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About QueenSpark Books QueenSpark Books was founded in 1972 as part of a campaign to save the historic Royal Spa in Brighton's Queen's Park from being converted to a casino. The campaign was successful and it inspired participants to start collecting memories of people living in Brighton and Hove to preserve for future generations. QueenSpark Books is now the longest-running organisation of its kind in the UK. More than one hundred books later, as part of our 45th anniversary celebrations, we are making the original texts of many of our out-of-print books available for the first time in many years. We thank you for choosing this book, and if you can make a donation to QueenSpark Books, please click on the “donate” button on the book page on our website. This book remains the copyright of QueenSpark Books, so if reproducing any part of it, please ensure you credit QueenSpark Books as publisher. About this book This comprehensive 1996 account of the fishing industry documents how it has changed since the beginning of the century. At that time, fishing boats landed on the beach and the fish market was actually on the seafront. On a more personal level, Catching Stories is a living record, told in their own words, of the individuals who made up Brighton’s fishing community. Their past is remembered with humour and honesty, as are the bygone traditions and lifestyles of their families. It was produced at a time when the style of oral history was largely a verbatim report of what was said, with a light touch of editing. While this captures the true voices of the contributors, to a contemporary reader it can appear unstructured or repetitive, but this unique and valuable document of social and oral history reveals the details of a traditional profession in an informative and unique way. Copyright QueenSpark Book 1996 CATCHING STORIES Voices from the Brighton Fishing Community 1996 Foreword This book is the result of an oral history project begun in 1993 to record the lives of those involved in the Brighton Fishing Community. It is a living record of the way in which some of the community remember their own past, and shows the traditions kept alive by the fishermen and their families. Although in no way a complete history of the community, because the number of interviews was limited, we believe this book shows the diversity of the community and records a way of life that is disappearing. This oral history project enables us to experience the past through the voices of the people involved. It has been a long process, from the first interviews being conducted to completing this book. Once the interviews had been completed the tapes had to be transcribed. The book draws on the life stories of thirty people. Twenty-eight of these were taped interviews, with two written contributions. In order to produce the book, extracts have been taken from the transcripts of the tapes and written material. This in itself has been a daunting task with so much wonderful material to present. We selected the material on the basis of presenting a diversity of contributors and content, and we arranged the material by common themes. But these remain the words of the people interviewed, and not of the people compiling the book. Short biographies of the contributors can be found at the back of the book along with a glossary of the words used by fishermen. The tapes and transcripts now form an archive which the public can use. QueenSpark are proud to have produced and published this book, and believe that it is a valuable record of a community history. We hope you enjoy the book. Brighton Fishing Community Project Team April 1996 History Why did the ancient settlement of Brighthelmston grow up on an inhospitable sweep of coastline open to the prevailing south-westerly gales and without a natural harbour? Was it because there used to be a small inlet at Pool Valley from which boats could be hauled up to the safety of the Steine? What's certain is that from very early times fishery was an important part of the local economy. In 1580 the fleet boasted eighty fishing boats, four hundred mariners and ten thousand nets. There were two main types of boat. The larger ones of up to forty tons would go on 'fares' or voyages and remain at sea for weeks or months, with Brighton boats fishing not only in the English Channel but also up the east coast as far as Yarmouth and Scarborough. Then there were the inshore boats which fished locally and would be drawn up on the beach after each trip. Fishing was seasonal, following the mackerel and herring on their yearly migrations round the coast. In the 1640s Brighton was a small town with a flourishing fishery and fishing-related trades such as boatbuilding and sail, rope and net-making. But after 1650 the industry went into a long decline, caused in part by the encroachment of the sea. The deep banks of shingle which now seem a natural feature of Brighton beach have only appeared - as a result of the scouring action of the tides combined with the building of groynes and other sea defences - in quite modern times. Lacking this protection and vulnerable to great storms like the one which came on 11 August 1705, the chalk cliffs and foreshore were steadily eroded. By the early 1700s the fishing fleet had dwindled to about twenty-five boats. From the 1740s and through the Regency period, as the town developed into a popular resort and regional centre, with better communications, the fishing community gradually lost its importance within the Brighton population. Even so, one hundred boats and three hundred men were involved in 1770, and the fishery continued on the beach alongside the new resort activities. Bathing machines appeared on the beach. Some of the town's fishermen and their families turned to bathing visitors for a living. By the early 1800s pleasure-boating was also well established. From early times the fishermen had kept their boats and gear and dried their nets on the Steine. Now, these ancient customary rights were progressively removed by the Town Commissioners. The Steine was enclosed, Brighton's 'lost river' (the Wellesbourne) culverted, Pool Valley bricked over, the fishing boats removed, the cliff-top capstans dismantled. All this so that fishing activity could be confined to the beach and the Steine turned into a fashionable promenade. The fishermen's angry demonstrations were in vain. However, the fishery remained an important and valued part of local life. By 1862 it had expanded to one hundred and fifty boats. The fishermen were still storing their gear on the beach in various 'rope houses' and huts made of half-boats, as well as in holes in the cliff. With the widening of the Kings Road in 1864-65, massive arches were built, stretching far back underground. The huts were removed. The Council granted leases of separate arches at a nominal rent to the displaced fishermen and boatmen, but fishermen believe they were effectively made to abandon their historic right to occupy and work on the foreshore, now buried beneath the Kings Road. A Fishermen’s Society was formed in 1813. The Arches were used for storing and maintaining gear but also for meetings, socials, clubs, a reading room, a school for fishermen's children. These were associated with church missions to the fishermen run by the Bethel Chapel and St. Margaret's Church. A fishmarket had been in operation on the beach for centuries and now a purpose-built one was constructed in the Arches opposite the bottom of Little East Street, with a hard provided in front for stalls. It became a major tourist attraction. In its heyday the old Brighton Fishmarket sold not only locally-landed fish but catches from Sussex ports like Rye and Eastbourne, as well as from further afield. Fish was sold by Dutch auction, with the price coming down rather than up. Brighton fishermen, like those in many parts of the country, have always worked co-operatively, receiving a prearranged share of the proceeds from the catch rather than wages. A non-owning skipper could 'work the boat out', the owner keeping most of the catch proceeds until the purchase value was deemed to have been met. After 1800, as new industries came and parts of the old town were taken over by new fashionable and commercial elites, the fishing community became more marginal and dispersed. The main fishing neighbourhoods were: to the west and north of West Street; a notoriously insanitary area known as Pimlico which was situated immediately to the north of Church Street and demolished under the Corporation's first slum-clearance scheme in the 1870s; the area between Edward Street and Sussex Street, famous for its herring dees; and the area around Bedford Street. The seasonal rhythm of fishing continued very much as it always had until the 1930s. Fishermen would start the year trawling about March and then they would switch to the fixed trammel nets until the end of April, when the boats were fitted out for mackerel-drifting which would go on into July. In the summer there was seine-net fishing for mackerel along the beach and some boats would be pleasure-tripping or lobster-potting. From August they would start trawling for soles and plaice up to about November, after which it would be herring-drifting until two or three weeks before Christmas. In the 1950s, full-time fishermen were still launching from the beach and 'heaving up' after each trip, as they had been since time immemorial, and still using traditionally-designed boats such as the twenty-six foot 'Brighton punts' and the elliptic-stern beach boats.