Eels have long been a popular food in this country. Indeed, in the Middle Ages they were used as a form of currency, with watermills paying rent in 'sticks' (bundles of 25) of eels. A watermill in Datchet, Buckinghamshire, paid a rent of 2,000 sticks of eels.

The Dutch started supplying eels to Billingsgate Fish Markey in the 1400s. Eels are transported live to keep them fresh, and Dutch 'schuyts' could carry up to eighteen tons of them.

Heybridge Basin became a major centre for the import of eels in 1928, brought across by the Kuijten Company, which used two boats, 'Hans 2' and 'Helene'. The boats could store a total of forty tons of eels. The trade flourished from 1928 to 1968 and employed a lot of local people.

Rapid transport to Billingsgate was essential, and initially the eels were packed in flat boxes which were stacked on a lorry, leaving at 3.00 a.m. and returning mid-afternoon. Each two-ton load consisted of eighty boxes. Writer C.A. Devall recalls a Mr Wakelin of Goldhanger Road drove the lorry.

As the trade grew, open metal tanks replaced the boxes, followed by specialist road tankers with discharge pipes and aeration facilities.

By the 1950s, land-based storage trunks had been built to store sixty tons of eels, followed by three steel barges each with twelve compartments. A shortage of eels in Europe meant Kuijten had to source them from all over the world, as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

This decline in supply, and rising transport costs meant that the company ceased trading in Heybridge in 1968.