Beautiful Star and Other Stories

by Andrew Swanston

  When we were not in the yard, Willy and I liked wandering around the village. I told him stories about its history and he told me about the boats in the harbour. He refused, however, flatly refused, to come with me to find flowers to show the children.

  ‘I can’t help it, Julia,’ he said. ‘Blue periwinkle and purple loosestrife are not for me. And anyway what are wild flowers for?’

  ‘Flowers are not wild or tame,’ I replied. ‘They’re just flowers.’

  ‘Perhaps. But they don’t do anything. They just happen. Not like a boat. A boat has to be designed and built, and it has a purpose.’

  A practical person, Willy. In the sweep of a hull he could see beauty; in fields and hedgerows he could not. He loved to talk about the boats in the harbour, which were nearly all Fifies with upright stems and sterns and long straight keels. The smaller skaffies, rounded at the bow and with steeply angled stern posts, were rarer visitors to St Monans; they were still in common use on the west coast but, on the east coast, only much further north.

  Before the building of safe harbours with adequate defences against the sea, fishing boats had to be small and light enough to be hauled up on to a beach or through a gap in the rocks, known as a ‘goat’.

  ‘My grandfather fished from an open boat, no more than twenty feet in length and powered by a single sail and oars.’ Willy told me proudly.

  Willy’s grandfather survived to old age but many did not and regular disasters eventually brought changes. When it became possible for boats to tie up safely inside a harbour wall, larger, more powerful designs appeared. Willy, of course, knew all about it.

  ‘Skaffies are less than thirty feet long with a broad beam and shallow draft. They’re easier to handle but slower than Fifies. Nowadays, Fifies have partially covered decks, as Beautiful Star will have. It’s the dipping lugs that give them their speed but watch out when the sails swing round. That can be dangerous. Overall, though, there’s no safer boat than a Fifie.’

  I got my own back with village history. I had a copy of a book by Mr John Jack, an odd man who ran a private school in the village. It was full of good stories. The village had two spellings, Monans and Monance, both taken from the name of its founder, Monan, an Irish missionary who was supposed to have been killed by Vikings in the ninth century, but its original name was Inverin. There were lots of stories about Monan, such as that he was a hermit who lived in a cave, which may have been true, and that he had the power of healing, which probably was not.

  One of the best of Mr Jack’s stories concerned the fishermen’s hatred of pigs. No St Monans fisherman would put to sea if he had the misfortune to see a pig on the way to his boat because pigs were creatures of the devil and omens of evil. The word ‘pig’ was seldom used; ‘the beast’ and ‘curly tail’ were safer.

  In medieval times St Monans was divided into two halves. Overtown, at the top of the hill, was where the farmers lived, and Nethertown, by the sea, where the fishermen lived. The fishermen hated the farmers and their pigs and one day they all set off up the hill with knives and sticks to deal with them once and for all. But the farmers saw them coming and started poking their pigs with pitchforks to make them angry. When they were let out of their pens the pigs charged at the fishermen and chased them back down the hill.

  It was not only pigs but ministers whom a fisherman hoped not to meet on a sailing day. If he did, he believed that the minister would meet his body when he returned. No St Monans fisherman would launch a boat on a Friday because St Monan had been killed on a Friday; and the church bell was taken down from its place on a nearby tree when the herring came up the Forth because, if it were accidentally rung, the fish might be frightened away. Thirteen was an unlucky number and if a boat left harbour with a leaky kettle on board there would be a death on the voyage. Fishermen are a superstitious lot.

  They also had a reputation for dourness – not surprising considering the life they led. The North Sea is harsh, unforgiving and often terrifying. On their boats they had little time for talk. But, back on land, making repairs, mending their nets, or just sitting smoking their clay pipes on the harbour wall, they made up for it. They all had tales to tell, many of them much embellished.

