Chasse-marée

In English, a chasse-marée is a specific, archaic type of decked commercial sailing vessel.

In French, un chasse-marée was 'a wholesale fishmonger', originally on the Channel coast of France and later, on the Atlantic coast as well. He bought in the coastal ports and sold in inland markets. However, this meaning is not normally adopted into English. The name for such a trader in Britain, from 1500 to 1900 at least, was 'rippier'. The chasse-marée name was carried over to the vehicle he used for carrying the fish, which because of the perishable nature of its load, was worked in the same urgent manner as a mail coach. Later, fast three-masted luggers were used to extend the marketing process to the purchase of fresh fish in Breton ports and on the fishing grounds. These vessels too, were known as chasse-marée. Both these meanings, particularly the latter, are used in English where, unlike the French, the plural normally takes an 's'.

Une marée has the basic meaning of 'a sea tide'. Fish is a highly perishable commodity. Before the days of conservation by salting, canning or freezing, it was brought ashore as near to its market as possible. Therefore, each coastal place had its harbour or its beach on which fish were landed, originally for that community. Berths in small ports and the upper parts of beaches were accessible from the sea only towards high tide. Where estuaries allowed entry farther inland, harbours were established some way into them. Consequently, the fishermen landed their catches towards high tide; in other words the landings were half-daily events, though particularly on the morning tide. They occurred in time with la marée so the landing of fish itself came to be known also as la marée; not only the process of landing but the batch of fish too. La marée therefore, now means any of 'the tide', 'the landing of fish' or 'sea fish marketed as a fresh product'. The last is nowadays, usually taken as including shellfish.

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' and une marée, 'a landing of fresh sea fish'.

The most prolific fish such as herrings and sardines are abundant in given waters only in their season so keeping them for use out of season required salting or smoking them. This permitted their sale in inland markets too but fresh fish tasted better so long as it really was fresh. There was therefore a premium on fresh fish in this top end of the market. 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. Another problem was that every lord through whose manor the road led wanted his toll so that if the road was too long, the enterprise became less economic.

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