Fishing boats at sea, crews hauling catches ashore, bustling fish markets and busy harbours are among the images we might expect to find at the Scottish Fisheries Museum. While these form a significant part of the museum’s photographic collection, looking beyond the boats and their catch reveals a broader picture of the people, places and coastal communities connected to Scotland’s fishing heritage.

Throughout the collection are photographs of children playing by the sea, fishwives and herring lasses at work, men’s football teams, family gatherings, local celebrations and candid scenes of everyday life. Together, these photographs offer a glimpse into life beyond the immediate work of fishing. They document the families, communities and experiences that formed an equally important part of Scotland’s fishing industry.

What’s in a photograph?

A single photograph from the collection can contain a significant amount of information. What may initially appear to be a straightforward image of fishermen standing beside a boat, or a busy quayside filled with boxes of fish, can reveal much more on closer examination.

The clothing people wear, the items they carry, and the buildings, shop signs, landmarks and seemingly insignificant background details can all help to identify when and where a photograph was taken, who or what it depicts, and the wider context surrounding it. A vessel name or registration number, for example, can provide a starting point for identifying a boat and researching its history. A handwritten annotation might connect an image to a particular time, place or person.

Individually, these details seem small, but together they can help build a fuller picture of the past. They can reveal changes in working practices, help identify how familiar places have changed over time, and offer glimpses into the everyday experiences of Scotland’s coastal communities.

Herring lasses and fishwives

Some of the most notable photographs in the collection look beyond the familiar subjects of boats, fishermen and life at sea, revealing many other people whose work supported Scotland’s fishing industry. Women played a particularly important role, both within the industry and in the wider communities that depended upon it.

Among them were the herring lasses, women who travelled from port to port during the height of the herring trade, following the fishing fleets around the coast to gut and pack the catch. Others worked in curing yards, repaired nets and other fishing equipment, or sold fish as fishwives.

Alongside this work, many also managed households and families while fishermen were away at sea. Together, these photographs provide an important visual record of women’s lives and labour, highlighting the varied and essential contributions they made to Scotland’s fishing industry.

Social fabric of fishing

The photograph collection captures many aspects of life away from the immediate work of fishing. Children play around harbours, families gather for portraits, football teams pose together, and communities come together for local events and celebrations.

These everyday scenes remind us that harbours were not only workplaces, but part of the social fabric of coastal towns and villages where people worked, met, played and lived alongside one another. Fishing influenced not only how people earned a living, but the development of societies, family life, local traditions and the identities of generations of people living along Scotland’s coast.

What’s beyond a photograph?

The historic photographs preserved at the museum are more than snapshots of the past; the original film negatives and glass plates are physical objects with histories of their own. Created by someone for a particular purpose, they have survived through the years before eventually coming into the museum’s care, sometimes carrying scratches, fading and other traces of their past along the way.

A photograph can therefore hold more than one kind of history: the moment captured in the image and the story of the object itself. Not all of that history is known; people may remain unidentified, dates and locations uncertain, and parts of an object’s journey may have been lost over time. Historic collections often contain these gaps, leaving questions unanswered and much still to be discovered.

Who are the people gathered outside a harbour building? What became of the children smiling at the camera? What is the story behind a celebration captured decades ago? Which vessel can just be seen at the edge of the frame? Questions such as these are part of what makes photographic collections so captivating.

Potential for photographic collections

Sometimes, answers can be found through archival research. At other times, they come from people who recognise a relative, remember the name of a long-gone shop, identify a familiar street or recall the story of a particular boat. This knowledge can help fill gaps in the historical record and deepen our understanding of the people, places and events captured in these photographs.

This knowledge can add new meaning to photographs that have survived for generations and deepen our understanding of the people, places and events they document. Although the photographs themselves capture moments that have long since passed, the information, memories and connections surrounding them can continue to grow.

The Scottish Fisheries Museum’s photographic collections reveal Scotland’s fishing heritage not simply as the history of an industry, but as the history of the people and communities who lived, worked and built their lives around it. By looking beyond the boats and the catch, a much wider picture of Scotland’s fishing heritage comes into view.

Further information

Find out more about the Scottish Fisheries Museum: Scottish Fisheries Museum – Home Page

Browse their collections here: Scottish Fisheries Museum – Collections

Written by Emma Montague, Scottish Fisheries Museum.

Edited by Isabel Lauterjung, Blog Coordinator.