"quite please to get your letter this morning it as been rough ever
since you left Seacombe it was a gale the night you went Back the
sea was all in over and knocking the boats about the road. I haven
been out sea sinsce it is still rough hear now it is blowing a gale
of wind I expect we shall get some witing and herring in the bay
when the weather get fine the sea hear is like the cliff now red.
Us aven catched nort nobody cant go to sea.
"TONY.
"I will write a letter soon.
"P.S. Tony just waked up. George is coming home, Tony mazed with
excitement and wishes you was here.
"MAM W."
So do I!
3
[Sidenote: _TONY OFF TO SEA_]
The evening before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and
miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home
to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before--his
own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at
Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he
had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as
a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo
agreed to run away together:
"Us was doin' nort noway wi' the fishing--nort 't all. Father, Granfer
that is, wer away to his drill wi' the Royal Naval Reserves. So Dick
Yeo an' me agreed to go off together. Where he went, I was to go tu,
an' where I went, he was to come. He had two pounds put away, in gold.
I only had half a crown, an' cuden't see me way to get no more nuther.
'Casn' thee ask thy maid for some?' Dick said. I was ashamed, like, but
I did.
"'What's thee want it for?" her asked.
"'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'
"'I an't got no money,' the maid says.
"'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin'
with her for nigh on two years.
"Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven
shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother--her cried tu'--an'
off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the
Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things.
Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel
nort.
"Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The
steward--what us urned against aboard ship--recommended us to a lodging
house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board
o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.
"Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a
room wi' fude [food] for two an' six a day--each, mind yu. Then us
looked into a big underground room wer there was a lot o' foreigners
gathered round a fire an' us didn' much like the looks o' that. So us
went straight down to the docks an' tried to ship together on several
sailing ships an' steamers. Some on 'em would on'y take me, an' some
were down to sail at a future date, like, what our money wouldn't last
out tu. _I_ cude ha' got a ship, 'cause I had me Naval Reserve ticket,
but nobody cuden't du wi' both on us--an' where one went t'other was to
go tu, by agreement.
[Sidenote: _AT THE BOARD O' TRADE_]
"Us went back to the lodging house, into a sort o' kitchen in a cellar,
where there was a 'Merican wi' a long white beard cooking, an' men
drunk spewing, an' men lying about asleep like logs. The 'Merican, his
beard looking so red as hell in the firelight, wer stirring some kind
o' stew. Yu shade ha' see'd the faaces what the glow o' they coals
shined on! An' the fude.... An' the tables an' plates.... I've a-gone
short many a time in my day, but I'd never ha' touched muck like they
offered to gie us there. Dick an' me crept up the staircase to bed wi'
empty bellies thic night.
"Soon a'ter we was to bed, Dick says to me: 'Can 'ee feel ort yer
Tony?'
"'No,' I says, an' whatever 'twas, I didn' feel ort o'it. But I see'd
'em crawling so thick as sea-lice on the wall in a southerly gale, an'
I tell 'ee, 'twas they things what took the heart out o' me more'n ort
else, aye! more'n the food an' being away from home. Us cuden turn out,
'cause the landlord had our bags an' us hadn' got no money to get 'em
back wi', nor nowhere else at all to go tu.
"Next morning, us went straight down to the docks again. Cuden' eat no
breakfast what they give'd us. Didn' know what to du. I only had
tuppence left, which wuden' ha' taken me home again, not if I'd been
willing to give up and go. Come to the last, us was forced to break our
agreement. I signed on as able seaman--_able_ seaman 'cause I was a
fishing chap an' had me Royal Naval Reserve ticket--aboard the
_Brooklands_, bound for Bombay. Penny o' me tuppence, I spent writing
home to tell mother. I cuden' stay aboard the ship (an' get summut to
eat) 'cause I had my gear to get an' a ship to find for Dick--an' we
still had hopes, like, o' getting a ship together. Howsbe-ever, us
cuden't, nohow. The writer aboard the _Brooklands_ wuden't advance
me no wages to get any gear. He told me the landlord to the lodging
house wude, him what had our bags a'ready.