  Father told one about a certain ‘Diamond Donald’, who was very proud of his earring. Earrings were not uncommon among fishermen but only Donald had one with a diamond in it. At least he claimed it was a diamond. Unfortunately, Donald’s earring disappeared while he was out fishing and he convinced himself that it had fallen overboard and been swallowed by a fish. From then on he frequently asked the lassies to look out for his earring when they were gutting the fish. ‘If you find a diamond earring,’ he told them, ‘it’ll be mine, for sure.’ In some versions of the story the earring was found inside a fish by a lassie who wore it on her wedding day but, in any case, Donald never got it back.

  Father loved telling us stories and he never minded our questions. He would sit in his favourite rocking chair by the range, sometimes tying and untying knots in a short length of rope, sometimes examining his prins to make sure the lettering was clear, sometimes just sitting. James was the most persistent questioner. ‘How do you know where the fish are, pa?’

  ‘Some say they can smell the oil on the herring, but the birds are the best guides. If solan geese are diving you can be sure of a shoal.’ Father spoke with the soft accent of a Fife man, often leaving the final ‘g’ off the end of a word.

  ‘Why are the herring called “Silver Darlings”?’

  ‘When you see a big shoal feeding near the surface in the moonlight, it looks just like a sheet of silver. And they’re our darlings because they’re our living. Without the darlings, what would we do?’

  ‘Are you ever afraid?’

  ‘Aye, often.’

  ‘Can you swim, pa?’

  ‘No, James. Few can swim. We’d rather go quick to God if we’re in the water.’

  ‘How many kinds of fish are there in the sea, pa?’

  ‘Very many, though only God knows exactly how many. We chase the herring, and there are others who catch the ling and the cod with long lines and hooks. Sometimes we even catch a salmon in our nets but we never use its name on board. The sound of its own name frightens away the salmon. We call it “the red fish”. It doesn’t mind that.’

  I was more interested in places than fish and wanted to know where he had been.

  ‘I’ve been to Lerwick in the north,’ he told me, ‘and as far south as Lowestoft. You might see a thousand boats in the harbours there. It’s a grand sight. Boys jump across them from one end of the harbour to the other without ever getting their feet wet.’

  The walls of our cottage were decorated with reminders of fishing ports up and down the east coast of the country – china plates from Hull, coloured glass from Wick, a small watercolour from Grimsby. Father loved them.

  At sea, fishermen look out for each other; in such an environment, they must. But there was rivalry, too, especially between the villages. Disputes between skippers were common, usually to do with lines being cut or not being cut by another boat. Robert liked to tell stories about the men from nearby Cellardyke. ‘Daft Dykers’ he called them.

  ‘You have to watch out for the Dykers’, he said. ‘If they think you’ve a good catch, they’ll rub up against your hull to try and steal some of your luck. That James Murray did it to us only last week and the fish disappeared. I’d never do that.’ But we knew he would. Rubbing up for luck was a common practice.

  By the end of June when all the stems had been fitted to the keel, we could begin to admire the size and sweep of Beautiful Star. ‘This will be one of our finest boats,’ Mr Miller told us, ‘and we’re very proud to be building her.’

  The next step was to fit the planking. While the keel, stems, stern post, frames and beams were oak, the planking was larch. As usual, Willy knew why.

  ‘Larch actually comes from America but there’s plenty of it now at Balcarres and it makes the best planking because i
t has a very long life. Over a hundred years.’

  The planks were selected, sawn, fitted to the frame of the boat and riveted together, with their grain following the shape of the mould. Some of the tools used in this process were fascinating. A fearsome-looking maul with a sharp end used to sink nails below the level of the wood reminded me of a tomahawk; there was a strange long-headed mallet for driving in caulking irons and a three-foot drawing bar for pulling out nails. Willy once challenged me to pull out a nail with the bar. It looked easy enough but I soon found out why it was so long. The rectangular tapered nails hammered in across the grain of the wood were almost impossible to move.

  Eventually with the frame, stem and stern posts in place, oak beams were fitted crossways and larch planking set over them to form the deck. When bulwarks were built up around her edge, Beautiful Star at last looked exactly what her name promised – a beautiful boat.

