Mother Care

Mother Care

          There was a Spartan youth who complained to his mother that his sword was too short.

          'You can lengthen it by taking a step towards the enemy' she retorted.

          That could have been my mother speaking though I think she was really quite fond of me. On my sixteenth birthday she decided it was time I learned more about the outside world. I needed to toughen up. Mother had influence with the right sort of people; among her relatives was a ship-owning uncle. She made arrangements.  One day towards the end of Trinity Term my housemaster summoned me to his study.

          'David, I have a letter from your mother.'  His eyebrows were raised.  'Did you know you were going to sea?'

          'To sea, Sir!'

          'Yes, my boy!  For a week or two! To sea!'

          'A cruise on a boat I expect.'

          I knew a thing or two about boats having spent much time on the river with the school rowing club.

          'You don't cruise on a boat.  It's called a ship.'

          My housemaster was ex-Royal Navy.  He glanced again at mother's handwriting.

          'From what it says in this letter it won't be a pleasure cruise exactly.'  He looked at me questioningly but I had no idea what he was talking about.

          'It's a fishing trip',  he said.

          For a moment I saw a happy image of myself with a rod and line but the vision quickly faded.

          'What sort of fishing?'  I asked.  He gave a chuckle and continued.

          'Deep sea fishing! You are to report to the M.V. Lady Julian at Lowestoft next Monday at 0500 hours.'

          'M.V., Sir?'

          'Motor vessel!  She'll be a trawler I expect.  A little ship!'

          'How little?'

          'It depends.  Perhaps a hundred and thirty foot long, more or less.'

          He suddenly looked wistful. 'I commanded a trawler once. An armed trawler!'

          Then he paused thoughtfully.

          'If you go you will lose a few days of school at the end of term but, on the condition you write me an essay, entitled Life on a Fishing Trawler, to be on my desk the very first day of Summer Term, I shall recommend to the Headmaster that you be allowed to go early.'

          'Thank you, Sir!' I said without meaning it.  I had had plans for the coming week: rugby plans, cricketing plans… but I was going to be a sailor on a ship. There might be some kudos in this.

          'OK',  he said 'You can go.  Would you like some advice?'

          'Please.'

          'Keep smiling!'

          Next Monday mother drove her posh car straight onto the dock among fishmonger vans, chandlers' carts and tradesmen's vehicles of all sorts. There were lots of people on bicycles. She summoned assistance by waving a bank note of large denomination at a man wearing a dirty white apron who immediately pointed out the Lady Julian.

          'That's it all right', said mother, screwing her eyes to pick out the lettering 'GY1359!  You have your train ticket?'  She had a tendency to think of everything.

          'I shall wait here until I see you go aboard.  Don't forget your kit.'

          It was warm in the car.  Clutching the bag of sea-going gear (courtesy of Great-Uncle) I was halfway out when the East wind, howling round a corner of the wharf, snatched the heavy door wide open and sent in a blast of cold North Sea air.  Mother became solicitous.

          'There's a windproof in your luggage', she said.

          I gave her the start-of-term kiss and made my way to what at first sight appeared to be a vessel fit only for the breaker's yard.  The deck was a wet tangle of ropes, steel cables, wooden boards, buckets, floats, wheels and strange machinery that looked ready to hurt you horribly.  Something like mole traps on a bigger scale. A big, rubber mat plus nets and scraps of chain hung from one short mast. A wooden ladder, multicoloured by paint spills, was propped against the other.  What appeared to be barn doors, much battered, hung on steel gallows mounted fore and aft.  The Lady Julian appeared to be a rusty, worn out thing, washed up by the sea and left to rot.

          There was a man on deck mending a net.  He wore a cap comforter through which protruded a lock of black hair.  Plimsolls, canvas trousers and a dirty pullover completed his gear.  He smoked a pipe.

          'Excuse me!',  I ventured, 'Is the Captain available?'

          'Thet he hint',  said the sailor.

          This was the first intimation of a potential language problem.  I took the phrase to be a negative.

          'He hint here?'  I said, 'But I have to report to him.'

          He gave me a searching look.

          'He's acrorst the rud.  Dew yew come alonga me.'

          Once I get the rhythm, I pick up languages fast.  From that moment on only the technical phrases gave me any bother.

          'I'm Eli Murrin, bos'n,' he said as he escorted me across the road, 'Are you the new deck-hand?'

          'David Jones. I don't think I'm a deck hand.'

          'You don't look like one.'

          His face was stubbled and deeply creased.

          'Have you got a middle name?'

          'John!'