"Then I thought o' the steward's note to the Board o' Trade officer,
an' us inquired our way to the Board o' Trade, where ther was a gert
crowd outside. 'Twas by that us know'd the place. A man told us as the
officer what the note was directed tu, wude appear outside the door an'
call. Sure 'nuff, he did--wi' gold buttons on his coat--an' called out:
'Six A.B.'s for the _Asia_'!
"'Who be that?' I asked.
"'That's he,' the man said. 'He'll come out again by'm-bye.'
"Us worked our way to the front--getting cussed horrible for our
pains--an' when Mr Gold-Buttons 'peared again, I give'd him the
steward's note. He luked at it--an' us. He cude offer me something an'
said as he'd du his best for me, but he cuden' hold out no promise for
Dick because, see, he hadn' got no Naval Reserve ticket.
[Sidenote: "_WER DICK GOES, I GOES_"]
"'Wher Dick goes, I goes,' I says, like that. With which the Board o'
Trade officer leaves us waiting there.
"After an hour or so, he com'd out an' called, as if he hadn' ha'
know'd us: 'Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo! Richard Yeo an' Anthony
Widger o' Seacombe!'
"'Yer we be, sir,' shouts I, thinking we was fixed up.
"'Be yu Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo? Come in.'
"Dick, he went in behind the officer, an' me behind Dick. 'Twer a
darkish passage, but as the door closed I luked, an' there, hidden
behind the door, sort o' flattened against the wall, who did I see but
Dick's mother; her'd come all that way by herself. I called to Dick.
"'What the bloody hell be doin' here?' said Dick swearing awful.
"'Don't thee swear at thy mother, Dick,' I says.
"'Dick!' her says, 'Dick, come home again. Your father's breakin' his
heart.'
"'Go to b----ry!' says Dick, swearing worse'n ever, 'cause _he_ was
wanting in his heart to be home again, yu see.
"I burst out crying, then and there, wi' seeing Dick's mother cry, an'
all o'it what we'd been drough. The Board o' Trade officer repeated as
he'd help me an' no doubt find me a ship, but Dick--his mother was
come'd for he.
"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' says I.
"Then Dick's mother, her says: 'Will 'ee come home then, Tony?'
"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' I says again. 'Twas fixed in me head, like.
"'Well,' her says, 'if Dick comes home, will yu come too?'
"I told her: 'I've a-signed on aboard the _Brooklands_, an' I'll hae to
tramp it 'cause I an't got no money.'
"'Well, if I pays _your_ fare too?'
"'Wer Dick goes, I'll go!' I says.
"So her got over Dick a bit, an' the Board o' Trade man told us to come
again, saying as he'd do anything for me, but Dick's mother was come'd
for he. An' Mrs Yeo asked us to go wi' her to a restaurant.... That
turned me more'n ort else 'cause us hadn' eaten the stuff to the
lodging house an' us _was_ hungry. An' her telegraphed home to Dick's
father for a trap to meet us to Totnes, for 'twas a Saturday an' there
wern't no trains no nearer home.
"Us went to the station, Dick swearing awful, an' in the end us come'd
to Totnes to find the trap.
"The trap was there at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting
up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found
'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then
he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a
slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him no more than a shilling. A
policeman come an' cleared us out o' it!
[Sidenote: _CARRIAGE PEOPLE_]
"Two or dree mile out o' Totnes the horse stops dead an' begins to go
back'ards. Us coaxed 'en, like, an' still he kept on stopping an'
walking back'ards. Dick an' me got out to walk to the halfway inn.
There the landlord wuden' come down for us. But he did when the trap
come'd up--us was carriage people than, yu see. We had drinks round,
an' us give'd flour an' water to the horse to make 'en go. But us hadn'
gone far when he stopped an' began to go back'ards again. Dick, he
started swearing. 'Let's walk on,' I says, to get 'en out o'it; an' so
us did for a mile or so. 'Twas dark, wi' a mizzling rain--an'
quiet--an' the trees like shadows. A proper logie night 'twas. Wude 'ee
believe me when I says I cude smell the flowers I cuden' see? Us was
glad when a tramp caught up wi' us.
"'Have 'ee see'd ort o' a horse an' trap wi' two persons in 'en?' I
askis.
"'Two mile back,' he says.
"'Us lef 'en only a mile back,' Dick says.
"'He've a-gone a mile back'ards then!' says I.