  Another of Willy’s pleasures was introducing me to his friends. Mungo Walker was an apprentice in the firm of Macdonald and Smith, sailmakers. Their yard was close to Miller’s, so they did most of the repair work that came in and made the sails for new boats. They made the sails for Beautiful Star.

  The first time Willy took me there to meet Mungo he had a warning. ‘Don’t be surprised when you see Mungo. He’s a good man and he knows a lot about sail-making.’

  When we entered the yard Mungo was sitting on an upturned half-barrel, working on a sail. He had a humped back and a leg that stuck out at an odd angle, but he greeted us with a big smile and a wave. ‘Morning, Willy. And who’s this? Have you made a friend at last?’

  Mungo’s hands were the largest and strongest I had ever seen, as if to make up for the strength he lacked in his back and legs. He explained patiently how the cotton canvas was cut to a scale plan and sewn with long needles and a tool called a palm, and how eyelets were cut and sewn into each sail for the ropes, which would attach it to the mast. ‘When the sails leave here,’ he said, ‘they’re as white as snow, but after their first season they’re boiled in cutch to protect them from the salt water. Cutch comes from the bark of an acacia tree. It turns them brown. I wish they could stay white – they look much finer when they’re white.’

  He told us that a foresail could be completed by two skilled men in about a week and that the yard was always busy with making new sails and repairing old ones. ‘Willy told me about the steam boats up in Aberdeen,’ he said, ‘but I don’t believe him. We’ll always need sails. There’s nothing to beat a good sailing boat.’

  Mungo’s disability was no handicap for a sailmaker and like all the craftsmen who served the fishing industry, he took great pride in his work. Mungo’s sails, Willy assured me, would never let anyone down.

  By contrast to a sailmaker, an expert cooper could make as many as seventy barrels a week, which was just as well because the demand for barrels was enormous. Jock Fraser, whose yard was at the other end of The Shore, had been making them for over forty years. He told us that the best barrels were made from Scandinavian spruce trees. He worked without plans or written measurements of any kind. The spruce trunks were first split into staves and left in the open to dry, which might take two years or more. When they were ready, Jock trimmed the staves and shaped them with a draw knife, dressed each end, fitted them to a frame and put them on an iron hoop. Chippings from the timber yard were used to fuel the fire needed for the shaping, which Mr Fraser did entirely by eye. The top and bottom of the barrel were fitted into grooves in the staves and if there was no leakage when water was poured in, the iron hoop was replaced by permanent wooden ones. It was a complicated process requiring a master’s skill, but carried out at speed.

  We spent hours in Mr Fraser’s yard, watching him at work and savouring the smells of timber and wood smoke.

  Although Willy would have nothing to do with the countryside, I did eventually drag him on a short walk along the old coastal path towards Elie. We took a detour to look at the ruins of Ardross Castle, once owned by the Anstruther family, and at Lady’s Tower, built in the eighteenth century by Lady Janet Anstruther as a bathing hut. Her Ladyship enjoyed bathing naked in the sea and employed a footman to ring a bell if anyone approached while she was swimming. Foolishly, I told Willy this. I should have known better.

  ‘It’s hot enough, Julia. Let’s have a swim.’ I had no intention of swimming, naked or not, but Willy was serious. ‘Then you keep watch and make a noise like a bell if anyone comes, and I’ll try the water.’ And with that, he went behind the tower, undressed and waded into the sea.

  When I looked, he was waist deep. He swam out for twenty yards or so, then turned on his back and waved. I was about to shout at him to swim back when a voice behind me said, ‘Good afternoon, Julia. And who is your brave friend?’ The minister, Mr Foggo, out for one of his strolls, must have seen us and had crept up silently.

  I felt myself blush like a tomato. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Foggo. Willy Miller. We were taking a walk when Willy felt like a swim. He’s an impulsive fellow, you know.’

  ‘Indeed. And a naked one, I see. How sensible of you not to join him.’ Tipping his tall hat, he continued on his way.