          'Call yourself Johnny Jones,' he said, 'Davy Jones is an unlucky name on a ship.'

          Evidently sailors were superstitious.  I decided to adopt the alias.  Half an hour in Lowestoft and already I was speaking in a foreign tongue under a pseudonym.  It was not to be my last change of moniker on that trip either.

          'Eli Murrin-Bosun is an unusual name', I remember thinking as he led me round numerous tubs of fish to a shed busy with buyers, sellers and men in white coats.  I little knew then what a mother to the ship Bos'n Murrin was.  He ushered me into an office ringing with the sound of typewriters. Matrons smiled at me.  A short wait and the Skipper appeared, a strong-looking man dressed in a suit with a white shirt and tie.  He could have been a headmaster. I got another searching look. He had a nascent smile on his face which never quite materialised.

          'You must be David Jones', he said.

          'Yes, sir, but they call me Johnny.'

          I was duly enrolled as Johnny Jones, cabin boy, and told to report to Billy Belcher, cook.

          A day later we were at sea and I had learned a lot about scrubbing things clean: chiefly pots and pans.  The crew were a salty bunch, most of them veterans of Hitler's War.  Billy Belcher even claimed to have sailed in his extreme youth against the Kaiser.  There was a new deck hand, young Jim Foster, who had a wide grin on his face under all circumstances.  We remained friends until he took a berth on a Hull trawler in 1968 which went down off Iceland with all hands.

          Somewhere between Norway and Bear Island was our destination. By the time we got there I saw our ship in a very different light.  Though her steel plates were, I thought, far too thin a separation from the hostile sea she rode the waves with an infectious confidence.  There was little by way of comfort aboard her and space was short but the crew were a business-like bunch who knew what they were doing and got on with it.  No hornpipes were danced and no sea shanties were sung.  The last trip of the Lady Julian had been a poor one.  Her side-winder trawl had a gape big enough to swallow a London bus but it had remained empty of fish.  That meant a loss for the owners and no pay for the crew. Morale was not good.

          We reached our fishing ground at night. Eli had made sure that everything to be oiled was oiled, nets were mended, the trawl had been made ready, the fish-hold was clean, there was plenty of crushed ice. It was a dark night with a rolling sea. There were sheets of rain. I heard the Skipper and Fred Barley, the Mate, having a bit of an argument over it but it was decided to shoot the trawl there and then. The big lights were switched on and lit her up for'ards like Christmas. The ship was stopped. Two hands manned the winches. There were five more heaving the net overboard, cod-end, belly and wings, followed by two great wooden paddles, the otter doors, to hold the net open as the long, steel warps dragged it all through the sea.  The warps took the strain and the trawl sank into the darkness.

          Me and the Cook were watching.

          'It's a very rough night for fishing',  I suggested.

          'Calm weather is the worst weather for a sidewinder',  said Billy  'In calm weather the trawl hangs to the side of the ship and it's hard work pulling the net aboard.  When you are rolling about like this the net goes slack with the next wave and you can pull it in easy.'

          'What do we do next?'

          'What we do, you and me, is get back to the galley and dish out cups of kai all round. It will be an hour and a half at least before we stop towing and pull in.'

          Kai was a drink Billy made with blocks of chocolate and a dash of condensed milk dropped into a mug of boiling water. He claimed it gave you energy. Not all the crew liked it but on a night like this they needed the boost. I had hardly got the big kettle on the boil when there was a shout from Eli Murrin to the bridge.

          'The warps are touching!'

          If the warps pulled together parallel it meant either the trawl was snagged on something or the net was full of fish.  The ship was stopped again.  A wave came right over the rails.  Down from the bridge came Fred Barley.  He was one of the Lowestoft lifeboat skippers and something of a hero.

          'The trawl ain't gone down all the way', explained Billy 'so it can't be a snag.  Night time you trawl mid-water.  The cod rise from the bottom at night you see.'

          'Loose off the towing block', ordered Fred after a brief confab with the Skipper. 'Pull her in.'

          The winch men got to work. Up came the otter boards and the net rose like a submarine, stuffed with fish from the wings to the cod end.

          Billy gave it one look and declared, 'There'll be no time to turn in tonight I reckon'.

          The crew heaved as much of the net aboard as they could.  They put a turn of rope round the cod end, winched it up and swung it aboard.  In the glaring light, Eli's yellow waterproof and sou'wester shone out like wet and shiny beacons.  He dodged under the cod end, reached for a special slip knot and gave it a pull. Three thousand pounds of prime cod fell about him.  The belly of the trawl was still in the water and it was still full of fish.  He roped the cod end shut and it was hoisted overboard again.  The ship went half ahead to wash fish down from the belly to the cod end which was again hoisted aboard.  Another avalanche of fish fell about Eli's shoulders. All this had to be repeated five times before the trawl was empty.

