by Lamorna Ash
At close proximity, most fish skin is fractalled with dark lines. In her poem ‘The Fish’, Elizabeth Bishop writes how the fish’s ‘brown skin hung in strips’:
Like ancient wallpaper,
And its pattern of darker brown
Was like wallpaper:
Shapes like full-blown roses
Stained and lost through age.
The colour and shapes painted over the skin of each fish we gut reminds me of some aspect of the land. A particular Dory’s back has echoes of the beige cubic patterns on the carpet in the Star, the dark circular mark on its side, known as ‘St Peter’s thumbprint’, a faded spillage across one cushion; the pinks of a monkfish’s gums are the exact shade of the cushions in the cottage in the Fragdan. Sometimes in the long gleaming strand of guts that you pull clean out of the fish come surprises, such as a second smaller fish in a translucent bag, as if my knife were a fishing rod diving into a second great sea, whose swilling waters were folded inside the first fish’s belly.
On the deck of the Filadelfia I hold one of these gossamer-thin pouches drawn from the inside of a fish up to the sky and marvel at the completeness of the thing within, its dim gold eye just discernible, its body curved slightly as if caught in the motion of a wave. I wonder how it got in there. And then, dumbly, it enters my mind that these bagged fish must be the unborn babies of the fish I am gutting. The revelation sickens me and I almost drop my knife. For a while I can’t continue gutting, the delicate, dead fish hanging limply from my hand like a goldfish won at a fair.
It is only after a few weeks back on land that I remember the vague details I do know about fish reproduction. Firstly they would be eggs, not fully formed fish. And secondly, most fish spawn eggs externally, which are then fertilised by the male fish (only cartilaginous fish, the jawed vertebrates with skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone, such as rays and skates, fertilise their eggs internally). It was not a fish embryo after all, but a smaller fish eaten whole by the larger one, its body undamaged in the process.
By dinner time I am starving and spoon myself out a generous helping of hunter’s chicken from the stove (though still about half the size of the other men’s portions). This is Kyle’s speciality on board. He wraps chicken in bacon and cooks it in the oven for several hours, while it swims in an oozing layer of treacle-like sauce. The resulting meal is sweet and moreish. Food always tastes better at sea. Kyle says that sometimes he makes his missus the exact same recipe he prepares on the Filadelfia but it never tastes as good. After a day of being thrown about by the boat’s lurching and with your body exhausted from the work of the hauls, to sit together out of the wind and eat hot, satisfying food is a feeling comparable to no other.
When I start to thank Kyle for the meal, he holds up his hand. ‘Stop with the thank yous. Just finish your plate,’ he tells me. ‘That’s the only thanks I need.’ There are small shifts in behaviour one has to learn at sea: a kind of sea manners. I learn to put the toilet seat back up after I’ve used it; to help in the fish room without getting in people’s way; when people need a coffee refill; which snacks are each men’s favourites and so should not be finished off by anyone but them; and when someone wants to be left alone.
We sit with the telly on, our mouths sticky with hunter’s sauce as the Filadelfia grunts and rolls over the waves. As I get to know her better, she seems to me like the kind of old woman who refuses to age gracefully, getting bits and pieces of herself Botoxed – a new engine, telly, more efficient nets – but still sagging in the neck, her external parts beginning to rust and flake, everything about her more rudimentary than the Crystal Sea. Most of the time no one says anything, too tired by this point in the week to utter more than a brief smattering of thoughts on a particular game show contestant or a question about tomorrow’s dinner. Another fisherman tells me that when they’re back on land, the reason fishermen like to gather together in the pubs is because ‘We don’t know what to say apart from fishing. The sea takes away everything else.’ Nothing new happens on trawlers; the world does not change beyond the repeating cycle of hauls. Like the manners peculiar to the sea, a particular kind of vernacular emerges while fishing too, one that varies in each part of the boat. During the hauls on deck language is contracted, focused right in to convey instructions quickly, which are nonetheless always interspersed with at least one wisecrack at the expense of another crew member. This staccato dialogue is itself distinct from the more meditative, multi-directional conversations that occur on watch.
