Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Have I got a good sea-stomach?’ Jim asked.

  ‘I would say so, yes,’ Brice said.

  ‘Tes nearly six weeks since I last went out.’

  ‘Six weeks? Surely not!’

  ‘Well, a brave long time, anyway.’

  It was a day at the end of September, a bright sunny day, very warm, and the Emmet was laid up on the beach at Porthvole, supported by the wooden ‘legs’ that kept her upright on her keel. The pilchard season had been a disappointment that year, both for the seiners and the drifters, and for almost three weeks now the Emmet had caught no fish at all. Brice and his crew therefore had decided to call it a day; the pilchard nets had been put into store and the mackerel nets had been overhauled ready for taking aboard; and it seemed to Brice a good opportunity to give the boat an extra ‘paying’. The crew, however, were not there; they had gone with their families to the Michaelmas Fair at Polzeale; so Brice and Jim, on the beach, were cleaning and scraping the Emmet’s hull in preparation for tarring it.

  Brice, on a ladder against the boat’s side, was working with scraper and brush while Jim, with a hammer and chisel, was knocking off the barnacles that clung below the waterline. Nearby, on a fire of driftwood burning between four flat stones, stood a large iron pot filled with tar and the smell of it, with the smell of the woodsmoke, was hot and rough and rather pleasant, drifting on the fresh sea breeze. There were ten or twelve other luggers dotted about on the beach but because it was Polzeale Fair Day only a handful of men could be seen working on them.

  ‘Can I come mackerel driving with you?’

  ‘One day, perhaps. I’ll have to see.’

  ‘How can I ever learn anything if I never get the chance to go out?’

  ‘You have been out.’

  ‘Three times, that’s all.’

  ‘You’ll have your fill of it soon enough when you leave school and join the crew.’

  ‘That won’t be until I’m twelve.’

  ‘And how long is that?’

  ‘Two years and a bit.’

  ‘It will soon pass. You mark my words.’

  ‘Georgie Dunn and Denzil Grose were only ten when they went to sea.’

  ‘They come from poor families, that’s why. Georgie’s father is laid up sick and Denzil’s mother, as you know, is a widow with five other children to raise. So they had to leave school and go to work.’

  Jim, with a smart blow of his hammer and chisel, knocked a barnacle from its place on the hull.

  ‘I wish I was poor like Georgie Dunn.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’

  ‘Yes, I do!’

  ‘Well, if you were to ask him,’ Brice said, ‘perhaps he’d like to change places with you.’

  Jim looked up with a sheepish smile that spread over his fresh-skinned face and then slowly faded again. Georgie Dunn was poor indeed. His family lived on parish help and this meant that the boots he wore were branded on the inside to show they were parish property.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that, should I? About wishing I was poor?’

  ‘Nobody heard it, only me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Shall I put some more wood on the fire?’

  ‘Yes, if you think it needs it.’

  While Jim was thus occupied, poking bits of dry wood into the fire under the tar-pot, his mother came along the wharf and down the slipway onto the beach. She had a piece of paper in her hand and Jim, guessing that he would be sent on an errand, glanced up at her with a mutinous scowl. Couldn’t she see that he was busy, helping Uncle Brice with the boat?

  ‘Your uncle Gus wants you to go to the boatyard with this note. Wait for Mr Laycock’s answer and then bring it home to him.’

  The boatyard. That was different. Jim was always pleased to go there and, taking the note from his mother, he paused only long enough to exchange a quick word with Brice.

  ‘You’ll wait for me, won’t you, before you begin tarring the boat?’

  ‘Yes, all right, I’ll wait for you. ‒ So long as you’re not gone all day.’

  Brice, left alone with Maggie, stepped down from the ladder and picked up the tools Jim had dropped on the sand.

  ‘He’s growing up fast, that boy of yours.’

  ‘Much too fast,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s very independent sometimes.’

  ‘Finding his feet.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He’s quite determined to be a fisherman.’

