Mevagissey from Fishing to Tourism

A reporter interviews a fisherman, Mr Robin on the decline in the local fishing industry in Mevagissey in Cornwall. Martin Chesterfield operates a traditional Cornish lugger, a type of small sailing boat now converted to running on diesel so-named because of its lugsail although the word ‘lug' may also have come from an old Dutch dialect meaning to trawl. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Cornwall had a thriving fisheries industry.

Mr and Mrs Lakeman have ended a family fishing tradition and moved into tourism by buying a Bed and Breakfast. Maritime tourism took over where fishing communities could no longer wholly depend on fishing as a source of income. In the sixties more young people went on to higher education instead of staying in traditional industries. Countries used customary international law to protect their coastal waters but in 1945 US President Harry Truman extended US control to its continental shelf and the old 3-mile limit or the so-called cannon ball rule was shot out of the water. Sovereignty was extended to 12 nautical miles and eventually enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).