FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME ^^ WALTER WOOD Sw -i FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fishermeninwartiOOwood ^FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME BY WALTER WOOD AUTHOR OF 'MEN OF THE NORTH SHA," "THE ENEMY IN OUR MIDST,' "NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS," Etc. Illustrated from Photographs LONDON AND EDINBURGH SAMPSON LOW. MARSTON 5c CO.. LTD. Cahill & Co., Ltd., Printers, London and Dublin. PREFACE In the late Eighties I made my first trip to the North Sea lishing-grounds in a Grimsby smack, a beam-trawler which sailed and joined her fleet, working around Heligoland, at that time a British possession. For some days and nights we shot and hauled our gear within sight and quite easy reach of that freak island, with a handful of fisherfolk and lodging-house keepers as inhabitants—a lonely lump of land which jutted out of the sea and re- sembled the dismantled hull of a gigantic battle- ship. What I saw and heard then, thirty years ago, remains with undimmed clearness in my memory. The fleeting system of fishing, as carried out by sailing smacks, had reached its zenith, and there were many signs of the revolution which the intro- duction of steam trawlers and drifters was to bring about in the fishing industry. When from my rough experiences of fishing off Heligoland I landed at Billingsgate from the carrier I made the old, old declaration that I had had enough of North Sea smacks and North Sea fishing-grounds to last -my life-time the warrior returns to the battle- ; yet, as field, so I went back to those hard fighting zones which produced the incomparable men who have done so much for the salvation of civilisation ; and so that I might the more fully understand and sympathise with fishermen, I settled on the York- shire coast for five years. From that time onward it was my good fortune to see trawlers and drifters at work in many regions —from the Shetlands southabout to the Bristol Channel ; to watch them in the Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay, and off the Moroccan coast, and often to bear some sort of a hand in their labours; and during the long years that have passed since those depressing Grimsby days I have never lost touch with my friends of the North Sea and other fishing regions. In story and historically I have tried to help the world to realise what the deep sea fishers in par- ticular are and what they have done. Twelve years ago, in The Enemy in Our Midst, a title which has proved useful since to many writers and speakers, I told something of the horrors and devilries of a German invasion of England and of the part which North Sea fishermen played in the imaginary struggle; and in North Sea Fishers and Fighters, published long before the war broke out, I ventured on prophecies, v/hich have been fulfilled, of what these men could do. And so now, in giving this book to a public which has been magnanimously appreciative of courage and endurance in every form, I have special pride in feeling that I am doing at least something to make the fishermen's work and devotion more fully understood. In two cases the deep sea toilers speak for themselves—the repatriated skipper and " Sub- marine Billy." They related their experiences to me when I saw them on the East coast, and after- wards saw and approved of the typescripts of their narratives. No man has a more profound admiration than I have for the mighty, all-protecting work of the British Navy, and I wish definitely to say that in seeming to neglect purely naval deeds I am merely carr3dng out the special task I have in mind, and that is to deal solely, and as completely as one may under the restrictions which so rightly exist, with the work of British fishermen in war-time. CONTENTS CHAFTER PAGE 1. TiTK RAW MAXnniAIi 11 II. TjfE CALL "TO ARMS 36 iiL Tin: riRnx swKErERS 47 IV. A SEirrER's TAI-E OF GERMAN INHUMANITV 68 V. WAP. ON FISHING CK^VIT . 73 VI. TRAWLERS TO THE RESCUE 85 VIL HEROIC DEEDS .... 97 " " VMT. SUBMARIXE BILLY . 109 IX. ARMED TRAWLERS AND SALVAGE . 123 X. AN ADVENTURE WITH GERMAN PIRATES 1"G XI. KEEPING THE TRADE ROUTES CLEAR 146 XII. Dnil'TERS AND CRUISERS : A SKIPPEP.'s V,C. If)! XIII. NATIONAL TRIBUTES 1C9 XIV. ANOTJfEIl skipper's V.C. 186 XV. DIFUCCLTIE3 AND REMEDIES 192 XVL KELP FOR THE FISHERMEN 210 XVif. TiriC FOURTH YEAH 22 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A STEAM Trawler in a gale Froni/ispiece PAGE A CORKER OF TlIE NEWFOUNDLAND CODMEn'S WORLD 23 SMACKSMEN OF THE OLD SAILING DAYS . 23 STEAM DRIFTER SHOOTING NTiTS 33 A STEAM Trawler a* work 33 STEAM TRAWLERS MINE-SWEEPING 49 A POSTCARD FROM A FISHERMAN PRISONER OF WAR 6.'