"And with the same, Dick laughs out loud, an' I laughs, an' the tramp,
he laughs.... 'Twas the first laugh us had since us left Seacombe, an'
I reckon it did us gude. Us went on better a'ter that. I covered the
tramp up wi' hay in a hay loft, advising of him not to smoke. I could
ha' slept tu; I wer heavy for a gude bed; but I saw lights in the
farmhouse winder, an' us wer so near home again.
"Well, we crept into Seacombe by the back (people was jest astir,
Sunday morning) going each our way from the churchyard, an' I listened
outside mother's door. Father was home again, an' they was to
breakfast. Her'd had my letter telling them as I'd a-shipped for
Bombay.
"'They'll Bumbay the beggar!' father was saying, only 'twasn't 'beggar'
as he did say.
"Then my sister Mary, cried out: 'Here's Tony!'
"'I know'd _he'd_ never go to Bumbay!' outs father so quick as ever.
"But they was so pleased as Punch to see Tony back, cas I ude see, if
they'd ha' cared to say so. I don' know 'xactly why I went off to
sea--summut inside driving of me--'twasn't only 'cause there wern't
nothing doin'--but I an't never been no more. An' thic Mam Widger
there'd hae summut to say about it now. Eh, Annie?"
4
[Sidenote: _THE SEA'S STAMP_]
It is an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and a sailorman's duty; yet
one thing always strikes me in talking to seafaring men, namely how
indelible the sea's stamp is; how indissolubly they are bound to the
sea--with sunken bonds like those which unite an old married
couple,--and also what outbursts of savage hatred they have against it.
Tony says that if he could earn fifteen shillings a week regularly on
land, he would give up the sea altogether. I very much doubt it. The
sea has him fast. He says further that nobody would go to sea unless he
were caught young and foolish, and that few would stay there if they
could get away. There are, among the older fishermen of Seacombe, some
who have worked well, and could still work, but prefer to stay ashore
and starve. Tony holds them excused. "Aye!" he says, "they've a-worked
hard in their day, an' they knows they ain't no for'arder. An' now
they'm weary o' it all, an' don't care; an' that's how I'll be some
day, if I lives--weary o'it, an' just where I was!"
But the sea has her followers, and will continue to have them, because
seafaring is the occupation in which health, strength and courage have
their greatest value; in which being a man most nearly suffices a man.
It is remarkable that Baudelaire, decadent Frenchman, apostle of the
artificial, who was violently home-sick when he went on a voyage,
should have expressed the relation of man and the sea--their enmity and
love--more subtly than any English poet.
Homme libre, toujours tu cheriras la mer;
La mer et ton miroir; tu contemples ton ame
Dans le deroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.
Tu te plais a plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
Vous etes tous les deux tenebreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sonde le fond de tes abimes,
O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous etes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
Et cependant voila des siecles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitie ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
O lutteurs eternels, o freres implacables!
[Sidenote: _SEA-LARGENESS_]
The sea is never mean. Strife and brotherhood with it give a largeness
to men which, like all deep qualities of the spirit, can be neither
specified nor defined; only felt, and seen in the outcome. The
Seacombe fishermen are more or less amphibious; ocean-going seamen
look down on them. They are petty in some small things, notably in
jealousy lest one man do more work, or make more money, than another:
to say a man is doing well is to throw out a slur against him.
Nevertheless in the larger, the essential things of life, their
sea-largeness nearly always shows itself. They are wonderfully
charitable, not merely with money. They carp at one another, but let a
man make a mess of things, and he is gently treated. I have never
heard Tony admit that any man--even one who had robbed him--had not
his very good points. Is a man a ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, an idler?
"Ah," they say, "his father rose he up like a gen'leman, an' that's
what comes o'it." In their dealings, they curiously combine generosity
and close-fistedness--close-fistedness in earning, and generosity in
spending and lending. A beachcomber, for simply laying a hand to a
rope, receives a pint of beer, or the price of it, and next moment the
fisherman who paid the money may be seen getting wet through and
spoiling his clothes in order to drag a farthing's worth of jetsam
from the surf. Tony fails to understand how a gen'leman can possibly
haggle over the hire of a boat. When he goes away himself, he pays
what is asked; regrets it afterwards, if at all; and comes home when
his money is done. "If a gen'leman," he says, "can't afford to pay the
rate, what du 'ee come on the beach to hire a boat for--an' try to
beat a fellow down? I reckon 'tis only a _sort o' gen'leman_ as does
that!"
