Article from SW Soundings No.50 (Feb 2001)

TONY PAWLYN - (Vice Chairman): A Profile.

Where to begin? And where to stop? Perhaps on this occasion I can confine myself to my first going to sea...

A Newlyn boy born and bred, by local standards I had the benefits of a good education, but failed to understand its purpose - or perhaps the educators failed to explain their purpose. Whichever, I always assumed that any career I chose to follow would be closely tied to the sea, but the concept of working for a living did not cloud my thinking. I left school in 1959 with four disparate 'O' Level passes, and no serious thoughts as to what I might do, though I had a hankering to try trawling out of Newlyn. Since I was thirteen I had been a keen members of the Penzance unit of the Sea Cadet Corps - TS. Grenville - making good progress through the ranks to become a Cadet Petty Officer Instructor.

On leaving school I asked my father to approach Mr. William Stevenson to see if he would take me on as a learner deckie. Although he somewhat doubted my motivation and staying power, Mr. Stevenson offered me a trial period in the firm's loft. The norm was for learners to spend six months or more in the loft, under two senior skilled fishermen - one an ex-skipper. Here we learnt the basic skills of netting, net mending, rope and wire splicing, and the make up of different items of trawling gear - ground ropes; head ropes; bridles; wings, squares, bellies and baitings, and cod-ends. The loft was an evocative place, ill lit, with a strong smell of stockholm tar and hemp, and from the upper bay window we overlooked the harbour and saw the trawlers come in to land, or putting to sea. The fishing routine then followed by the near water trawlers out of Newlyn, weather and markets permitting, was five/six days/nights at sea fishing, one day in landing and settling up the voyage, one night ashore, and back to sea the following day.

In the loft we boys worked six and a half days a week for 15 shillings (I think). For me it was all very interesting and physical work, with the highlights being the replenishment of the different trawlers between trips - Trevessa, Roseland, Trewarveneth, W & S, Resurgam, William Stevenson, St. Clair - being just some of the contemporary fleet. Replenishment meant loading flatbed lorries with a whole variety of gear, from a list sent up by the mate. Driving down to the quay and transferring the gear to the different boats. At high tide this was simple enough, but at low tide quite heavy gear had to be lowered some fifteen feet from quay to decks. Each boy quickly learnt that you did not throw a carton of England's Glory matches down onto the deck.

I must have had some aptitude and ability, because at the end of three months I was offered a berth on the St. Clair, under Capt. Small. One or two others went to sea from the loft at that time, but I can only recall one of the 'George's,' from Sennen. At the Grimsby Stores (Grimsby Coal, Salt, & Tanning Co.) we were each given a basic outfit of gear, paid for by Stevensons' - Oilskin frock; Sea boots; Sou-wester; Norwegian roll-neck pullover; mattress and pillow. By tradition you never gave a fisherman a knife, so we each had to pay 1d. for our gutting knives.

The St. Clair was a 90 foot ex Admiralty MFV, the first of this class acquired by Stevensons, and then the largest vessel in their fleet. Along with the usual ship to shore radio, Radio Direction Finding [DRF], Echo-sounder, and basic magnetic compass, she was fitted with a new Decca Navigator, using the three clock system - Red, Green, and Purple. A side-trawler, that is working otter trawl gear from either side of the vessel as required, the St. Clair, sported two pairs of 'square-headed' gallows fore and aft, as opposed to the normal bent arch of 6"x 6" 'H' beam. She also had a large wheelhouse, with skipper's day-berth behind, and a crews' mess-room on deck abaft the galley, all in one deckhouse. In all the other trawlers your ate below in the aft cabin. We also had a flushing water closet, while on all the other boats the crew had to make do with 'bucket and chuck it' facilities.

The testing period on the trawlers was your first few days at sea. With a lively motion in a seaway, and heady concoction of smells below decks, seasickness usually laid low down even the hardiest youths. Perhaps I was fortunate, I was certainly queasy for a couple of days, but was not actually seasick, and on the third day out I was able to sit through a whole meal without seeking fresh air on deck!

