Chasse-Marée - a man, a cart or a boat?
All of the above, actually - and also a superb French magazine devoted to maritime history. Based in Brittany, of course, and the site also sells books and nauticalia.
The French word chasse means hunt or chase. Marée originally referred to the tide, but took on metaphorical meanings connected with an activity that was tightly linked to the time of high tide - the landing and distribution of fresh fish in shallow harbours before the days of refrigeration.
Chasse-marée - the man
Marée became the name of the load of fish landed at each tide, so chasse-marée became the job title of a wholesale fishmonger - a man who bought from the boats as they landed in coastal ports and delivered as far inland as he could while the fish remained fresh.
Chasse-marée - the cart
A pack animal such as a donkey or pony with a couple of panniers on its back couldn’t get the fish very far from the port where it was landed, so it was superseded by a specially constructed light cart - little more than a wooden frame for hanging baskets of fish - pulled by teams of four small horses driven hard in relays in the same way as mail coaches. Paris was the destination, and at its peak the network extended along the French coast from Fécamp to Calais.
Chasse-marée - the boat
In Brittany, particularly in the south around what is now Morbihan, sea fishing was a two-tier trade. Fast luggers bought fish at sea and carried it to the mouths of the Loire and the Gironde, selling their loads at markets in Nantes and Bordeaux. As Paris became wealthy in the 19th century, three-masted Breton luggers bought fish from boats operating further north and delivered it up the Seine estuary to markets in Rouen.
As you can see from Remi Jouan’s Wikimedia Commons photo of Corentin on the left, the rig of some of these boats was modified to make them handier when moored to crowded quays. Both bowsprit and bumpkin can be raised out of the way when not in use - quite a space-saver on a 50-foot boat.