  ‘Yes, he can talk of nothing else. It’s always the fishing, the boat, the sea …’

  ‘It must worry you very much, after what happened at Porthgaran, but I notice you never try to discourage him.’

  ‘I know it wouldn’t be any use. I’d keep him from the sea if I could, but I know I can’t. For one thing, it’s in his blood and there’s no going against that. For another thing ‒’

  ‘What?’ Brice said.

  ‘He models himself on you,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You are his hero. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘In that case you must wish I was anything but a fisherman.’

  ‘No,’ Maggie said, absently, ‘I don’t wish that.’

  There was a long silence between them. Maggie was thinking about the past. But she was thinking of Brice, too, and there was something she wanted to say.

  ‘My father took terrible risks. He went to sea time and again in a boat he knew to be unsound and in the end he drowned himself and five other men besides. But you are a different kind of man from my father and you never take any risks except those that can’t be helped. That’s why I’m glad that when the time comes, Jim will go to sea with you. You’re a good seaman. One of the best. I’ve heard Gus say so oftentimes.’

  ‘Does he say that?’ Brice was surprised. ‘Well, whatever I know of the sea, I learnt it all from him, and he was a seaman if you like. There was no one to touch my uncle Gus in the days when he was fit and strong. Anyone will tell you that.’

  ‘I know what they say about Gus and I know what they say about you. No young boy, going to sea, could be in better hands than yours. Jim is intelligent. Quick to learn. And I know he’ll learn nothing but good from you.’

  Brice stood looking at her. Not a muscle moved in his strong, lean face. And when in a while he answered her it was with a certain formality that kept his voice toneless and flat.

  ‘I shall do my best, I promise you, to see that it is always so.’ And then, because of the way she looked at him, he asked: ‘Is there something troubling you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m often troubled,’ she said, ‘when I think back over the past … Of how I first came to the farm and persuaded your mother to take me in … I’m not surprised she hates me when I think how I came, a perfect stranger, and caused such an upset in your lives.’

  ‘That was ten years ago. You are scarcely a stranger now. And Uncle Gus at least has cause to be thankful for you coming. You saved his life.’

  ‘But you have no such cause,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘We talked like this once before. Years ago. Do you remember? I said then ‒ and I say the same now ‒ that being cut out of my uncle’s will meant less than nothing to me.’

  ‘You said you did mind about losing the boat.’

  ‘Did I say that? Perhaps I did.’ Brice looked up at the Emmet and with a quick, mechanical movement, scraped at a patch of moss with his scraper. ‘But I haven’t lost her, have I, not yet? I’m still her skipper ‒ so far at least ‒ and will continue so, probably, until Jim is old enough to take over from me.’

  ‘And then?’ Maggie asked.

  Brice smiled.

  ‘Jim is not quite ten. We don’t need to think about that yet.’

  ‘No, perhaps not,’ Maggie said.

  But afterwards, as she walked slowly home, she was thinking about it a great deal.

  Chapter
Seven

  The year 1879 was a bad one for the Cornish fisheries. The pilchard fishing had been poor everywhere and in most areas the mackerel fishing turned out little better. Catches were slight throughout the season and already, by early December, many boats were coming back ‘clean’.

  The Emmet was no exception. Night after night she shot her nets, only to take them up empty, or to draw in a few rabblefish, which, when divided among the crew, were ‘scarcely enough to feed the cat,’ as Ralph Ellis said with great bitterness.

  ‘I hope to God the herring season will turn out better than this!’

  ‘Tes all we can hope for, edn it?’ Billy Coit said snappily.

  Tempers were often short aboard the Emmet at this time, as they were on all those boats whose crews, having suffered two bad seasons, faced hardship and poverty.

  During the first week in December the mackerel nets were put into store and the herring nets were taken aboard and early on a calm Tuesday afternoon the Emmet, with the rest of the fleet, set sail for the herring grounds thirty or forty miles up the Channel.