Capt. Small (nicknamed 'Pistols' - though I never did find out why) was a big man, 17 - 18 stone, and as a learner deckie I was his 'go-for.' After years of wearing sea-boots day in and day out, he suffered from bad legs. A problem not improved by his habit of consuming a bottle of whisky each night when on shore. As I recall we then had a crew of eight - Harry Small, skipper; Don Spicer, mate; Dick Mitchell, deck hand; Archie Swan, engineer; another deckie and the cook/steward whose names I can't recall, with myself and the other boy 'George,'

I was on the skipper's watch, and worked alongside Dick Mitchell when on the fore deck. After steaming off to the fishing grounds, anything up to 10 or 12 hours (during which all spare hands got in as much rest as they could), the normal fishing routine commenced. After shooting away the gear (starboard trawl first) there was a three-four hour drag, depending on conditions and the grounds we were working. One watch on deck, one below. The engineer and cook did not work watches, but were expected to help out on deck when we were busy, or the catch heavy. At the end of the first drag, 'knock out' the towing shackle, and 'haul the trawl.' While hauling the watch below was called on deck. Hauling took about 15 to 20 minutes. When the trawl was alongside, and the otter boards (doors) secured, the heavy foot-rope was worked onto the deck and the belly of the trawl clawed inboard by hand, hanging on during the up-roll, and scrabbling in net hand over hand during the down-roll. During this process, if the catch was good, the cod-end would float to the surface some way off buoyed up by the expanded swim-bladders of the fish. After another ten or fifteen minutes the cod-end would be alongside, and after passing a wire becket around the net, the cod-end was hoisted aboard streaming water and swinging dangerously with this mass of fish acting as a pendulum. It was the mate's job to duck in under the cod-end and release the special slip-knot, lurching back as the catch cascaded onto the deck. While hauling the trawl its condition was constantly assessed, and any minor repairs were carried out by the senior deckies while the mate retied the cod-end knot. This was his sole responsibility, and caused much anxiety, because there was no living down the shame of finding the cod-end knot undone at the end of a four hour trawl.
If the trawl was relatively undamaged, the same side of gear was shot away again, and the warps paid out until the fishing depth was reached, and the warps brought into the towing block on the stern quarter. If the trawl had suffered major damage during the last drag, then it was 'change sides.' the two steel warps were rove to port, and the port trawl shackled on and shot away. This perhaps took another 20 minutes to half an hour. Once the trawl was fishing the time to the next haul commenced, but no one left the deck until the catch was gutted, washed, and sorted, and iced down in the fish pounds below in the fish room. And, if the damage to the hauled trawl was extensive all hands then pitched in to the effect the necessary repairs.

Depending on the catch and the weather clearing away the fish might take from fifteen minutes to several hours. With the decks cleared the watch below now made the best of their time until the next haul. This might be as much as three hours, but was too often only an hour or less. The watch on deck steered the boat, and watched the trawl, checking the angle of spread of the warps aft (the only direct indication that the mouth of the trawl was open and the gear fishing), and carrying out minor running repairs. Four hours on and the whole process was repeated. Baring accidents the normal pattern of work was about five or six hours on deck, with two or three hours below. But accidents would often disrupt this pattern.

Trawling was a cut-throat business with intense rivalry between the different skippers, and the waters of the south western approaches are littered with wrecks. Many of these are strewn across the prime fishing grounds, and a knowledge of their location is essential. Most skippers kept a wreck-book, and Harry Small was no exception, except that his had recently been stolen. Normally the Decca Navigator was sufficiently accurate to enable the skipper to lay a course reasonably close to a wreck. But without his wreck-book Harry Small was in trouble, and by association so were we! Now you might say why trawl close to a wreck? Why not give it a wide berth? And the answer is that a close encounter with a near miss of a wreck could give a fine catch of 'rounds.' That is large demersal fish such as Ling; Conger; and Pollack, which inhabited these wrecks, retreating into their confines when threatened, while feeding close by when not. But a close encounter involving direct contact was dangerous to say the least, and usually resulted in extensive damage to the trawl, if not it's entire loss.

Unfortunately we had quite a few close encounters of this latter kind during this period, as skipper Small refreshed his knowledge of wreck locations.

For the watch on deck the first indication of a 'come-fast' was the screech from the brake drums on the trawl-winch, as warp was stripped off under the sudden strain. Along the decks the warps would be thrumming, off the quarter they would run away from the towing-block almost in parallel. 'Knock-out,' and 'call the hands.' were the orders, though the watch below rarely needed to be called, having by instinct been alerted by the change of engine noises, and the stubbed movement of the boat. Now tethered to the bottom by the trawl warps, the natural roll of the trawler was cut short, and as any slack in the warps was hauled in the trawler gradually assumed a position nearly directly over the wreck. Trawl warps now quivering with tension, ran near vertically from the gallows blocks into the sea below. This was the most dangerous time. Either warp could part at any time, whip-lashing across the decks to maim or kill a hand caught in its path. Now listing heavily under the strain on the warps, with the windward deck hauled down nearly to sea level, there was a constant danger of seas rolling aboard, and an ever present threat of total capsize. While in my short time trawling no local trawler capsized under these circumstances, on several occasions it was quite a close run thing, and equally fortunately is was quite rare for either of the warps to actually part on the deck.

