Herring buss
type of seagoing fishing vessel
A herring buss (Dutch: Haringbuis) was a type of seagoing fishing vessel, mostly used by Dutch and Flemish herring fishermen in the 15th through early 19th centuries.
History
The buss ship was already known around the time of the Crusades in the Mediterranean as a cargo vessel (called buzza, bucia or bucius). Development advanced in the 11th century with the Viking longship in Scandinavia, known as a bǘza. The Dutch buis was probably developed from this Scandinavian ship type.
The buis was first adapted for use as a fishing vessel in the Netherlands after the invention of gibbing made it possible to preserve herring at sea. This made longer voyages feasible and hence enabled Dutch fishermen to follow the herring shoals far from the coasts. The first herring buss was probably built in Hoorn around 1415. The last one was built in Vlaardingen in 1841.
Construction
The wooden ship was about 20 meters in length and displaced between 60 and 100 tons. The ratio of length to beam was between 2.5:1 and 4.5:1, which made for a relatively nimble ship, though still sufficiently stable to be seaworthy.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herring buss” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.