Dear Sir,
It was interesting to hear on the radio that the Russian Premier, Mr. Kosygin, dining with the Conservative Shadow Cabinet at the Carlton Hotel, ate Whitstable Oysters for the first time.
Being an old age pensioner and a widower, I am compelled to spend much of my time at the home of my son in Minster, Isle of Sheppey, where I have made many friends. Often my new found friends enquire what was my job before retirement and I tell them that between 40 and 50 years of my life were spent in oyster fishing and cultivation together with grading, purifying, packing and dispatching oysters all over the country.
On hearing this they usually remark that they thought Whitstable oysters became extinct years ago. I have been wondering how many people, even in Whitstable, think this is true. The truth is that Whitstable Native oysters are rather scarce, but far from extinct.
I feel sure there may be hundreds of thousands, large and small, lying on that vast acreage known as the Kentish Flats – the real home of Whitstable Native oysters – but they are so thinly scattered that it would cost too much to round them up, even by experienced dredgermen of whom there are mighty few of working age left.
If this scarcity lasts many more years, the art will have to be learned all over again. Even in the days of plenty there were dredgermen and men who went dredging. Of course, no oyster company could survive trading at present on Natives alone so they lay on their beds young oysters, known as brood, from the Essex rivers, Falmouth harbour in Cornwall, and Brittany, where as they grow each summer, their new growth is of Whitstable nature and their flesh of Whitstable taste.
Natives were very plentiful from 1903 to 1920-21 when, in those last two years, a mysterious death or disease attacked oysters nearly all over the world and thinned the numbers so badly that the companies were near collapsing and the Flatsmen, those men who dredged oysters on the Kentish Flats, could not earn a living. Their boats, which cost just over £300 in Victorian days, got into disrepair, and either sank and were broken up or sold cheaply to yachtsmen. The old men retired and the younger mostly became house builders’ labourers.
This scarcity of Natives has many times happened since Roman days and the last period was, I think, from 1875 to 1902. To my mind we are on the verge of a great recovery. This year we hear of instances of early breeding among birds and animals and even trees and bushes seem to be forward. If the sea temperature in the Thames Estuary, which contains the oyster beds and the Kentish Flats, were to reach 60 degrees in the month of May and not decrease throughout the summer there would be such an increase in local shellfish that in seven years’ time the oyster industry would, or could be, a flourishing one capable of attracting men to it and so put Whitstable on the map.
The advantage of other types of shellfish being born at the same time would attract the oyster’s enemies they give less resistance to the enemy.
Yours faithfully,
R. D. Dale.
82, Nelson Road
Whitstable.
