Farewell Mr Puffin

by Paul Heiney

  Wild Song drifted on in the fog and we could have been anywhere in the world, were it not for the mark on the chart that said we were now somewhere north of Bridlington. Modern navigation devices meant there was no danger of our getting lost, but even so it would have been nice to see the shore and spot the old Expanse Hotel, which we always craved but could never afford, and the boarding house my great-grandmother ran on Pembroke Terrace, charging, with typical Yorkshire generosity, three pence extra ‘for use of cruet’. It’s Yorkshire, remember.

  My family on my mother’s side would have known every inch of the sea between Bridlington and the chalky Flamborough Head to the north, for they were fishermen here, sailing the east coast cobles to the inshore fishing grounds – longshoremen, you would call them. Cobles are bluff-ended, open boats, not unlike Viking longships in some respects, and you can’t fail to spot that influence. They were designed to be launched and recovered on the shallow, shelving beaches of the east coast and carry a pronounced ‘tumblehome’ to give stability, making them look as if they have put on a little too much fat round the waist. They also have runners the length of their flattish undersides so they can be encouraged to skid along the beach when launching. They were, of course, powered by a single sail, but the few remaining are motorised.

  Rather like the cobles, my mother’s family, the Trufitts, have passed into history, although one of them, my Great Uncle Teddy, has something of a legend about him. Brid, as everyone calls Bridlington, has two piers: a north and a south. Although the harbour entrance between them is no more than 50 or 60 feet wide, to walk from one to the other used to be a major excursion through the town. But for a thruppenny bit you could take the ferry between the two, which was a real thrill for a kid. The ferry was a large rowing boat and the boatman placed himself in the bow and stood up like a giant to row, giving everything he’d got to the lengthy sweeps. He seemed heroic to me. The snag with Bridlington is that when strong winds have any east in them, big seas are driven towards the harbour mouth, and one day there was a big swell running after a particularly bad storm, but Great Uncle Teddy (1847–1932) insisted that the ferry must go and so he rowed with all his might against the swell. They say he ‘strained ’is heart’ and died a few days later. I guess he must be the Edward Theaker Trufitt who appears in Bulmer’s Directory of 1892 (Bulmer was an enthusiastic Victorian historian who took it upon himself to conduct what was pretty much a one-man census of the north of England) and is recorded as living in lodgings at 49 West Street, the same street where, as a child, I remember Mrs Wilkie’s boarding house, which always smelled of the previous night’s gravy mixed with the early-morning scents of fresh bread from the bakery next door. He would have walked from there to the harbour, ever superstitious as sailors were back then. If the first person he met on leaving the house was a parson or a woman, he would turn back and not go to sea that day. Such a meeting was as bad an omen as hearing the word ‘pig’, which also spelled doom.

  I have a crumpled black-and-white photograph of old Teddy and he has that same wise stare of the Southwold fishermen, his beard as white as the Flamborough cliffs, his pipe as black as the tar on the bottom of his boat. Below his picture is his tattered certificate showing his membership of the ‘Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society’, an early kind of insurance into which he would have paid a little of what were probably poor earnings.

  But at least there were earnings for inshore fishermen in those days. It might not have been grand sums, but families were raised from the proceeds of hauling cod, haddock, herrings and crab using small boats like cobles. Now there is hardly pocket money to be made from the game and catching fish inshore is no longer a business. It has sunk beneath the waters, drowned for political as well as commercial reasons. We gave our fishing away to join Europe, bitter fishermen will repeatedly tell you. ‘The bloody fishermen raped the sea for all they could get’, scream the environmentalists. But not the likes of Teddy Trufitt and the small-scale fishermen he worked alongside. They fished with long lines strung with hundreds of hooks and had none of the net-handling capability that came with the intensive mechanisation of the fishing fleets. But governments were conveniently able to look over the heads of the small fry and allow them to drown. That is the story of much of the fishing off this coast, all the way from the Straits of Dover to John O’ Groats, and was to be a repeating theme.

  With Bridlington and its memories behind me, I decided to shrug off the past as I sailed into now unfamiliar waters. I was on my way to Iceland to follow in the wake of those hardy souls of the 14th century who traded from the harbour from which my voyage started. It is difficult to explain the strength of connection I felt towards them. No matter how much of our DNA may get tangled down the generations, there is always a bit of us that is drawn to the distant past.

  3

  Puffins beyond the fog?

  Seabirds are remarkably adaptable creatures and we seem useless by comparison when it comes to versatility. I need a boat and a mountain of paraphernalia to get me to Iceland but a seabird would think of it as a jaunt, feeding themselves on the way without any need for fridges or gas, and certainly having no use at all for satellite navigation to find a landing place. And they wouldn’t be fretting about the weather either. We are pretty hopeless ocean adventurers compared to seabirds, which makes for a timely reminder that out on the oceans we are mere beginners and it serves us well to appreciate how little we really know, and forces upon us a due humility. I have never set out to sea thinking that I was entirely on top of the business of living in this alien place.