Like most seafarers, the fishermen are fatalistic. "What's goin' to be,
will be, an' that's the way o'it." But they are not thoroughgoing
fatalists, inasmuch as disappointment quickly turns to resentment
against something handy to blame. If, for example, we catch no fish,
Tony will blame the tide, the hour, the weather, the boat, the sail,
the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate--anything
rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are
off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not
acquiesce in, fate itself or his luck.
Tony is a black pessimist as regards the present and to-morrow;
convinced that things are not, and cannot be, what they were; but as
regards the further future, the day after to-morrow, he is a resolute
optimist. "Never mind how bad things du look, summut or other'll sure
to turn up. It always du. I've a-proved it. I've a-see'd it scores o'
times." He can earn money by drifting for mackerel and herring, hooking
mackerel, seining for mackerel, sprats, flat-fish, mullet and bass,
bottom-line fishing for whiting, conger or pout, lobster and crab
potting, and prawning; by belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve; by
boat-hiring; by carpet-beating and cleaning up. I have even seen him
dragging a wheel chair. His boats and gear represent, I suppose, a
capital of near a hundred pounds. It would be hard if he earned
nothing. Yet he is certain that his earnings, year in and year out,
scarcely average fifteen shillings a week. "Yu wears yourself out wi'
it an' never gets much for'arder." The money, moreover, comes in
seasons and lump-sums; ten pounds for a catch perhaps, then nothing for
weeks. Mrs Widger must be, and is, a good hand at household management
and at putting money by. I doubt if Tony ever knows how much, or how
little, gold she has, stored away upstairs. Probably it is as well. He
is a generous man with money. He 'slats it about' when he has it.
[Sidenote: _OPEN BOATS_]
It has to be realised that these fishermen exercise very great skill
and alertness. To sail a small open boat in all weathers requires a
quicker hand and judgment than to navigate a seagoing ship. Seacombe
possesses no harbour, and therefore Seacombe men can use no really
seaworthy craft. "'Tis all very well," Tony says, "for people to buzz
about the North Sea men an' knit 'em all sorts o' woollen gear. They
North Sea men an' the Cornishmen wi' their big, decked harbour boats,
they _have_ got summut under their feet--somewhere they can get in
under, out the way o'it. They _can_ make themselves comfor'able, an
ride out a storm. But if it comes on to blow when we'm to sea in our
little open craft, we got to hard up an' get home along--if us can.
For the likes o' us, 'tis touch an' go wi' the sea!"
Tony knows. At places like Seacombe every boat, returning from sea,
must run ashore and be hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather,
over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture
twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in
length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling
over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to
no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not
sail close to the wind, and beating home against it is a long wearisome
job. Again, because the gear for night work in small craft must be as
simple as possible, such boats usually carry only a mizzen and a
dipping lug--the latter a large, very picturesque, but unhandy, sail
which has to be lowered or 'dipped' every time the boat tacks. Neither
comfort nor safety is provided by the three feet or so of decking, the
'cuddy' or 'cutty,' in the bows. To sleep there with one's head
underneath, is to have one's feet outside, and _vice versa_. In
rough broken seas the open beach drifter must be handled skilfully
indeed, if she is not to fill and sink.
I have watched one of them running home in a storm. The wind was
blowing a gale; the sea running high and broken. One error in steering,
one grip of the great white sea-horses, meant inevitable wreck. Every
moment or two the coastguard, who was near me with a telescope to his
eye, exclaimed, "She's down!" But no. She dodged the combers like a
hare before greyhounds, now steering east, now west, on the whole
towards home. It was with half her rudder gone that she ran ashore
after a splendid exhibition of skill and nerve, many times more
exciting than the manoeuvres of a yacht race. Were there not many
such feats of seamanship among fishermen, there would be more widows
and orphans.