Eventually something gives way, the warps go slack, and the vessel staggers upright again to resume her natural motion. With some trepidation the warps were recovered to see how much of the fishing gear remained. Occasionally doors and all were lost, but more frequently only the trawl net was torn to a greater or lesser degree. Either way the watch below was cut short. Hopefully there were some fish in the cod-end, and inevitably it was a question of 'change sides' before shooting away the trawl again. Watches were not kept by the clock, only by the length of a drag. And the early termination of a drag entailed a change of watch irrespective of its duration.

With such a working regime clock watching of any kind brought down a skipper's wrath, and some were known to have thrown a crewman's watch overboard if detected in bringing one aboard.

After four or five days and nights of this unrelenting labour, at the end of a haul the skipper would order the gear stowed, and the run back to harbour commenced. One particular habit I found frustrating as a young man, was that of going to sea, and coming ashore in your best clothes! There was nowhere on board fit to stow good gear, and there were no facilities for cleaning up to go ashore. I would have preferred going ashore in my rough gear, and having a good bath and shave - yes in those days I was clean shaven. However, this was not the way of trawlermen. So, somewhere off Lamorna, five miles from home, the boat would be stopped and hove too. Buckets of hot water would be procured from the cook, and on the side deck all hands would wash and shave to the best of their ability, before donning their best suits for the final run into Newlyn. Mooring up a boat in your best suit is not ideal at the best of times, but there it was a long established and defended tradition.

We would usually arrive at Newlyn after five in the evening, any earlier and there was hell to pay with the owners, even in rough weather. And many a skipper and crew had been ordered to sea again not to return until after five! For all that we were technically self-employed share fishermen. That night the die-hards would have a run ashore on 'tick', as we were not paid until after our catch had been landed and sold on the following morning. Most turned in early, knowing that they had to be on board for landing just after five in the morning. At Newlyn each crew landed their own catch, with the occasional lumper hired to help if the catch were heavy, and landing at low water. The fish were swung up by hand in baskets to be caught on lorries on the quay and tipped into 'kits' to be carried to the market. This process involved a free swinging gaff, with guys limiting its arc of travel from vertically over the fish-room hatch, to a point just outboard of the side on which the fish were being landed. A gin block was suspended from the swing-gaff, with a single part runner leading down to a pair of hooks on short strops over the fish-room hatch. On the other end was secured a wood spreader about two or three feet long. Set so as to be nearly in the jaws of the gin block when the strop hooks reached the floor of the fish-room. Two long lengths of light whip line fell from each end of the spreader. Two hands tailed on to these ends, while another stood by the fish-room hatch.

The landing sequence began with the hatch man guiding the free runner down into the fish-room, where the mate supervised the breaking out of the fish from the ice pounds. The strop hooks were hooked onto the handles of a basket full of fish, and the hatch man signalled the two haulers to raise the basket up to his waist height. At this point there was a distinct pause while the haulers gathered themselves, and the hatch man prepared to swing the basket away from the quay. His was a fine judgement, requiring sufficient momentum to be imparted to enable the basket to reach the catcher, without knocking him off his feet. However it was not a straightforward swing. As the hatch man swung the basket the two haulers whipped down on the runner, adding impetus to the swing, then pausing as the basket neared the outward point of its first swing and then whipping again as it came back. With judgement and timing, the basket now swung towards the quay, the free gaff now swinging with it until the basket now swung firmly into the hands of the catcher - right into his 'bread basket.' if the timing was right. The haulers below immediately let go of the whips while the catcher simultaneously tipped the contents of the basket into the appropriate kit. Letting the empty basket swing free again, it now had just sufficient weight to drop towards the hatch man, who would guide in down through the hatch to complete the sequence. With a natural rhythm quickly gained, about four, three-quarter hundredweight baskets, of fish could be swung up every minute, and landing a catch might take a couple of hours.

On the Fish Market at Newlyn catches were sold in the order that the boats came into port, and were sold to the highest bidder by auction. On completion of each sale, the office would make up each boat's voyage accounts, and after deduction of running costs, stores, gear and fuel, a net sum was handed over to the skipper to share among his crew.

So why did I do it, and was it worth it. Those long hours, danger and discomfort. Well, as boy I was on a half share, that is half a man's share, which was then 5% of the net catch. And in 1959 my 2 ½ % rarely came to less than £20 a week. Which gave a full deck hand around £40 a week, the cook, engineer and mate, around £50 each, and the skipper around £60 or £70.

After a couple of months I came ashore again, not to give up trawling, but because I had been awarded a place in a party of 12 Sea Cadets, to represent the UK at a Commonwealth Sea Cadet Corps Training Camp in New Zealand - but that and my subsequent time at sea is another story.

To be continued...

By Tony Pawlyn