          While the deck crew started to gut and clean the fish Eli inspected the trawl and declared it undamaged. The order came to shoot again. We must have been over a shoal of millions.  In no time the trawl was again stuffed to bursting point.  No skate nor haddock, just cod of the best sort!

          It was a weary crew who came in for breakfast.  Weary but happy!  No sooner had they had their scoff and a dose of kai than they went out and shot the trawl again.  There was no time to kip.  This time the trawl went to the bottom but it came up just as quick, full of cod, haddocks and some big halibut.

          'A night's sleep lost is nothing when you're making money', said Eli to the Cook that morning when he came into the galley for a drink.

          'I've seen three dawns come up before now without a wink of sleep', said Billy, 'On the old 'Olympia GY1080 that was.'

          Then he gave me a strange, sideways look, 'But it's a pity we ain't had a nice big lady skate for the boy.'

          Eli gulped his drink without a word and went back to the fish pens to do some more gutting.

          So the trip went on; every time the trawl was shot the warps closed up in no time and we had another silvery deluge of prize fish.  There was never a tear in the nets.  I don't know who said it first, or when, but they began to call me 'Johnny Cod'.  I was taken to be a lucky shipmate, a charm, an anti-Jonah.  Chancy the sea is and perilous. To live on it you need more than strength and skill: you need luck.  So seamen have their superstitions and their rituals.

            'That lot alone will pay for this trip', said the Chief Engineer with a nod towards another top-prize haul in the pen.  He rarely came up on deck.

          'I think the Old Man will be wanting to get back to port again soon', said the Mate cheerfully.

            'Aye!  And we'll be millionaires for a day again', said the Chief, quoting an old saying among trawlermen.

            I shall be disappointed if we aren't.  Even for a day', they both laughed.

            'And we shall all be disappointed if Johnny don't get a lady skate', broke in Billy.

            This was mysterious.  I did not entirely trust Billy, he told too many yarns.  So I broached the subject with Jim Foster.  It was the only time Jim was ever shifty with me.

            'You've heard of mermaids?'  asked Jim  'Well, the lady skate is the true mermaid of the sea.  They have faces like ours you know.  A big skate is as big as a woman and they make love the same way.'

            It was to be some years before I had attended sufficient anatomy lessons to ascertain the truth of this statement.

            'You have to make love to a mermaid to be a real sea-going fisherman',  Jim continued,  'and if a good-luck shipmate like you gets to make love to a mermaid you can never be short neither of money nor of  breath.  You can never be drowned.'

            'What!  Kiss a fish?'

            'Kiss it? No! You really have to make love to it.'  His grin returned

 'Some of those big lady skate are very good looking.'

            'You'll never catch me doing that.'  To me at that time a woman was no less mysterious than a sea-skate.

            'The luck of the ship depends on it.  Our luck could change you know.'

            'Bugger the ship!  Anyway we haven't caught a skate.'

             I began to pray that we never would catch one. But we did. When the Skipper had already decided to make the very last trawl. As soon as the cod end surfaced it was clearly going to be another bonanza. Then a great shout went up: 'Skate! A big one! She's a beauty.'  The mermaid had arrived.

            The ship was already stopped, rolling gently under a blue sky. The winches fell silent. The engineers appeared from below. The Skipper came down from the bridge. No condemned man ever felt more horror on catching sight of the gallows than I felt on seeing that cursed fish, mounted.  Mounted, I might say, in what the deck hands considered the most alluring position.  All faces turned towards me, implacable as a condemning jury.  I discovered that youth, vigour and past good fortune were no defence against despair.  I grasped the ship's rail with one hand in preparation for the vault over the bulwark that would plunge me forever into the sea.  What saved me then was a twinkle in the Skipper's eyes.

            'Keep smiling', my housemaster had said. I came to my senses.

            'You bastards!'  I choked out.  It was all I could say.

            This was followed by a rousing cheer, great roars of laughter and a handshake from every man.  I have had honours since but never so great.

            We lashed the doors off the deck and chained down the expensive bits of the trawl.  We checked the fish rooms and made sure all was right down there.  The scupper doors were lashed back on their chains; the galley doors were locked.  Nobody was allowed on deck.  We were going home, fast.

            I rang mother as soon as we were back in port.

            'What hev yew bin doin now, my mawther?' I enquired.

            'Are you in England, David?

            'Yes!'

            'Then speak to me in English, dear.'