Parrett Flatner (Flattie)
The river Parrett flatners were the largest of the generic Somerset Levels flatners: the flat-bottomed double-ended vessels, very basic in design and build. However, unlike some of the flatners used inland upon the Somerset Levels, these were a bit more subtlety built. There’s a rockering in the flat bottom from bow to stern as well as a camber across the bottom. The reason behind this was two-fold: firstly to improve the stability of the vessel in the more exposed and choppy seas of the lower river and sheltered parts of the Bay and, secondly, to help prevent the boat sticking to the mud of the riverbank. A boat so built, when rocked by a man moving from front to back in the boat, will come unstuck in all but the thickest gluelike mud.
The bottom boards were non-edged joined and several methods were used to bend the planks. Some covered them with wet sacks and then loaded them up with heavy weights whilst others simply weighted them with 40-gallon drums filled with water or sacks of stones and left them for long periods of up to a year before carrying on work. That obviously necessitated some advance planning. Once the bottom had been shaped and cut, the sides were fitted at an angle of about 30 degrees, again at first a single wide strake of elm, scarfed just abaft of amidships until each side was built up in the clinker fashion.
The main difference to the inland flatners is the rig. The so-called classic river flatner, as well as having two pairs of thole pins for rowing and a central unattached box or thwarts to sit on, had a short mast and was rigged with a single spritsail and often a small jib. However, as outboard motors developed, many were adapted for this mode of propulsion, with a small wooden bracket being added or, in some cases, the back end being cut off and a transom built in.
To counteract the rig a daggerboard was also fitted. The rig tended only to be used when sailing out of the river for the lower part is full of bends making sailing difficult. Square-shafted oars, rounded towards the loom, were used most of the time with thole pins instead of rollocks, the former so that if the oarsman caught his oar on the riverbank the thole pin broke and not the oar.
The river Parrett was renowned for its salmon, eels and elvers. Flatners were used to ‘pitch’ for salmon, a method of fishing, although not practised very much, which was similar although somewhat smaller to the stop-net. In this case the fishermen would moor two flatners alongside each other off the rocks with anchors bow and stern so that the boats lay across the stream. The net was fixed to a V-shaped affair, about 20 feet across the mouth on 15-foot poles. This was lowered into the water so that the bag of the net trailed beneath both boats and it was held down by the fisherman who stood in the second boat even though the net was balanced against the gunwale of the first boat. The presence of a fish would be felt through ‘feeling string’ which were attached to parts of the net.
At other times dip nets were also used from a flatner to catch salmon as they swam upriver with the incoming tide on the Parrett. Each net was licensed and the licence number had to be displayed upon the net. The fisherman rowed with the tide and noted the spot where the fish came up to clear his gills. The Parrett was, still is, a very muddy river, and the salmon couldn’t travel more than about 25 yards without clearing. Having noted the spot, he let his oars go to be caught in the thole pins, ran to the bows of his flatner, and dipped the fish next time it appeared.
The traditional pattern of dip net was like a large Y with a six-foot headline (the legal maximum) and a long handle. A more conventional net superseded these cumbersome nets, rather like an overgrown butterfly net, some time after 1945. They only survived that long as Somerset fishermen were, by nature, very conservative. ‘If ’twas good enough for father, ’tis good enough for me’ was their attitude, similar to that of many other fishing communities.
Eels were caught in fyke nets, in withy or wire traps, by spearing and by an unusual method called ‘clodding’, sometimes known as ‘ray-balling’. Elvers – deemed a delicacy at Easter time when they were fried with bacon fat and the odd rasher – were caught in an elver net, a sort of scoop net. Although none really necessitated the the use of a flatner, all are worthy of a simple mention.
Sources: 8
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