  The season began well enough. Catches were not big at first but that was only to be expected, for the weather continued soft and mild, and it wanted a good steady breeze to set the herring shoals running. In the new year there was a change; a cooling and freshening of the air; catches improved accordingly and the drifter crews, with high hopes, talked of it being a good season. One night the Emmet caught ten thousand fish; on another twelve and a half thousand.

  ‘Seemingly your good luck haven’t deserted you after all,’ Ralph Ellis said to Brice. ‘None of the others have done so well as us so far.’

  But luck was something you could never take for granted; not if you were a fisherman; and sometimes it happened that what appeared to be good luck could suddenly turn into bad, all in the space of a couple of hours, as Brice and his crew discovered one night early in February.

  They were fishing that stretch of the English Channel which Cornish fishermen called the Dings and which lies some ten to fifteen miles due south of Kibble Head. It was a fine clear night with a brisk wind from the south east and the moon just entering her last quarter. With Brice and Clem Pascoe sharing the watch, the Emmet rode to her fleet of nets, rocking rhythmically on a sea that murmured busily to itself and slap-slapped against the boat’s hull.

  Brice and Clem stood in the bows, looking along the line of floats stretching away into the distance. In the bright moonlight they could see a large number of gulls gathered on the surface of the sea, all along the line of floats, and this was a sure sign that the herring were coming into the nets.

  ‘We’ve found’m tonight, sure nuff,’ Clem said, and put up his nose to sniff the air which was strong with the smell of fish-oil. ‘I wonder how the rest are doing, you.’

  Astern of the Emmet, away to the east, could be seen the lights of the rest of the fleet, like tiny stars in the distant darkness. Brice turned and studied them and saw that a few of the lights were on the move.

  ‘Some of them are giving up. Four or five of them at least. So plainly they’ve got no fish tonight.’

  ‘Poor souls,’ Clem said, contentedly.

  By six o’clock in the morning, the wind had freshened appreciably and there was a big sea running, causing the Emmet to roll badly. The assembled crew were now at work, shifting ballast in the holds and getting the bankboards and roller in place, ready for hauling in the nets. They were all in high spirits, for they had let down a sample net and, having found it full of fish, knew they were in for a record catch.

  ‘We’ve struck it rich tonight for sure. There’s a herring in every mesh, very nearly, and all prime maties at that. And if we’re the only ones that’ve found’m we’ll be able to ask what price we please! We shall make our fortunes tonight, boys, and not before time, neither.’

  Brice, though he shared their jubilation, was cautious in expressing it because, with the wind and sea as they were, he feared they would have a difficult haul.

  By half past six, all was made ready; the men took a pause for food and drink, then put on their oilskins and big sea-boots; and, as the first light grew in the sky, prepared for the long task of hauling. Brice went forward into the bows and, lying back on the spring rope, began pulling the lugger close up to the nets. Clem Pascoe and Martin Eddy wound in the warp on the capstan and as the first net came splashing up out of the water, Billy Coit and Jacky Johns reached out with eager hands to ease it in over the roller.

  A great many fish fell out of the net and rained down into the sea and the frenzied gulls, flapping and screaming, swooped on them and snatched them up. But the bulk of the catch was firmly enmeshed and at sight of the glittering silver mass the men gave vent to a shout of excitement. This was a splendid catch indeed and although Billy Coit was in his sixties even he had to admit he had never seen anything like it before.

  ‘If this is what the first net is like, how will it be with the rest?’ he said, and Jacky Johns answered him, ‘Billy, my handsome, tes three shoals in one!’

  As the net was pulled in further, however, a change came over these two men, and over the rest of the crew, for, in spite of the heavy bags of ballast carefully stowed on the boat’s port side, she was listing badly to starboard, pulled down by the weight of the nets. Billy Coit gave a shout and the capstan men stopped work at once but even so, such was the list, that when a big sea came rolling at them it broke clean over the gunwale, immersing the men for a moment or two and washing some of the fish from the net, sending them spinning and slithering all along the waterways.

