by Gray, Gordon
All the while, the skipper is watching from the open wheelhouse window, eyes everywhere, to spot any danger for his crew such as a stray wire getting caught up, or a big sea rolling the ship as the crew manhandle the net over the side of the ship. He is also, of course, assessing the success or failure of the haul. Not that you would ever tell from his face. It seems to remain totally impassive regardless of the haul. The skippers know that one good haul does not guarantee another. The cod end knot is retied and the net checked for any tears, then it is manhandled back over the starboard side and shot away. The trawler then takes up another tow for three or four hours while the crew set to work and begin gutting the catch.
The fishing goes on twenty-four hours a day as long as the trawler is on the grounds. The crew carries on working regardless of the weather and the time as long as there are fish to be gutted. A series of good hauls can mean that the whole crew is on deck gutting and packing for anything up to eighteen or twenty hours at a stretch. Getting the fish below and packed on ice is all that matters.
Today is my first Sunday at sea. It is just the same as any other day, no special Sunday Service or a day off for the crew. Fishing goes on round the clock seven days a week, summer or winter, Easter or Christmas. What shore factory worker would work seven days a week for twenty-one days for just one and a half days off, all the year round? To make Sundays special at sea there is a normally a special menu on the trawlers.
The food is, so far, very good. It is also very important as it is on any ship. Food is what the crew look forward to when they are stuck out on a freezing deck gutting ice-cold wet fish for hours on end, so it has to be as good as the cook can make it with the supplies he is given. A typical day’s menu might be porridge, cereals, eggs, bacon, and bread for breakfast with pots of tea. Dinner (not lunch) would be soup, a roast or sausages, or fish with vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and cake or apple pie and custard. tea could be chops and tea cakes.
While there is still fresh meat then roasts are often the main meal. It varies according to what the weather will allow the cook to make and what is left that can be eaten. The meals are at set times. Breakfast is seven to eight, dinner at twelve noon and tea at six o’clock. There are two sittings during each time of half an hour each.
On Sundays, however, breakfast is the same, bacon, eggs, beans, fried bread and fried potatoes. Lunch is a full roast dinner of roast pork, stuffing, or beef with Yorkshire puddings, carrots, peas or cabbage and a steamed duff and custard for pudding. Sunday tea is normally ham and eggs with tinned fruit salad as a pudding. For most of the crew, Sunday lunch and tea is what they look forward to all week and as in all ships a good cook and good food are essential for good crew morale. Christmas is of course a bit more homely. The company puts on board Christmas puddings and turkeys as well as extra bonded stores and liquor. Trips are normally arranged so that the ship is either steaming for home or steaming off to the grounds or in port but a large number of trawlers are always on the grounds over the Christmas period.
‘Big Dave’, the cook, had originally gone to sea on oil tankers and had been trained as a cook in the BP Tanker Co. so was well used to time at sea, but mostly in 50,000-ton tankers rather than 700-ton Arctic trawlers. He admitted that there was a bit of a difference between the Persian Gulf and the fishing grounds off Iceland. While life on board the tankers was good and the ships were comfortable, he found that he was away from home for too long, so he left. Tankers could be at sea for months at a time as they were often diverted mid-voyage to other ports, having set off from the Gulf bound for the UK. After he left the tankers, he did a couple of trips on timber ships that brought timber to Europe from Siberia. He told me some of his tales from those trips, of the huge Russian rivers, the poverty of Siberia and of the friendliness of the people. He explained that in summer, when the ice has receded, the timber ships steam along the north coast of Russia, along the north-east Passage, and up the big rivers of the Ob and Yenisei to load timber deep in Siberia. They can only do it in summer as the sea is frozen solid for the rest of the year, but even so the Russian icebreakers are available in case the ice closes in and the ships get stuck. A change of wind in the early part of the season can bring the ice pack back onto the coast very quickly and ships can get caught out. These sounded like fantastic trips. Eventually though, as he was a Yorkshire boy, he found that the three weeks away on the Hull trawlers was as good a deal as he was going to get so he stuck with it.