  Willy, who must have seen Mr Foggo behind me, emerged from the water bent over with laughter. He shook himself like a dog and retrieved his clothes. He was in no hurry to put them on and sat on the grass until he was dry. I tried not to look but he was laughing so much, I had to say something. ‘Willy Miller, you must have seen him. Why didn’t you shout?’

  ‘Why didn’t you make a noise like a bell?’

  ‘Because I didn’t see him, you big oaf.’

  ‘Ah, well. Now we’re for it. It’ll be the Church Elders for us.’

  ‘But we haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Try telling old Foggo that. By this evening, every Church Elder will be after our blood.’

  The thought of six puritanical old men baying for his blood did not seem to bother Willy. I found it rather alarming. The Elders were a fearsome group who met once a month. Willy’s cousin Mabel and her young man had twice been summoned before them, having been found entwined once in a haystack and once among the sand dunes near the windmill. ‘Mabel and Donald were terrified,’ Willy said. ‘The first time was bad enough, but the second time they thought Foggo was going to explode. She said he kept jabbing his finger at them while they had to stand still and listen. “You have sinned against God’s laws,” he shouted, his eyes bulging with fury, “not once, but twice. You must pray for forgiveness every day and for the strength to resist the temptations of your miserable flesh. This must not happen again.” After a good deal more like this, he absolved them from “the sin of pre-marital fornication”, so that they could be readmitted to church where they were to do their praying every Sunday. Mabel and Donald were a bit unsteady when they left but I don’t think old Foggo’s sermon worked. They were just more careful.’

  That was the end of our walk. Home we went, Willy in fine good humour, I distinctly apprehensive. I did not relish the thought of having to explain myself to Father. He was rather strict about such things.

  Herring are pelagic fish, rising to the surface at night to feed. Pelagic is not a word one might expect children in an Adventure School to know, but ours did. By the time they moved on to the Parish School there was very little they did not know about herring, even the few who did not come from fishing families.

  They knew that the great herring shoals could cover as much as four square miles and that the annual journey of the herring took them from their winter grounds off Norway to the seas around the Shetland Isles and the north of Scotland in late winter and spring, and then southwards to the Wash and East Anglia in the autumn.

  And they knew that by August the shoals were in and around the Forth, which is when the East Neuk villages were at their busiest. This time was named for the ancient Celtic festival of Lammas, celebrated on the first of August. It was called the Lammas Drave. I hated it.

  When the herring arrived in the
Forth, the whole village was galvanised. Every spare bed was occupied, every kitchen turned out endless pots of tea and bowls of soup and every spare inch of ground was covered with drying nets. From first light to last, the harbour and The Shore were noisy, crowded, and reeking. Extra men were taken on for the Drave by the skippers, some from the north, others local tradesmen out to earn some extra money.

  My cousin David was a shoemaker who shut up his shop during the Drave and went fishing on The Angel. As a ‘half dealsman’, he did not supply his own nets or lines and so took a smaller share of the profits. During the Drave it was still worth his while to put away his cobbler’s tools and go to sea.

  Almost everyone was involved in one way or another and even I had to help out. The school was closed in August so I had no excuse. Margaret and Agnes did not mind and James loved it. Alexander was too young to do much but he came with Mother and collected scran for the cat. When the boats were being unloaded, there were plenty of scraps to be found.

  Our cousins, the Patersons and the Allans, were flat out too. Cousin David’s father, Uncle David, had Quest which usually came back with The Angel, and Uncle William was steersman for father.

  At about six o’clock each morning we all went down to the harbour to wait for the fleet to return. As soon as they were secured safely inside the harbour wall, the families were on board, unloading the catch, rolling up nets to be taken away for mending and sluicing down the hold with seawater, ready for the next trip that evening.

  By that time cotton had largely replaced hemp and linen. It was much lighter so that more nets could be carried on each boat, but it broke more easily, even when soaked in linseed oil or alum water, and the mesh had to be regularly measured to ensure that it had not shrunk below the legal minimum of one inch square. It all made for more work.