[Sidenote: _BOATS SHEERING_]
Those are the craft, those the sort of men--two usually to a boat--that
put to sea an hour or two before sunset, ride at the nets through the
night, and return towards or after dawn. Anything but a moderate breeze
renders drifting impossible. In a calm, the two men are bound to row,
for hours perhaps, with heavy 16-20 ft. sweeps. Moreover, if the sea
makes, or a ground swell rises, the least mistake in beaching a boat
will cause it to sheer round, capsize, and wash about in the breakers
with the crew most probably beneath it. Yarns are told of arms and legs
appearing, of a horrible tortured face appearing, while the upturned
boat washed about in the undertow, and those ashore were powerless to
help. There is nothing the fishermen dread so much. One of them owns to
leaving the beach when he has seen a boat running in on a very rough
sea, so that he might not endure witnessing what he could not
prevent.--He peeped however.
These risks need considering, not in order to exaggerate the dangers of
drifting in open beach boats--in point of fact, accidents seldom do
happen,--but to show what skill is habitually exercised, what a touch
and go with the sea it is.
Sundown is the time for shooting nets. Eight to fourteen are carried
for mackerel, six to ten for herrings--the scantier the fish, the
greater the number of nets. At Seacombe they are commonly forty fathoms
in length along the headrope which connects them all, and five fathoms
deep. Stretching far away from the boat, as it drifts up and down
Channel with the tides, is a line, perhaps a thousand yards long, of
cork buoys. From these hang the lanyards[16] which support the headrope,
from the headrope hang perpendicularly the nets themselves. Judgment is
needed in shooting a fleet of nets. They may get foul of the bottom or
of another boat's fleet. When, on account of careless shooting or
tricks of the tide, the nets of several boats become entangled, there
is great confusion, and the cursing is loud.
[16] For herrings the lanyards may be of such a length that the
foot of the net almost touches the sea-bottom. For mackerel,
which is a surface and midwater fish, they are much shorter, so
that the headrope lies just below the top of the water.
Nets shot, the fishermen make fast the road for'ard; sup, smoke, sing,
creep under the cutty, and sleep with one eye open.
Sometimes they are too wet to sleep; often in the winter it is too
cold.
Afterwards, the laborious hauling in--one man at the headrope and the
other at the foot. Contrary to a very general impression, the fish are
not enclosed within the net, as in seining or in pictures of the
miraculous draught of fishes. They prod their snouts into the meshes,
and are caught by the gills. There may not be a score in a whole fleet
of nets, or they may come up like a glittering mat, beyond the strength
of two men to lift over the gunwale. Twenty-five thousand herring is
about the burthen of an open beach drifter. Are there more, nets must
be given away at sea, or buoyed up and left--or cut, broken, lost.
Small catches are picked out of the nets as they are hauled in, large
catches ashore.
[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN FLEECED_]
It is ashore that the fisherman comes off worst of all. Neither
educated nor commercialized, he is fleeced by the buyers. And if he
himself dispatches his haul to London.... Dick Yeo once went up to
Billingsgate and saw his own fish sold for about ten pounds. On his
return to Seacombe, he received three pounds odd, and a letter from the
salesman to say that there had been a sudden glut in the market.
Fishermen boat-owners have an independence of character which makes it
difficult for them to combine together effectively, as wage-servers do.
They act too faithfully on the adage that a bird in the hand is worth
two in the bush, and ten shillings on the beach a sovereign at
Billingsgate. So 'tis, when
There's little to earn and many to keep,
and no floating capital at a man's disposal.
In recent years, owing to bad prices and seasons and general lack of
encouragement, or even of fair opportunity, the number of sea-going
drifters at Seacombe has decreased by two-thirds. Much the same has
happened at other small fishing places along the coast. This
decline--so complacently acquiesced in by the powers that be--is of
national importance; for the little fisheries are the breeding ground
of the Navy. Nowadays fishermen put their sons to work on land.
"'Tain't wuth it," they say, "haulin' yer guts out night an' day, an'
gettin' no forrarder at the end o'it." Luckily for England the sea's
grip is a firm one, and many of the sons return to it.
When one hears Luscombe talk about the maddening trouble he has had in
teaching plough-tail or urban recruits to knot and splice a rope, or
watches, as I have, a couple of blue-jackets drive ashore in a small
boat because they couldn't hoist sail, then one comprehends better the
importance of the fisher-families whose work is made up of endurance,
exposure, nerve and skill; who play touch and go with the sea; and who
in the slack seasons have--unlike the ordinary workman--only too much
time to think for themselves. They are the backbone of the Navy.