The Shoals of Herring (Roud 13642) is a ballad, written by Ewan MacColl for the third of the original eight BBC Radio ballads Singing the Fishing, which was first broadcast on August 16, 1960.Ewan MacColl writes that the song was based on the life of Sam Larner, a fisherman and traditional singer from Winterton-on-Sea, Norfolk, England.Liam Clancy, who performed the song for decades, tells a more nuanced story, saying that MacColl "tape recorded all the old fisherman up along the east cost of England. And he never used one word of his own. ... He rhymed the lines that the fishermen had given him, and he made it into a song..."