  Of all the seabirds I know, it is without doubt the puffin of which I am most fond. There is no more cheerful moment than when you bump into these little birds at sea. I’ve watched them carefully over the years. They bob around in the troughs of the waves, sometimes in flocks as dense as a football crowd, heads spinning this way and that, sunlight flashing off those ridiculously garish beaks, until they realise that your boat is an intrusion into their world, and possibly an enemy, and so in what I assume is panic they dive head first, but stylishly, like an Olympian. They really are nervous little things when at sea, and seem to be expecting danger at every turn. They fear the approach of the unfamiliar, and their necks must surely ache as their heads nervously swivel like the head of a ventriloquist’s puppet. They can stay underwater for over half a minute, dive as deep as 25 metres, and those who have seen them say they are far more graceful under the water than above. In fact, on land or on the surface of the sea they can look quite ridiculous as they flap their little wings up to 300 times a minute and paddle their webbed feet as fast as they possibly can: every take-off seems to be an epic struggle that nature has not completely refined. It’s a funny name for a bird, if you think about it – puffin. It is apparently an English word, and the only reasonable suggestion about the origins of its name was made as far back as 1706 – ‘a bird supposed to be so-called from its round belly, as it were swelling or puffing out’. Nicknames abound: Lundi, Sea Parrot, Tammy Norrie, Pilot, Couler and Bougir.

  Penguins and puffins are similar in that their land-based waddling cannot compare with the sleekness of their underwater swimming, although puffins and penguins are not related. But in the public affection, there must be something that binds puffins and penguins together. Is it possible that we recognise in both of them something of ourselves? I have stood in front of Antarctic penguins and had them look me in the eye, and I have found a connection, I am sure of it. They appear not afraid even though they sense we are not one of them, but they are accepting of us being there. Puffins are less confident than penguins, but that might be because they’re smaller so feel more vulnerable. I wouldn’t want to take on an angry penguin but might happily face up to a flustered puffin, and perhaps both the puffin and the penguin know that.

  The first puffins I ever saw were off the west coast of Ireland, where that combination of craggy cliffs and soft grass allows easy burrow-building, irresistible to a puffin. They first appeare
d as distant black dots on the water and the iridescent beak is not seen until quite close up. That’s when you can’t help but break into a smile, for puffins are entertainers even if they don’t know it, and you have to laugh.

  I was expecting no end of laughs from the puffins on this voyage. There might be ten million pairs of puffins on Iceland, 600,000 on the Faroes and 24,000 here on the north-east coast of England. Puffin heaven awaits. My face will surely be aching with laughter.

  ***

  Another damp night passed, with only the red and green navigation lights on the bow of the boat illuminating the dank mist as we made slow but comfortable progress northwards. It was a chilly wind, but not like a true north wind for there was no freshness about it and I certainly didn’t feel inspired. Home, the Yorkshire coast, the River Humber – all these planks in my life were receding. When you sail the separation happens slowly, often before you’ve fully realised it, then suddenly you look up and see that an old world is being left behind.

  ‘I think the fog is lifting a little,’ said Ant, peering forward, wiping the condensation from his specs. It was excuse enough for the kettle to go on yet again. I don’t know why we ever switch it off. The bulk of the white, chalky Flamborough Head, usually unmissable but this time unseen, was creeping behind us and the day dawned brighter. But the rain soon came. ‘At least this rain will take the fog away,’ Ant said, ever the optimist.

  With rain now dripping off our oilskins, we wallowed along in a light following breeze with hardly the puff to fill the sails, leaving the boom to slat to and fro and the nerves tested as the sail came to a crashing halt with every roll of the boat. No chance of a sight of Flamborough village now, or of the two landings, or bays, North and South, that provide some shelter for small boats whichever way the wind is blowing. The shore remained a smudge, somewhat darker than the lighter smudge that was the sky and a slightly silvery smudge that was the sea.

  After Flamborough came the six-mile-long towering cliffs of Bempton, rising vertically like a mouldy white iceberg from the sea. At least, I assumed they were still there. They revealed themselves only as another shade of grey among the surrounding gloom. Gannets live here and this is their only mainland breeding colony.

  And so does the dear puffin.

  Realising where we were, I shouted up to Ant. ‘Look out for puffins. This is good puffin country.’

  He scanned around. ‘Nope, nothing here,’ he said.

  The puffin should have been here. It was the right time of year. For puffins not to be here in the breeding season is as unthinkable as Arsenal supporters not turning up if their team is in the Cup Final. There must be puffins here. If we’d been here a couple of months earlier, when they were fresh from their winter holiday in the North Atlantic, it might have been possible to overlook them; until spring arrives, that beak has none of the striped gaiety that we enjoy and reduces to a miserable grey lump, making the puffin an easily missed specimen. The appearance of the beak of many colours is entirely to attract the girls, of course. Why else would you dress yourself up like that? Did you know that puffins kiss? During the mating season they make contact between beaks as part of the mating ritual in a nose-to-nose rubbing, which human observers like to think of as a kiss. Once they’ve clashed beaks, the male presents the female with a token, which might be a feather or a tuft of grass. It’s all too romantic.

