crabbing

Veramente molto bella!! Ciao

I see the loopline bridge, they are on the quays at the Custom House in Dublin. Streetview of the steps. The date range is off - the Clarecastle was built in 1914 and bought by Gunness in 1915 : Clyde ships page. Date is before 1953 when the Clarecastle was sold again.

All the boys are wearing shoes, which also suggests a later date range. I think some of them are fishing with bits of string. They have a big empty tin can to put their catch into.

Flickr is sometimes amazing and the NLI is always amazing - we have visited those steps before -

A wonderful looking image.

It looks like the boys are Crabbing. A ball of string or a sock is the bait on a line.

Dinner for months!!

These "crab lines" were usually strung between two floats, anchored in place. The baits ( often cut up sections of eels, treated with rock salt to toughen them ) were tied or hooked onto the "trot line", between the two floats, at regular intervals. To harvest the catch, you just got your dip net handy and started going over the line hand over hand, moving the boat along as you did. The trick was to spot the crab before he spotted you. If you did, and he hung on, feeding, long enough, you scooped him up in the dip net. Some commercial crabbers use a roller on the side of the boat to run the trot line under low outboard motor power, like this photo shows.

Those are blue crab not stone crab.