When fishing nets were made of hemp in Brittany
( I am very grateful to Colin Bosworth for his translation )
I came across this family blog (https://treffiagat.bzh/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/ledrezen.pdf) which relates the origins, nearly a century ago, of the Le Drezen net factory – now famous throughout the world – near Douarnenez. As this product launch was made possible by the use of hemp twine, it is clearly relevant to my work in presenting the thousands of years of practical applications of this fabulous plant!
The ¨Chalutage¨ is a sea-going company owning 17 steamers operating panel trawling. The skippers, as is often the case, complain that their nets are maladapted to their trawlers and sodon’t catch enough fish. This results in a waste of resources. Yann ar Prince, near retirement age, proposes to his chandler the creation of a workshop for the making by hand of better adapted trawl nets for the boats … in the villageof his birth, Lechiagat. And so it was that in 1926 the company bought a plot of land at Parc ar Brial and there built a long construction visible to this day near the Protestant Temple ¨Ar Vagagenn Kohz¨. In Lechiagat, Yann is sure he will find skilful and abundant labour with the mothers, wives and daughters of the fishermen, already experienced with the special needles. This was most convenient to the people of Lechiagat because the canning factories were all in Guilvinec and it was difficult to get there in the absence of a bridge between the two shores. Then there was the issue of transport to Lorient. The ¨Birinik¨ train ran not far away; it can carry the nets to Pontl’Abbe and then on the standard gauge directly to Keroman. So, a special workshop for a single trawling company.
Each working woman had a set of needles and a set of moulds in wood or bone corresponding to the various dimensions of the links. The most dicult task was to perfect the degressive size of the links on certain nets
The hemp twine delivered to the homes of the workers came from the twine factories in Armentieres or in Fives as the factory in Lechiagat didn’t make twine. At home the women made a skein of string made by the family in order to facilitate the threading of the needles. Then it’s just a question of collecting the various parts of the trawl net and assembling them. Yann ar Prince surrounded himself with old seadogs like his brother Yves, L.Stephan and H.Gueguen from Guilvinec. In the long building the role of the men was to join the pieces of the net and to edge the net with cord. The last adjustments, the most difficult, were made in Lorient by the crews themselves. Entirely handmade, the trawler nets couldn’t be made on classic assembly lines because, as we have seen, each model is different.
Prince recrutes first twenty workwomen all from Lechiagat, who he trains, and evens teaches them the technique of splicing! They have to make, separately and at home, the various pieces of the trawler net, each dfferent from each other like the wings, the belly, the big back, the li$le back etc … n different sizes too according to the dimensions of each net. Each working woman had a set of needles and a set of moulds in wood or bone corresponding to the various dimensions of the links. Themost dicult task was to perfect the degressive size of the links on certain nets.
André Ravachol
Hemp in my heart
Founder of the Plasticana Brand
www.plasticana.com