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

by Mary E. Pearce

  While they were easing the boat round, one of the long, low-backed waves came at them in such a way that they shipped the top of it over their bows and as the water swirled round their feet, Brice reached for the dipper and bailed it out. He had to use his left hand, for his right arm had stiffened completely, all the way from shoulder to wrist.

  ‘Can you manage all right, skipper?’ Clem Pascoe asked.

  Brice, sitting up again, made a wry face.

  ‘This is all I’m good for,’ he said.

  ‘Well, we’re bound to get a few more of those, so you won’t lack employment, you may be sure. Anyway, tes your job to keep us clean on our proper course.’

  ‘Keep a look-out for ships, boys,’ Jacky Johns said hopefully. ‘Any old sort, it don’t matter which, so long as there’s Christian men in them.’

  They needed no telling; their eyes were skinned; but even if they spotted a ship, what were their chances, young Reg asked, of being seen in this small craft, sitting so low in the sea, without any sail sticking up from her?

  ‘Chances, my son? Only God knows that. Tes up to us to have faith in him. But if the worst should come to the worst, well, our chaps’ll be out again tonight and they’ll be looking out for us. Trouble is, twill be dark then, and if we get another foggy night ‒’

  ‘Seems to me,’ Reg said, ‘we’d better put our backs into it.’

  As the sun rose in the clear sky the men lifted their faces to it, gratefully, this way and that, so that the faint warmth of its rays should play over their stiffened skin and penetrate their weary flesh. But gratefully though they lifted their faces, the sun’s faint, teasing warmth only made them more keenly aware that their bodies were chilled through to the bone, and when they gazed out over the sea they felt its unending coldness and greyness flowing in their very veins.

  Shivering, they bent to the oars.

  Chapter Nine

  On the quay at Polsinney that Tuesday morning, the fish merchants and local jowsters had resigned themselves to a long wait, for the fog lay thick on the sea and at ten o’clock showed no sign of clearing. By half past ten it was shifting, however, and soon the greater part of the fleet could be seen, lying-to outside the bay, waiting until it should be safe enough to venture close inshore. By eleven o’clock the fog had quite gone, the April sun was shining thinly, and the first boats were drawing in to the quayside.

  Gus, sitting out in the yard, watched them through his spyglass. Speedwell. Trelawney. Ellereen. Cousin Jacky. Samphire. Sea Breeze. These were the first boats to come in and each had its escort of hovering gulls, showing that the fishing had been good that night. He saw Bob Larch of the Ellereen throw a good-sized dogfish to Dicky Limpet on the quay and, watching Dicky’s wild efforts to catch and keep hold of his slippery prize, he quietly joined in the laughter that floated across the harbour pool.

  At half past eleven Maggie brought him a mug of cocoa. She stood looking across at the fish-quay, where the boats were now berthed two and three deep.

  ‘Has the Emmet got a good catch?’

  ‘The Emmet haven’t come in yet.’

  ‘Not come in?’ Maggie said. She put up a hand to shield her eyes and looked out across the bay. ‘It isn’t like Brice to lag behind.’

  ‘He’s not the only one late in today. There are quite a few to come yet. The fog must’ve been pretty bad out there.’

  Gus swung his spyglass round until he too was looking across the bay. Four boats were rounding Struan Point. The spyglass dwelt on each in turn.

  ‘Is the Emmet among them?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  He put the spyglass into his lap, took the mug of cocoa from her, and blew on it with noisy breath.

  ‘They seem to have had a good fishing last night. Speedwell’s got a pretty good catch. So have Trelawney and Ellereen. And I heard Watty Grenville shouting the odds that he’d got half a stone of turbot aboard.’

  ‘Then there’s a good chance that Brice will have got a turbot for you.’

  ‘If he haven’t,’ Gus said, ‘I shall have something to say to him!’

  Maggie went back indoors, leaving Gus sipping his cocoa. But the instant he knew he was alone he put the mug on the bench beside him and took up his spyglass again. Two more boats had appeared off the headland, Maid Molly and Little Hob, and these were soon followed by three more, Betty Stevens, Pintail and Swift. Gus gave an anxious sigh and counted the boats in the harbour pool. All except the Emmet were accounted for. Once again he looked out to sea.

