From the brush of David Bray
This article, and others, follow a series which Sea Breezes magazine is publishing, featuring David’s paintings, and the stories behind them.
Regular readers of this column will be familiar with the fact that many of the subjects portrayed have some link to my past, and this one is no exception.
When I was a kid we lived in Great Yarmouth, only about 200 yards from the fishwharf. In those days, I spent much of my spare time mooching around on the quaysides looking at the ships. In those days, there was public access to all of the riverfront quays. Today there is virtually no public access to any of the quays or the new outer harbour.
An annual event in the 1950s was the herring fishery. Dozens of wooden-hulled drifters, mostly Scots, landed huge quantities of herring which were gutted on the quayside by Scottish fisher-ladies, and packed in salt in barrels. Smoked as kippers and bloaters, or just plain fresh, herring were a staple in those times. Herring spawned during October and November in this area, and the river was very busy. But what I was observing was the end of an era. The herring fisheries collapsed in about 1965. Since then, only relatively small quantities of “longshores” are landed by small boats. The peak year was 1913 when over 1,000 boats would crowd Yarmouth harbour, and a similar number at Lowestoft, eight miles up the coast.
Much has been written about the herring industry, and I need not repeat it here, but one publication deserves attention.
In around 1977 I attended a weekend workshop seminar on the herring fishing industry in East Anglia. The course was held at Belstead House near Ipswich. One of the expert speakers was Ted Frost, who talked at length on the building of a steam drifter. Ted was a shipwright by trade and served his apprenticeship at Chambers yard on Lake Lothing, Lowestoft. This yard built many wooden sailing and steam drifters and trawlers, and was responsible for the standard design of steam drifter built for the Navy during the war.
Ted had produced a very comprehensive set of magnificent pencil drawings illustrating every stage of the construction of the steam drifter “Formidable” LT100, which was built in 1917. During his apprenticeship and later, Ted worked on every aspect of the building of these vessels. In 1985, his drawings and constructional descriptions were published by Terence Dalton in “From Tree to Sea”. None of the wooden steam drifters have survived in preservation, so Ted’s book is an invaluable record of this bit of maritime history. Ted was a true gentleman and I was honoured to call him a friend, and I treasure my copy of “From Tree to Sea” signed by him. We will not see his like again.
This winter I dug out my copy of “From Tree to Sea” with the idea of building a model of “Formidable”. It was an interesting project and took me about three months. I had previously built a model of the Lowestoft sailing trawler “Master Hand”, representing the final development of the sailing fishing vessel, while “Formidable” marks the beginning of a new era. However, “Formidable” was built in 1917, while “Master Hand” didn’t appear until 1920.
Drift net fishing was grindingly hard work for the eight or nine crew. Between one and two miles of drift nets are laid across the tide. A favourite fishing ground was the Smiths Knoll, about 10 miles off Yarmouth. It could take ten or twelve hours to haul the nets and stow the catch. Then the boat steams to port, Lowestoft or Yarmouth, to offload onto the quayside, the catch being sold in the market. Sometimes, however, it happened that a lot of boats have all had a good haul, so although a good catch has been taken, the price is low. Crew were always paid on a share system.
I have shown “Formidable” entering Lowestoft in a NE gale. With a strong cross tide the narrow entrance between the piers can be challenging. After all night hauling the nets, the crew will now have to land the catch before anybody gets paid.
“Formidable” was known as “Fidget” locally. She fished UK waters until the outbreak of war in 1939 when she was commandeered for service in the minesweeping fleet. She was sent to Dunkirk in 1940 and rescued several hundred tommies from the beaches. After the war she was sold to Norway.
I remember watching the last wooden-hulled steam drifter, the “Wydale”, leaving Yarmouth in October 1961. The huge industry that was herring fishing is now but a memory. Herring stocks are miniscule compared to the multitudes of the “silver darlings” that fed the world very cheaply prior to the First War. Nevertheless, longshore-caught herring are often found in the fishmongers locally during October and November, and there is nothing I like more than a brace of fried herring, fresh crusty bread and a big cup of tea!