Chasse-marée

Each of the two French words involved in the name 'chasse-marée' has a range of meanings but in this instance, they are chasser 'to impel' or 'to drive forward'[3] and une marée, 'a landing of fresh sea fish'.

The medieval chasse-marée merchants catered to this originally by carrying fish in pairs of baskets on pack ponies, as far as possible, overnight.

They rushed la marée (the batch from a particular landing) to market but the distance coverable before the fish deteriorated was limited.

When designed for this trade, with a minimum of weight put into their construction and provision for harnessing the four horses, these vehicles took the name of chasse-marée.

On their axle was mounted an open rectangular frame within which were slung the baskets holding the fish, packed in seaweed.

[4] The teams of usually fairly small horses were worked hard and changed at posting stations in the same way as those of mail coaches.

On the coast of Brittany, originally in the southern part, later known as Morbihan, from the eighteenth century, fast luggers bought fish from the fishermen at sea and carried it to the Loire and Gironde for sale in the markets of Nantes and Bordeaux.

Other available dictionaries ignore it but the Mandragore II site describes it as a gaff ketch and says that the rig was used principally in lobster boats and herring drifters.

The article includes an illustration showing a vessel well adapted to the chasse-marée trade, with a large sail area and strikeable bowsprit and bumkin.

Apparently, the yawl rig (cotre à tapecul) used by French tunnymen was sometimes but improperly called a dundee.

The days of the chasse-marée were numbered but still the marée, in both senses, ruled the life of the longshore fishermen of the tidal French coasts.

The chasse-marée boat seems to have persisted for some years by using its crew's capacity to buy on the fishing grounds and bringing the marée ashore.

[7] The dictionary Le Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustrée (1934) gives the following definition: CHASSE-MARéE n: m: invar: Bâtiment côtier à trois mâts.

French chasse-maree at anchor, Claude Monet circa 1872
An 18th- or 19th-century lithograph
Le Corentin, a chasse-marée from Quimper . Note the three-masted lugger rig with the foremast stepped well forward and the apparent absence of headsails. The large jib has been cleared so that the bowsprit can be topped up to facilitate manoeuvring in harbour. At the after end of the vessel, the bumkin, which carries the lower block of the mizzen sheet, is similarly stowed.