  When next he picked up his mug of cocoa, it had gone quite cold. He emptied most of it onto the ground. And then, as he moved to set down the mug, he saw that Maggie had come to the door again and was standing quietly watching him.

  ‘You’re worried about them, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘tes time they were in.’

  ‘You think they’ve missed their way in the fog? Gone aground somewhere, perhaps, like the Samphire did last year?’

  ‘Any skipper can miss his way in bad fog but I’ve never known Brice to do it yet. Even the Maid Molly is in and if Sam Cox can make harbour any fool can!’

  The Maid Molly had now come into the harbour and, there being no room at the quayside itself, she was berthing beside the Shenandoah. Gus, through his spyglass, was watching her, and he saw that her skipper and crew, instead of setting to work at once to unload their catch, were talking to the men on the other boats. They then crossed the Shenandoah and stepped ashore, and something in the way people gathered, coming from all over the quay, confirmed the old man’s growing fears. He closed his spyglass with a click, thrust it down into the chair, and swung himself round to face Maggie.

  ‘Wheel me down there, will you?’ he said. ‘Something’s happened. Something’s wrong.’

  They were seen coming, of course, making their way round the harbour road, and as they turned onto the fish-quay, Sam Cox and his crew, with a number of other fishermen, came forward to meet them. Their faces showed that they had bad news. There was some constraint among them and all looked towards Sam Cox. Sam carried something in his arms, which he laid on the ground in front of Gus. It was one of the Emmet’s hatches. It bore the number PY 19.

  Gus, in silence, looked up at Sam, and Sam, haltingly, told his tale. They, like the rest of the fleet, had been out fishing the Bara Breck. They had started for home at five o’clock and at half past five, still in thick fog, they had found themselves amongst the floating wreckage of what they judged to be a fair-sized lugger.

  ‘There were broken timbers and spars and all sorts, bobbing about everywhere, and there were a few baskets, too, with the lines all trailing out of them, so we knowed twas a fishing-boat straight away. Then we got that hatch inboard and there was her number painted on it. That told us who she was. The old Emmet PY 19.’ Sam paused. Cleared his throat. ‘Seems she was run down,’ he said, ‘and that must’ve been a pretty big ship, cos some of those timbers had been smashed right through.’

  Gus and Maggie both stared at the hatch and its white-painted number, PY 19, but what they each saw, in their mind’s eye, was the helpless lugger at sea in the fog and the six men caught up in that moment of horror as the ship came at them to smash and destroy.

  Maggie still stood behind Gus’s chair and he turned himself round to look at her. Pale with shock, she met his gaze and then, with eyes full of pain and pity, she looked towards a group of women standing nearby, at the edge of the crowd. These were the women whose menfolk made up the Emmet’s crew and they had already been told the news. Martin Eddy’s young wife, scarcely more than eighteen and soon to give birth to her first child, stood with the tears streaming down her face, and the older women, no less stricken, were gathered about her protectively.

  Gus began questioning Sam Cox.

  ‘I take it you didn’t find any bodies?’

  ‘No. We’d have brought them home if we had.’

  ‘What about the Emmet’s punt? Was that broken up al
ong with the rest?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tes hard to say. Everything was so scat to bits ‒’

  ‘Easy enough, I should’ve thought, to tell bits of lugger from bits of punt.’

  ‘We didn’t see no sign of the punt, neither whole nor in bits,’ Sam said, ‘but more than likely she was sunk.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘On account of how everything looked.’

  ‘Did you search around at all?’

  ‘Ess, we did. Of course we did. But what with the fog being so bad, there wadn no chance of seeing much.’

  ‘What time did you say that was?’

  ‘Half after five, near enough.’

  ‘Daylight, then.’

  ‘Just about. But what with the fog being so bad ‒’

  ‘If you had waited for the fog to clear, you’d have stood a better chance of seeing something.’

  ‘Ess, we might’ve done, I suppose, ‒ if there’d been anything to see. But we should have had some good long wait cos that didn’t clear till well after ten and we’d got a catch of fish to get home.’

  There was a silence after this and the Maid Molly’s crew, looked uncomfortable. One of them, Amos Saundry by name, muttered something under his breath. Then Sam Cox spoke again.

  ‘That was a nasty shock to us, finding the Emmet wrecked like that, and we all thought the best thing was to come on home as fast as we could and let folk know what had happened to her.’