  ‘Are you sure there are no puffins?’ I asked again, thinking that to see them here, off one of their principal breeding grounds at the right time of year, should be as easy as spotting a red bus in Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘Nope. No puffins. There are some gannets, though,’ and just as he spoke one swooped from a great height, falling vertically, hitting the water at an estimated 70 miles an hour, to spike a tasty fish. ‘There are several gannets around, but no puffins.’ Ah, well.

  Gannets are equally remarkable seabirds, if less amusing, and are easily recognised by someone as lacking in ornithological skills as I am, for the yellow heads make them unmissable. Their streamlining is Concorde-like, and that carefully calculated dive from a great height, and the perfectly smooth entry into the water, can only remind you of a bullet being fired from on high with the utmost precision. The prey must have no chance. Given that the gannet enters water at such high speed, you’d think they would be living with a perpetual headache, but they have evolved air sacs in the face and chest to act as cushions, and they’ve shifted their nostrils to be inside their mouths; their eyes are further forward than on many birds, giving them sharp, binocular vision for judging distances, which they need for diving accuracy. They really are as finely tuned as any ballistic weapon when it comes to hitting their target, and use their large wings to steer themselves precisely, folding them away at the very last moment as they hit the water. However, they are not a perfect creation – their walking abilities are not great and they find taking off from land a bit tricky, preferring to launch themselves from the water with a good headwind to help.

  They are, of course, less cuddly than the puffin and far too athletic for my taste. I can’t identify with them as I do with the puffin, possibly because I admit I am more of a comic and far less of a sportsman, but their deadly precision when it comes to hunting means you must pay the gannet respect. To call someone a ‘gannet’ has become an insult indicating gluttony, but I wouldn’t mind being likened to a creature of such physical precision. However, I would draw the line at being eaten, as the islanders of Lewis in the Hebrides do to their gannets, known there as ‘gugas’. The harvest takes place as autumn approaches and a small gang of men, at no small risk to themselves, set off for the lonely Gannet Rock at the northern tip of the island and camp out for a fortnight, during which time they might catch a couple of thousand. The catch is swift and deadly and employs a long pole followed by a killing, decapitation, de-winging, splitting and then packing in salt. I am grateful that the journalist Jon Winter of the Independent was able to observe this on my behalf. He reports that when the salted carcasses are finally brought home, they have the look of ‘heavily soiled floor cloths’. Yum yum. He reports that to return it to an edible nature, the bird is washed, quartered, and boiled for an hour and served with spuds, and its dark, muscular flesh tastes of strong game, salty and fishy. Even more yum.

  ***

  The fog off the Yorkshire coast was certainly lifting, but only at a glacial pace, and even if there had been puffins around, the rattle of the sails in the light wind might well have had their little wings flapping like kids, giggling as they made their way with all haste back to their burrows in the cliffs. But no puffins were to be seen.

  It was very quiet and no other vessels were in sight. There was a time in my earlier sailing years when your eyes dared not stray from looking dead ahead, peering for other ships, avoiding collision. Out here, these days, you might see the odd inshore fishing boat hunting for crab or lobster, or the Yorkshire Belle out of Bridlington offering ‘Puffin Cruises’ – I hope their punters have better luck than we were having.

  Hereabouts was once a maritime artery, flowing with trade, bringing coal from Newcastle and warmth to an ever-expanding London, but now no colliers carry coal from the Tyne. There are none of those sturdy little ships, the craft in which Captain Cook put his faith and on which he learned his trade. You will find no traders sheltering in the lee of the Head when strong winds blow, no fleet of cobles, which would tend them with provisions from the shore while they waited for better weather. There are not even any scoundrels engaged in a little tobacco- or rum-smuggling on the beaches and in the coves, which this coastline conveniently provides for their illicit night-time landings. North of Scarborough there was a trade in alum, used in tanning and dyeing, the production of which required coal to be brought in from sea and processed alum to be sent out. All vanished trades. Only the grand old Yorkshire Belle, which has sailed from Bridlington Harbour every year since 1947, makes a living off this bit of coast.

  ‘What’s for supper?’ I asked, hea
ring the rattle of pans on the stove.

  Silence.

  ‘It’s not pigeon, is it?’

  Another silence, which somehow conveyed Ant’s deep disgust at my suggestion.

  ***

  I was reading a little local history to pass the time and help conjure up images of the places that the mist had deprived me of. Staithes is a defiant little settlement, so close to the sea it is a miracle it has never been washed away. It was common, on this coast, to build as close to the shore as they could so as to be near to their cobles, which were usually drawn up on the beach above the high-water mark. Should the weather turn for the worse, it was usual for someone to run through the streets shouting, ‘Turn out! Cobles!’ and then they would all rise from their beds, face the fury of the storm, and gather to help each other to make their boats secure. Staithes lives in a cleft in the rocks where the North York Moors collapse into the sea and is almost too picturesque to be true. There were once said to be Trufitts in Staithes, my mother’s family, certainly plenty of them in the 19th century, and a book of poetry by Charlotte Caroline Richardson in 1823 lists a Mrs Trufitt of Staithes as a subscriber. It is, in fact, one lengthy poem, spread like an oil slick over 50 pages. Thankfully I didn’t have a copy of it on board or I might have threatened to recite it to poor Ant. To give you a flavour: