Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1901 — England’s Sea Gypsies. [ARTICLE]

England’s Sea Gypsies.

A strange and almost unknown part of the population (if they can be called that) of the British isles are the queer semi-wild folk known as sea gypsies. Real gypsies they are, differing from their fellow gypsies in the fact that they always live on the sea and that, never having mingled with landsmen, their type is much purer and more nearly resembles the original. There are about 500 sea gypsies in Britain. They cruise along the coast, seldom touching the land, but always close to it, in old and weatherbeaten craft that may have carried their grandfathers. When the tide is out the old craft will often drop anchor by a sandbank Island far out at sea, and her crew will grub for cockles with their hands, filling a score of baskets, but saying nothing to each other, for they are almost out of the habit of speech. They find fifty shellfish where the ordinary fisherman finds one, but they rarely do the same thing two days running, and in the next hour they may be snaring rabbits on a headland miles away. The sea gypsies are wild-eyed and thick set. Their hair is always either jet black or golden. They are still of almost pure Norse or Danish descent, never having used the land and mixed with the shore folk to any extent. Their hands seems to be all thumbs instead of fingers, so powerful and stubby are the digltg, because they have done nothing but haul ropes aud dig in the wet sand.—New York Press.