Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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A small sea-vessel used in the Dutch herring-fishery.
“BUSSE:…two- or three-masted vessel chiefly for the North Sea fishery, heavily built and of about 60 tons”
Large Glossary, L&M Companion
The busse was also in the English herring fishery.
“In September 1662 a scheme — similar to those of 1580, 1615 and 1661 — for building herring busses had been inaugurated by the Council of Royal Fishery, the King himself undertaking to provide ten. The council had been established in August 1661: Pepys became a member of the corporation appointed to succeed it in 1664….” L&M iii.268.n.3
No doubt the busses were the instruments of the fishing conflicts between the Dutch and the English: for the war of words see
Grotius, Hugo http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/3396.php
and Selden, John http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/3339.php#c25025
Busse: in Dutch “buis”. These ships were quite seaworthy because the saying was: ‘een buis is op zee een huis’ (A busse is a house at sea).
from Martha R on Tue 29 Nov 2005, 8:39 pm | Link
Herring busse
A late 17th century engraving of a Dutch herring busse is available here:
label: een hering schip
Under sail
http://www.sevenoceans.com/Ships/ShipsByType/buss.htm
The Herring Busse [Buizen, slow sailing] was of the order of 20 to 40 tons or more and acted as a Mother Boat, curing the fish, as the herring had to be cured [gutted {Dutch]or not gutted] within 24 hrs, It did have its own nets too [driffing type]. It usually worked out of site of land as they roamed far and wide following the army of herring migration and when it had a full load, the barrells would be ferried ashore and then salt was brought back for more fish. A 70 Ton busse had a crew of 17 men , half be salters/degutters. The Dutch had 700 of these profitable Busse vessels, each vessel did three trips a season and would land 800 barrels per season of Dutch salted herring i.e. that be, the fish be gutted before being drowned in brine. Each barrel would have approx 1000 gutted herring. The fast ferring boats be Jagers.
Then there was the Dutch Bomschuit, that was flat bottomed to allow fishing where the lads with Keels could not go.
lifted from Herring by Mike Smylie