  Brice, his earlier fears not only confirmed but magnified a hundred times, hurried to join the two net-hands and, looking down at the laden net sloping so steeply into the sea, knew at once there was danger in it. He turned towards Billy Coit.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Yes,’ Billy said, in a grim voice, ‘we shall never be able to get them in.’

  Ralph Ellis now came up with a face as black as a thundercloud.

  ‘What do you think you’re talking about? Of course we can damn well get them in!’

  ‘The nets are too heavy. We’ve got too much fish. You can see what’s happening to the boat.’

  ‘Once we’ve got some fish in the holds, that’ll soon steady her,’ Ralph said.

  ‘No, it’s too dangerous,’ Brice said. ‘We shall have to cut away the nets.’

  Another sea came rolling at them and again they shipped it over the bow. The men bent their heads to it and when it had passed they stood in silence, shaking the water out of their eyes. Each, as he hung on to the nets, was sick to the heart with disappointment.

  Every fisherman, being human, dreamt of taking a record catch that would put extra money into his pocket, but this night’s catch was so big that instead of gain it meant heartbreaking loss. Their fleet of nets was one mile long and, with hundreds of thousands of fish enmeshed in them, formed such an enormous weight that if they attempted to haul them in the Emmet would almost surely capsize. All the men knew this. Ralph Ellis knew it as well as the rest. But the bitterness of the loss they faced made it a difficult thing to accept.

  ‘Tedn just your nets you’re talking about, tes ours as well!’ he said to Brice. ‘And two of mine were new this year!’

  ‘Better to lose our nets than our lives,’ Brice said.

  ‘Skipper’s right,’ said Billy Coit, and Ralph Ellis turned away, kicking savagely at a fish that floated in the scummy water frothing along the edge of the deck.

  So the Emmet’s nets were cut away and quickly sank to the bottom of the Dings and in a while, as the crew watched, large numbers of dead fish floated to the surface of the sea and were swooped upon by the ravening gulls. The men turned their backs on this sad sight and set about cleaning the boat, gathering up the few scattered fish and putting them into a basket. Bankboards and roller were stowed away, ballast was redistributed, and the punt was put back into place. They then heaved up the forem
ast, made sail and headed for home, and, having a good strong wind behind them, reached Polsinney at half past ten.

  On the quay, as usual, the fish merchants and jowsters were waiting, but even before the Emmet berthed they could see that she had no fish in her. A few other boats lay at the quayside but they had all been unlucky too.

  ‘They’ve all of’m come in clean so far,’ one old jowster said to Brice, and Ralph Ellis, leaping ashore, said with spluttering anger: ‘At least they’ve still got their nets, haven’t they?’

  He strode off towards the village, leaving Brice and the rest of the crew to explain the loss of their herring nets to the sympathetic crowd on the quay.

  On his way home, an hour later, Brice called at his uncle’s cottage, where the old man and Maggie were expecting him.

  ‘I hear you cut away your nets,’ Gus said without preamble. ‘I’ve just had Ralph Ellis in here. He was feeling pretty sore.’

  ‘We’re none of us over the moon about it but it was something that couldn’t be helped.’

  ‘You are quite sure about that, I suppose?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’

  ‘Ralph seemed to think different from you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brice said tersely, ‘he always does.’

  ‘He said, if you’d only given it a chance, you could’ve got that catch aboard, or part of it at any rate.’

  ‘Since when, might I ask, have you or anyone else taken any notice of Ralph?’ Brice was suddenly very angry and, looking down at his uncle, he said: ‘I’ve skippered the Emmet for thirteen years but perhaps you feel the time has come when you would like to make a change? If so I would prefer that you said so straight out in plain simple words!’

  Gus made a gesture of impatience.

  ‘Now you’re talking plumb foolish,’ he said. ‘I’d back your judgment against Ralph’s any day and well you know it. That’s why I made you skipper in the first place ‒ not because you’re my nephew but because you’re a first-class seaman. It just seemed, from what Ralph said, that you’d been a bit overcautious, perhaps, when you decided to cut away.’