Sunday, April 16, 2006

Another Fishy Business

Years ago in Post Magazine - an insurance paper taken by me mainly for the jobs, I read the story of a trawler called the 'Girl Pat'. I could never thereafter find any reference to it, the internet not being invented. I have just found the following BBC link.
Girl Pat With some research and a script this could be a good film.
Now I must see if I can find a copy of the book by the mutinous captain George Orsborne.

3 comments:

Sir Compton Valence said...

I worked in Grimsby for a while and covered fishing for the local paper. There were all sorts of funny goings-on with trawlers, and I am pretty sure that Naval Intelligence operated (though not in my time) from the fish docks giving the skippers cameras to photograph Russian ships in the White Sea and Arctic Ocean. They were interested in the designs of the radio masts and superstructures. This certainly happened in Hull, and I seem to remember that there was some question over whether the skipper of the Gaul, which sank with all hands and has been the subject of various inquires and documentaries, was in possession of a naval box brownie.

When I worked in GY, the far water fleet had packed up because of the second Cod War but most of the fish the port landed came from Icelandic boats. The Icelanders were splendid and used to invite me on board for coffees and lovely food when I had to do stories on them. They had a nice little side line in buying all the white goods they could lay their hands on in Currys and shipping them back in the empty hold to sell at huge profits to Reykjavik housewives.

With a lot of the older boats, especially the steam trawlers of 70 od 80 years ago, seaworthiness was honoured in the breach rather then the observance. They very often sank because the bottoms simply dropped out of them. They men responsible for getting trawlers provisioned and ready for sea and (were) called shipshusbands. Interesting phrase.

MacDuff said...

You certainly get around! Does GY = Great Yarmouth? I envy you the fish suppers that must have been available to you and I hope you didnt waste the opportunity. Lister on Red Dwarf once said 'Weve less choice than in a Welsh fish & chip shop' - he was right, they only eat cod.
What you say makes Trawlers sound even more interesting.

Sir Compton Valence said...

GY is Grimsby. Not sure what Yarmouth is. Yes, fish was good. Pretty much whatever you wanted, fresh and very, very cheap. Yum. A seiner, incidentally, is a trawler which drops miles of nets, like a wall of death for fish. Not like a stern trawler which shoots a net resembling a big sock and drags it along behind. Redmond O'Hanlon did a very good book a year or so about deepsea fishing called Trawler. It's more to do with Scottish fishing but is quite entertaining. Probably v cheap on Amazon.