Big Dave’s domain is the galley, which is situated towards the after end of the accommodation area. It is small, only eight feet by eight feet and no room for more than one person to work in it at a time; especially when Dave was trying to serve up a meal. When Dave has a full meal on the go it is as hot as the boiler room. There is no airconditioning here, just one small scuttle. The cooker is a large, black, oil-fired range, which appears to be virtually uncontrollable. Nothing that Dave does to the regulators seems to make any difference. The range has two ovens and hot plates on the top with a grid of large steel ‘fiddles’ over it. These ‘fiddles’ are movable bars that the cook can use to try and secure pots on the range in bad weather and stop them sliding right off. Dave tries to make fresh bread rolls at sea whenever he can. All the dough has to be hand-kneaded in bowls while he is kneeling on the food-store deck. The food store adjoins the galley at the after end and is slightly cooler than the galley itself. He kneels on the floor to do it as there are no worktops. The bread then has to be cooked with the oven door left slightly open, otherwise it is burned to a cinder on the outside and raw dough inside. When there are strong winds they can blow out the range fires or a sudden gust can blow back down the stove pipe which causes mayhem as the pans and hot plates are sent flying off across the galley. Every evening, when he has finished clearing up after the last meal, Dave cleans the galley deck. He does this by simply boiling a large bucket of water and, while it is still boiling, throws it across the deck and under the range. He then scrubs every inch he can and hopes that the boiling water has killed off anything nasty under the range and in the darker corners. The galley boy, Dave, whose main jobs seem to be washing up and peeling potatoes, has to squat on an upturned bucket and peel the potatoes by hand; either out on deck if it is fine or in the passage outside the galley as there is no room to do it in the galley itself. Dave reckons that he loses about 2 stone a trip because of the heat in the galley combined with the fact that he says he never feels like eating the food he has prepared. Although to me the food was good, Dave says it is poor quality when compared with the food he had been used to on the tankers. He ditched all the cabbages on day three of this trip as they were bad when they were put on board.
The crew eats their meals in the crew mess, a bare, square room immediately forward of the galley. There is a slatted wooden bench that runs round all four sides. A large, fiddled table fills the rest of the space. A tiny hatch opens through to the galley for the food to be passed through. There are no pictures on the bulkheads and just one small scuttle. The crew rarely spends much time here apart from eating their meals or having a tea break when fishing. There is always a huge pot of tea on the table and often some bread or biscuits left out by the cook.
The one thing that I cannot get used to on board is the tinned milk. The crew all seem to like it and pour loads into their big china pots of tea. I find that it has a strong taste that ruins the tea, so I drink black tea. Now, years later, just the smell of tinned milk takes me back to Lord Lovat.
Today, the skipper sends me down into the fish room to see what goes on down there. Here the fish are packed and stored after they have been caught, gutted and cleaned. The fish room occupies about one third of the total length of the ship and stretches right across the total breadth. When a fish has been gutted it is thrown up into the washer on the deck. This large tank is open at one end and a grill chute leads from there down to the fish room hatch. Sea water is continually pouring into the washer from a hose and as the ship rolls and pitches so the
fish are washed in the tank, then they roll onto the chute, the water drains off through the grills and the fish fall into the fish room. Working in the fish room is considered to be one of the best jobs, especially in winter as it is considerably warmer there than being out on deck.
When the ship leaves on a trip the fish room is filled with crushed ice from the ice factory. The fish room is arranged into pounds by fixed vertical posts and each pound can be made up at sea to form a number of shelves, each deep enough to carry a layer of fish and ice. Prime fish, such as cod, haddock and halibut, is laid on a layer of ice and a further layer of ice is put on top of the fish, then the next shelf is set up above that and so on. The lower-quality fish, such as red fish, are packed into the pounds without shelves. These are always sold off last and often go straight to the pet food factory or the fish-meal factory.