Describing life on the fictional Narcissus, Joseph Conrad reproduces the ways he hears men at sea interacting, the fragments of conversation captured perfectly through ellipses: ‘Here, sonny, take that bunk! … Don’t you do it! … what’s your last ship? … I know her … there years ago, in Puget sound … This here berth leaks, I tell you! … come on; give us a chance to swing that chest! … did you bring a bottle, any of you shore toffs? … give us a bit of baccy… I know her; her skipper drank himself to death … he was a dandy boy!’ I imagine the sea and the engine beating over this punctuation, slicing through dialogue and causing the end of sentences to be washed away. That night, as the men come and go from their short sleeps, I stay in the galley with the TV still buzzing on. Like Conrad’s narrator, I am privy to a whole host of fleeting exchanges between the men, while I lie slumped along the back bench in my tracksuit and thick socks, snug beside the hotplates burning away on the stove.
Up in the wheelhouse, I hear Kyle call up the Billy Rowney, skippered by Danny Fisher (nickname ‘Fish’) whose trawler lights we can just make out to our port side. Kyle asks the man on watch if his friend is about and the watchman replies: ‘I think he’s turned in for the night, why?’
‘Oh,’ Kyle looks dejected. ‘Nothin’ – just wanted a yarn.’
The watchman tells him he’ll let the friend know once he’s awake. A few hours later, Kyle gets his yarn. For almost forty-five minutes I listen to the two of them happily chatting, half a mile away from each other over the waves, reminiscing about the best steaks they’ve had in Penzance and Newlyn, their love of the Meadery restaurant and what they’ve eaten at sea so far this week. On the Billy Rowney last night they had a ‘real rich supper’ (rich means delicious in Newlyn) of breaded scallops and monk. Tonight, they’re finally heading home after a gruelling week, so having the traditional ‘Billy Rowney Going Home Meal’ of jacket potatoes and steak. The men sign off on the VHF, promising to speak again soon.
‘Where are we going next, Old Man?’ Stevie shouts up to Don.
‘I know where the megrim is and the lemons, but where are the bloody monks and turbots?’ I hear Don reply, and later: ‘We’ll try down south-east way tomorrow.’
If we were to continue our course ‘down south-east way’ eventually we would reach France. Some trawlermen reckon it’s too hard and stony down that way, but Don loves those grounds, knowing that in those territories you’re away from the other boats, pushing out alone into the sea. This knowledge runs through Don’s blood; his great-grandfather was a fisherman and sailed all the way up to Greenland to hunt amongst the ice sheets. They talk of other boats they have had relationships with. Don was skipper of the Sarah Shone for thirteen years, she was ‘a fucking gem’, while Kyle has especially fond memories of the young crew on the Joy of Ladram. Once he and his mate went to the back of the boat when it was blowing a hooley and re-enacted the Titanic scene with Rose and Jack. When they get to talking about a fisherman who hanged himself the day we set out from Newlyn, I think of Conrad’s dialogue once more, and the sadness that lurks between the ellipses: ‘give us a bit of baccy … I know her; her skipper drank himself to death … he was a dandy boy!’ The lines speak of how you can never know how much another person is really struggling inside their own head.
12
CAREWORN
Almost every cottage along the rounded bay on which Newlyn is seated has at least one window from where you can see the sea, so that from a distance the town app
ears like a theatre auditorium with rows of seats sloping down towards the stage that is the harbour – a grander version of the Minack Theatre a few miles further along the coast towards Land’s End. The line between sea and land delineates Cornish experience. It seeps into every aspect of life, shaping its mythologies and slicing through any inflated sense of human grandeur by reminding its inhabitants that there is always something out there that is bigger than them.
To work within this environment is even more character-defining. Fishermen are shaped by the sea in the same manner that every coastline across the planet, though comprised of different rocks from various ages, has felt the presence of the oceans and been reformed throughout its lifetime by that encounter. When the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis was asked: ‘Which were more in number, the living or the dead?’ he responded: ‘In which category, then, do you place those who are on the seas?’ His retort speaks of a lasting conception about those at sea; while out there, away from the land, some vital part of their humanity is lost, making them fundamentally unknowable to those back on the land.
