For nearly two centuries, Barking Creek was the beating heart of English fishing. At its height in the 1850s, this small Essex town commanded the largest fishing fleet in the country, with more than 200 vessels and over 1,300 men hauling cod, sole, and herring from the North Sea to the plates of London.
The Hewett Dynasty and the Birth of a Fleet
The story begins with Scymgeour Hewett, a Scottish immigrant who arrived in Barking around 1760. Born on 7 December 1797, Hewett married into a local smack-owning family and founded what would become known as the Short Blue Fleet. His second son, Samuel, took control of the business around 1815 and transformed it into an industrial powerhouse.
Samuel Hewett's innovation was the "fleeting system." Rather than having each vessel return to port after catching its fill, Hewett organised his smacks to work in coordinated groups. Smacks would transfer their catches daily to fast cutters, which raced back to market whilst the fishing continued uninterrupted. This dramatically increased efficiency and ensured the freshest possible fish reached Billingsgate Market.
The Codbangers and Their Living Cargo
Central to Barking's success was a peculiar vessel called the well smack. These boats featured a central well section through which seawater circulated, keeping captured fish alive throughout the voyage. Fishermen who operated these vessels were known locally as "codbangers" β a reference to the practice of piercing the swim bladders of caught fish before lowering them into the well.
The advantage was economic. Live fish commanded premium prices at market. Upon returning to Barking, crews transferred their living cargo to semi-submerged chests, or cages, moored in the creek. Here the fish awaited sale, swimming in the Thames until buyers from London's markets arrived.
A Town Built on Fish
By 1850, approximately 220 smacks operated from Barking Creek, employing some 1,370 men and boys according to the 1851 census. The town's dependence on fishing was total. A document from 1574 observed that "all that inhabit there are fishermen," and by 1601 the town was described as entirely dependent on the industry.
The vessels themselves were substantial craft: typically 75 feet long, carrying up to 50 tons, with crews of 8 to 10 men, half of whom were apprentices learning the trade. The fleet ranged far from home, fishing the Dogger Bank and the coasts of Holland, Germany, Denmark, and even Iceland.
Barking's rise as a fishing hub owed much to geography. The town sat at Barking Creek, where the River Roding joins the Thames, providing direct access to Billingsgate Fish Market. The surrounding marshland supplied another critical resource: ice. Local fields were flooded in winter, the ice cut and stored in ice-houses. At least two such structures existed before 1848. Hewett even introduced England's first artificial ice-making plant, though this was later discontinued in favour of natural ice.
The Decline
The fleet's dominance was not to last. Multiple factors converged to destroy Barking's fishing economy.
The Thames itself became a victim of industrial progress. By the 1850s, the river was severely polluted, and fish kept in the semi-submerged chests quickly died. Meanwhile, railway expansion to east coast ports such as Great Yarmouth and Grimsby enabled competitors to transport fish to London by train more quickly than Barking's cutters could sail.
Disaster struck in December 1863, when a violent storm off the Dutch coast killed 60 Barking men and caused damage estimated at Β£6,000 to Β£7,000. The fleet never fully recovered from this blow.
Structural inefficiencies compounded these external pressures. Barking's fishermen used small, inefficient trawls compared to their northern competitors. They also refused to accept the common practice of sharing catch as part of wages, making their smacks expensive to operate.
In 1865, Robert Hewett, Samuel's son and heir, transferred most of the trawlers to Yarmouth and Gorleston. This effectively ended large-scale fishing from Barking. The Hewett family continued building and repairing fishing boats at Barking until approximately 1899, but by 1900 the town had ceased to be a fishing port entirely.
What Remains
Today, little visible evidence of Barking's maritime supremacy survives. The fishing community once centred on Fisher Street β now Abbey Road β has long since dispersed. Yet the story of the Short Blue Fleet remains a defining chapter in the town's history, a reminder of how Barking, through innovation, organisation, and sheer labour, once fed a nation.