Two of the crew are given the job of stowing the catch. Charlie and Roy, who work for the mate, are responsible for the proper stowage and condition of the catch. As I climb down the ladder into the fish room I am given an axe by Roy and told to start smashing the ice that, although it came aboard in flakes, soon freezes into a solid mass. It takes hard work with a felling axe to break it back down to flakes that can be used on the shelves. The process of breaking ice for flakes also creates room for the next row of fish shelves to be set up and so it goes on until the hold is filled. Charlie and Roy are friendly guys and are happy for me to wield the axe while they stow the fish. It is clear that stowing the fish is not that easy as the layers of ice below and above the fish have to be of a certain depth for maximum preservation without crushing the fish or wasting too much space by having the ice too deep. All the time they were under pressure to keep up with the flow of fish coming down from the washer. They also have to check that the fish are properly cleaned as if the guts are accidentally left in the fish it will rot and cause fish nearby to rot too.
Most of the crewmen seem to have been given nicknames that are less than flattering. One spare hand called Wally was known as ‘Soft Wally’. The deckie learner, yet another Dave, was known as ‘Daft Maggot’ as he was a tubby lad and not the brightest. Dave the galley boy was called ‘Midget’ due to his lack of height. In spite of his small size he stood up for himself well amongst the rest of the crew. galley boys and deckie learners are prime targets for practical jokes on board and some jokes can take things a bit far. Dave the galley boy told me a story against himself when he was on his second trip the previous summer; they had gone into Akyureyri on the north coast of Iceland for repairs. It was a glorious sunny day, with sparkling, clear, blue waters. It was pretty hot for Iceland and the crew was all on deck enjoying the sunshine. They kidded Dave that he should go for a swim as the water looked really blue and inviting. He was reluctant but after some strong egging on and challenges about being a softy, he did. He dived off the ship into the harbour and by his own admission came straight back up out of the water like a torpedo. The water temperature would have been just above freezing.
On a sad note, the deckie learner, Dave, lost his life a few months later when the Hamling’s-owned stern trawler St Finbarr was lost after an explosion and major fire off the Grand Banks on Christmas Day. A total of twelve men died that day, either due to the fire and fumes or through falling into the sea as they were being rescued. Thirteen were rescued by the stern trawler Orsino, which was fishing nearby and saw the flames.
After a few days on the Bill Bailey, Working Man and Hari Kari grounds we steam to Kidney Bank. There is a BBC gale warning for south-east Iceland; we could be in for more bad weather. It is the Ebor Handicap at York today and a number of the crew place bets. This is done by a telegram to their bookies at home. However, no one won any money. Like a certainty of the winners at the races, the forecast gale does not materialise either but we did have a few showers of rain.
It is an interesting day for fishing. A haul of forty baskets is deemed not too good by the skipper. He then challenges the bosun to do better and goes to his day cabin for some sleep while the bosun takes the ship on the next trawl. The bosun catches eighty baskets on his haul, much to his joy and the crew’s amusement. When the skipper comes up he sets off to show that he can get a good haul too. He manages only forty baskets. He stomps off below again and leaves the mate to have a go and with orders to make sure he betters the bosun’s haul. The mate then caught 120 baskets, nearly three full bags, much to everyone’s amusement except the skipper’s and the bosun’s. It is the best haul of the trip. Three bags means that there is so much fish in the cod end that it cannot be hauled inboard in one go. With the mouth of the net safely on board, the rest of the net is left in the water full of fish; the cod end is roped off from the rest of the net then it is raised out and emptied. The cod end knot is retied then put back in the water and half of the remaining fish are brought into the cod end by hauling in on the net and the cod end filled again. This is repeated until the whole catch is emptied. Hence, three bags means three full cod ends. That night I am called out of the radio room by the mate to see the Ross Cleveland, which we are passing close by. She has stopped and is hauling her net on board about forty yards off our starboard beam. The crews stop working and wave to their pals on the other ship. The Ross Cleveland was lost with all hands, except one, in Isafjord, north-west Iceland, on 4 February 1968 after being overcome by ice in a storm and turning turtle.