On the day of my twenty-third birthday, exactly a week after I return from sea, I meet Nathan at the Swordy over a couple of pints. As ever, I get more drunk than I intend to (it takes me a long time to admit to myself that I will never be as good at drinking as fishermen), I get back to the cottage late and wake the next morning to find the charred remains of my attempt at cooking one of the lemon sole I gutted on the Filadelfia. Nathan is thirty-one and one of the youngest men I’ve met who has a skipper’s ticket (the qualification you need before you can captain a boat). He tells me that there’s only one type of person who’ll fit in that wheelhouse, and they don’t come along often. A lot of the skippers Nathan reckons are really worth their salt are ‘only-children’, the kind of men who would have developed over time an insular strength which prepared them for life at sea. ‘You gotta be tough as boots,’ he says, ‘and savvy enough to be able to control four other wayward men.’ He pauses – ‘a man amongst men’ – and grins. ‘I made that one up. Quote Nathan Marshall in your book, all right?’
You’ve got to be smart too. To get a skipper’s ticket, fishermen have to complete a rigorous examined course that you can only take after you’ve fished for at least two years and requires you to attend three months of residential classes, working up to twelve-hour days. Another fisherman tells me that in the first class their teacher said ‘Hands up who’s got a Maths A level?’ After no one raised their hand he said ‘Well, you’re all fucked then.’
Nathan shows me some of the questions he had to answer when he did the skipper’s exam. Each algebraic or trigonometric question extends into a two-page sum comprised of letters, numbers and complex symbols. He explains how every calculation, every aspect of fishing – the winch, the nets, the position of your boat through the water, whether you are with or against the tide – must be measured perfectly so you don’t damage the gear, or, worse, lose the boat or put your crew’s lives at risk. A lot of the fishermen I meet say they couldn’t handle the responsibility of being a skipper. Nathan only does it when he has to, preferring to be a mate.
Evening comes and with it the last of the day-fishermen tracing their way back along the coast home. The pub fills with oilskinned men yawning over their pints, and Nathan gets in another round: ‘It is your birthday and all.’ One Scottish fisherman, whose boat is presently moored in Newlyn harbour, explains to me that the community of fishing extends beyond borders. Many of the younger fishermen take time out from fishing for a year or two to travel around the world with the money they’ve made so far. In each coastal place they arrive during their travels, be it France, Australia or India, they somehow end up back at sea again with a group of foreign fishermen. Out on the water, the distinctions between cultures dissolve and the men share in that identifying mark: a sea language which is outside your native language and which feels more fundamental than your origins.
Nathan tells me that if I really want to understand fishermen, I’m going to have to learn some proper sea lingo. He mulls over some of his favourite fishing phrases, listing them on his fingers. ‘Roughty tufty fishermen, man amongst men, and …’ He grins again. ‘Furious wanking!’
‘Wait, what?’
‘Yeah, sorry.’ He pauses for a moment, faltering in the list. ‘That was one of my mate’s. The one I was telling you about.’
The fisherman who took his own life the morning we set sail on the Filadelfia was one of Nathan’s closest friends.
‘Anyway.’ He shakes his head and continues: ‘My girlfriend at the time called me up on the satellite phone one night at sea, and she says: “Me and my friends were wondering, do you ever wank on the boat?” I go to my mate: “She just asked if I wank on the boat?” My mate says: “Say furiously.” “Furiously!” I go.’
Nathan rubs his eyes, stretching the loose, bluish skin below them. ‘That’s probably why she’s my ex and all.’
One of Nathan’s friends, Big John – who, true to his name, is enormous, and also ‘a funny, wordy one, like you’, according to Nathan – joins us as we are both just finishing off our second round. Brave from beer, I tell Big John that I’d recently been trying to come up with a phrase that encapsulates what I think fishermen are. The men give me a funny look and I blush, realising how absurd that sounds; they have spent a week working at sea, while I have been sat in front of a laptop for a lot of that time puzzling over words.
