islands, found more than 160km (100 miles) off the north coast of Scotland. ...

External links

• Scottish Fisheries Museum
• The Swan Trust