The good weather continues through the trip and we are now taking this good weather for granted, with clear blue skies, calm seas and gulls around the ship. The fishing, however, is varied and we move from ground to ground in search of the ‘Fish Shops’ that can make a really good trip.
In the evenings I often sit in the radio room with George as I try to understand the system of ‘Skeds’ or ‘Scheduled Broadcasts’ to other trawlers and the office. George has spent most of his life on the trawlers. He explains patiently how the trawlers send their messages to the owners in Hull. If the ship is north of Wick then the ship sends a Morse message direct to Wick Radio Station in the north of Scotland. Wick then send a ‘wire’, a form of telegram, to the owners. If the ship is south of Wick then it uses coastal radio stations at Stonehaven, Cullercoats or Humber Radio Station.
On the grounds, one of the trawlers in the company is nominated as the ‘Control Ship. It is their sparks’ responsibility to contact all the company ships on the grounds and collate a ‘sked’ twice a day telling the company that all the trawlers are OK and where they are, what they are doing, i.e. fishing, steaming, moving grounds, dodging bad weather, etc. This is done for all the side-winders at Iceland. The trawlers at Greenland or on the Grand Banks have their own control ship and their messages are sent via Halifax, Nova Scotia or Portishead if they are in the Atlantic. The freezer trawlers have their own sked systems. Portishead Radio Station is also used by the vessels at Greenland as it is more powerful than Wick. However, Portishead is also the ‘Empire Radio Station’ and handles radio traffic from ships all over the Empire so it is busier and costs more.
One evening, we are sitting chatting in the radio room and George is listening to various Morse messages that are being transmitted by Wick Radio when the bosun who was on watch calls for us to go out to see a sunset. The sun slowly sinks into the sea leaving a black sea, a warm red sky and high clouds tinged with pink against a blue sky. The sunset lingers for hours, not finally fading until after midnight. During that time we watch the Notts Forest, a Grimsby trawler, come up over the horizon from the south, pass us and vanish away to the north. It was a very calm, peaceful night, and the Atlantic rolls gently by. The many hundreds of stars reminded me that it was across these same waters that Eric the Red led the Vikings across the Atlantic using the same stars to set up the Iceland and later the Greenland, settlements.
The trawl deck is a dangerous place and one that the skipper would only let me onto when he deemed it was safe. The heavy steel wires, or trawl warps, that hold the net are under fantastic tension when we are fishing. If the net snags on
an underwater obstacle, which happens fairly often then these warps can snap. When that happens they flick back across the deck at lightning speed as the huge tensions are released. Anyone in their way has no time to escape and men have been cut in half before they even know what is happening. Sometimes a snapped warp or wire will flick and catch a man’s overall or waterproof and carry him over the side. When hauling and shooting the deck is dangerous as a number of heavy wires are being let out, or held fast, as the gear is released and set. As the ship rolls across the wind and sea to allow the men to haul the net up to the ship’s side, the sea can pull the net back into the sea and if hands get caught in the net then their owner will follow them over the side. There are numerous stories of trawlermen who have been washed over the side by one wave and washed back on board and dumped unceremoniously on the deck by the next wave. There are, unfortunately, stories of those who were washed over and did not get back. However, being injured by the equipment itself is the main danger. The gallows with the huge trawl doors which have to be handled during hauling and shooting, and with the main trawl warp running through them, is a favourite place to lose a finger or hand as the ton of solid timber and steel bangs up against the steel gallows inches from thick steel wire warps under tension. When the crew are gutting, the deck is lethally slippery with fish scales, offal and seawater. The crew use razor sharp knives to gut the fish and then throw the fish up into the washer. A slip here, a trip there, a rogue wave washing aboard and you can easily find yourself being gutted. The deep-sea trawling industry has always been the most dangerous occupation, way ahead of coal mining, in terms of injuries and deaths on the job. This is something that has never been recognized in the price of fish.