Big John asks me straight up. ‘Well, go on then, what are we?’
‘Er, sea-sculpted…?’ I say, wincing.
‘Bollocks!’ Big John responds immediately and Nathan shakes his head in agreement. ‘That’s not it at all! Stop trying to romanticise us, all right?’
I am ready to slide into my pint and never return from it again when, still reeling from my blunder, Big John takes another glug of beer and in the same beat that the glass hits the table says: ‘We’re careworn’ – as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Careworn! That’s it. Told you he was clever.’ Nathan slaps him on the back. ‘Careworn!’
Regardless of my attempts to find words adequate to express what it means to be a fisherman, there are a number of distinguishing physical features that mark them out as men of the sea. These tend to accumulate over the years so that the oldest fishermen appear almost as caricatures of their past profession. Pretty much all of them have at least one tattoo. Their chosen images have a nice predictability: there are countless anchors, hearts with names written across them in curly fonts, mermaids, pirates, and the occasional registration number or drawing of a particular fishing boat they have grown close to – nothing too fancy, nothing pretentious. Each of these is drawn in thick blue ink, the lines spreading out like a fountain pen touched to wet paper so that you can barely recognise where one line ends and another begins. The most densely tattooed men accumulate dark clusters of bruise-coloured islands running up and down their arms. Their faces are weather-beaten (the word for this in Nance’s glossary is towethack). Their fingers are yellowed after years of rolling endless cigarettes to pass the time on watch, their voices similarly gritty and rasping from smoking. They often carry considerable and impressive guts that stand as record to their bearer’s ability to sink innumerable pints given half the chance and a few nights on shore. These guts look almost comically disproportionate, protruding out above thick, muscled legs and alongside arms made strong from years of handling heavy machinery. It is their faces that most betray their profession though. Every man I meet has heavily lined and intelligent eyes that somehow always retain some aspect of the sea within them. It is not a wildness in their look, but a wilderness that lurks somewhere at the edge of it.
At the end of the Second World War, Life magazine reproduced a painting by the artist Tom Lea entitled Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare. A US marine, depicted in vivid, realistic detail, stands just off-centre of the frame positioned head on towards the viewer while behind him smoke billows, th
e land burns and engines of war are readied. It makes me uneasy to look at it – not because the soldier is staring right at the viewer, but because he is not. His eyes never reach ours; the wide whites and deep black pupils are hollow, empty and cold as space. This look has become a telltale sign of PTSD amongst returning solders, one family and friends must dread to see when they believe their loved one has come home, only to find a significant part of them has not.
Fishermen’s stares are directed somewhere, though. It is not a kind of disassociation but an intent and profound attention to the water. I see it in Don sometimes, when even amongst friends during a raucous night out at the Star his usual booming voice fades and his expression returns to the one I have become accustomed to seeing him wear at sea each morning, after he has spent many hours alone in a smoky wheelhouse scanning the tar-black seas. Like the negative spaces that make up the human form, fishermen back on the shore feel keenly the absence of that other half of their identity, which, only when imagined together with their life on the land, can complete the portrait of who they know themselves to be. ‘Some of these guys, if they didn’t go to sea, they wouldn’t last long,’ Nathan tells me. Many fishermen are so used to their coming and going between the land and sea that, when injured or their boat is tied up with repairs, they cannot cope. Their identity becomes destabilised. There are men for whom being condemned to a life on the land, be it by injury, or simply by age, is a kind of slow drowning – or perhaps drowning is exactly the wrong word, but rather suffocation, like fish on a deck whose bodies flood with air. In Quite Early One Morning, Dylan Thomas’s short narrative about a village in Wales, he writes of ‘miscellaneous retired sea captains’, who ‘emerged for a second from deeper waves than ever tossed their boats, then drowned again, going down into a perhaps Mediterranean-blue cabin of sleep, rocked to the sea-beat of their ears’. Some retired fishermen never fully return from these sea-beating dreams.