According to historic sources, Gourock was the first place in Great Britain to cure the fish, commonly found in North Atlantic waters.
The curing method involved salting herring so it could be packed into barrels for export, including across the Atlantic Ocean.
An etching of Gourock in 1839 (Image: Newsquest)
Red herring curing was introduced to Gourock in the late 17th century.
Walter Gibson, a Glasgow merchant and provost, is credited with introducing the technique.
Gourock’s early economy also involved ropemaking, copper mining, textile weaving and kipper production.
The town developed from a small fishing village in the 18th century following the arrival of steamboats, which brought with them tourism.
The wider Firth of Clyde herring fishery, of which Gourock was part, has documented importance dating back to the 1800s.
Herring curing across Scotland followed techniques originally devised by Dutch fishermen, involving removing the gills and gut before packing herring in barrels with layers of salt.
By the 1900s, the Scottish herring industry was producing more than two million barrels of fish a year and employing more than 35,000 people, some 14,000 of them women.
By then, however, there were already signs of over-fishing in the Firth; seabed trawling had been banned by the Clyde Fisheries Board in 1889 due to the damage it was causing to the marine environment.
Herring catches on the Clyde recovered while fishing was banned during the Second World War, but fell into decline again in the second half of the 20th century, and had collapsed to less than 10,000 tons a year by the mid-1960s.
Habitat degradation, pollution and high herring mortality levels have had serious ecological impacts, and large herring shoals have not been seen in the Firth for a number of years.