> SCOTCH FISHER-GIRLS BARELLING HERRINGS 65 IN A FLEET OF STFrAM TRAWLERS 8.5 NORTH SEA TRAWLERS CONVERTED INTO MINE-SWEEPERS 1C9 SKIPPER WRIGH-r, WHO DISCOVERED THE "KONIGEN LUISE" 1C9 "TirE SKIPPER OF A MINE-SWEEPER IN THE WHEELHOUSE 123 A MINE-SWEEPER DAMAGED BY STRIKING A MINE . 136 THE PICTURES OF THE CREW OF A NORTH SEA TRAWLER 146 MINT=:-SWEEPERS SPLICING A SWEEPING-WIRE . .186 EXPLODING A MINE WITH RIFLE-SHOTS . .226 ; FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME. CHAPTER I THli; RAW MATERIAL The Great War brought the fishermau, especially the toiler of the deep sea, into his own, and put him in the forefront of that mighty naval power on which, in the good providence of God, the safety not of England only but the whole civilised world depended. It saved him from obscurity and gave him that honoured place in public life from which for many generations he had been unjustly kept. Some such cataclysm as the war was needed to call adequate attention to the fisherman, for he was by nature incapable of singing his own praises or claiming his due. There were few, even amongst those to whom the toilers of the deep had been a life-long study, who anticipated the va.st development in the employment of the fisherman and his craft for purposes of war naval authorities themselves were not able to fore- cast that growth, and to the world at large the ex- 11 FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME tension of the fishers' operations was an almost in- credible revelation. The common view of fishing life was that if not so good it was, at any rate, not so bad, and there was reason for that general impression, for it was mostly based on observation made at romantic watering-jDlaces by holiday-makers who were sus- ceptible to comforting impressions. There were the little brown-sailed craft beloved of the visitor, and the bluff, hearty fisherman, whose life apparently was made up of pleasant trips to sea, well within the protection of the land. There was the picturesque marketing of the catch, perhaps on a sun-bathed beach, followed by the return home, often to the little cottage under the hill or up the creek, which looked so snug and pretty. There was perhaps the added attraction of the old, old story of the lover and his lass—he so big and strong and bronzed and handsome ; she so comely and so much a daughter of the sea. All this delightful picture came into the view of the casual observer ; an image seen largely through the artistic eye, and therefore to a great extent misleading, for that standpoint must ignore the sordid and unlovely. That common view of fishing life was wholly wrong and incomplete. It was true that there were many little trips to sea on calm blue water, under glowing summer suns, and many safe havens to which the fisherman might run for shelter when the snarl of the rising wind was heard and the seething surge came up as herald of the growing sea. But 12 THE RAW MATERIAL the view left out of count the multitude of fishing- places on inhospitable coasts to which romantic visi- tors rarely went ; and it did not include even a vague impression of the deep sea fishermen. Nor could it do so, for the poetic trifier at a Cornish haven pro- bably had no knowledge of the Dogger, and had doubtless never lieard of Grimsb}-, except to shudder and dismiss the sordid vision which the mention of the port aroused. Visitors to a place like Scar- borough could see something of the deep sea men, but rarely did the fashionable lady jeopardise her lovel}' dress or risk offending her dainty nose by going to look at the old town or the harbour where the fishing craft were moored. Yet from the Spa it all looked so romantic, especially on a moonlight night, with the soft summer breeze coming in from the sea, the Spa brilliantly illuminated, and the band playing delightful music. Here, again, the fishing element added to the picturesqueness and romance, and pretty heads were not troubled by thoughts of fishers who in winter gales had been dashed to death by monstrous seas on the deadly rocks on the Spa beach and on the very sea wall of the v^pa itself. That there were, on such a great extent of coast- line as the shores of Great Britain afforded, a very large number of men and boys engaged in fishing was obvious to the most unobservant seaside visitor, but of the fishers little was really known, and there was a general and profound ignorance of the lives of the deep sea men, especially those wlio ranked as 13 FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME " fleeters," and whose whole existence was practi- cally spent on the Dogger and other banks, far from land and all the safety and comfort that it repre- sents, exposed to every peril and torment of a noto- rious sea.