  ‘No wonder bad news travels fast,’ Gus said. ‘Tes because people like you are always in such a hurry-all to spread it around. But if only you had waited a while you might’ve brought good news instead of bad.’

  ‘What good news?’

  ‘You might just have found the punt and maybe the crew alive in her.’

  ‘I understand how you d’feel, Gus Tallack, but if you’d seen that wreckage for yourself, and the way those timbers were splintered and smashed, you wouldn’t pin much faith on the punt coming out of it in one piece.’

  ‘If you’d had a nephew on board of her, you’d pin your faith on anything.’

  ‘Tedn fair to say that,’ said Sam Cox, ‘cos Brice was always a good friend to me and Jacky Johns was my brother-in-law.’

  ‘Was? Was?’ Gus exclaimed. ‘You said you didn’t find any bodies.’

  ‘No, that’s true, there wadn no sign ‒’

  ‘Then how do you know they’re not alive?’

  Sam Cox shifted uncomfortably and his glance kept straying, in a meaningful way, towards the missing fishermen’s wives who had drawn close and were listening.

  ‘Seems to me you do wrong to raise poor people’s hopes like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry about us,’ Betsy Coit said to him. ‘If there’s any hope at all, we d’want to know about it. And the next thing we d’want to know is ‒ what is there to be done about it?’

  ‘Well, I reckon the first thing we should do,’ said Tommy Bray of the Ellereen, ‘is to send a message round to Polzeale for the lifeboat to go and search for them.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea than that,’ said another voice from among the crowd, and Ralph Ellis of the Bright Star elbowed his way forward until he stood in front of Gus. ‘Why waste time sending round to Polzeale when we can send a boat ourselves?’

  ‘What boat had you got in mind?’

  ‘The Bright Star of course.’

  ‘You mean you’re willing to go out and search?’

  ‘That’s what I mean, sure nuff, and I speak for my crew as well.’

  ‘Why you more than anyone else?’

  ‘First, cos the Bright Star’s a good fast boat. Second, because when we went out last night, we didn’t manage to get our bait. We shot three times without a sniff and at midnight we decided to come back home. So we’re all fresh men ‒ we slept in our beds ‒ and we haven’t got any fish to unload.’ There was a pause and then Ralph said: ‘Besides, they’re all old shipmates of mine, and I know they’d do the same for me.’

  ‘How soon can you be ready to go?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. No, say half an hour. We shall need to put plenty of food aboard ‒’

  ‘Then we’d better get a move on, I seem.’

  ‘We?’ Ralph said.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming with you,’ Gus said.

  News that the Emmet had been lost at sea was already spreading fast and as Maggie and Gus returned home they were watched by little groups of people who had gathered along the harbour road. One or two tried to question them but Gus gave only the briefest answers and ordered Maggie to wheel him on.

  On entering the cottage kitchen, Gus went straight to the cupboard under the stairs and got out his old white oilskin smock and sou’wester, his old brown leather sea-boots, and two big hessian bags which he handed to Maggie. Into one bag, as instructed by him, she put all the food the larder offered, together with two bottles of rum; and into the other she put blankets and shawls and all Gus’s spare warm clothes.

  While they were thus occupied the door burst open and Jim came in. He had heard the news on his way home from school. He looked at Gus with anguished eyes.

  ‘Do you really think they might be alive? Out there somewhere? In the punt?’

  ‘I don’t know, boy. I aim to find out.’

  ‘You’re going out in the Bright Star?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘No,’ Gus said. ‘You must stay at home and look after your mother. But there is something you can do.’

  ‘What?’ Jim asked.

  ‘We haven’t got nearly enough food and I want you to go to Mrs Beale’s.’

  Gus, busy with pencil and paper, wrote these brief words: ‘1 Whole Cheese. 4 Quartern Loaves. Butter for Loaves. Jar of Jam.’ He gave the note to boy Jim and found him another hessian bag.

  ‘Don’t bring the things back here. Take them straight down to the quay. I want you to be as quick as you can, so don’t let anyone hinder you.’

  For an instant the boy hesitated. There were things he wanted badly to know. But then, with a nod, he turned and ran.

  Gus was now ready to go. The two heavy bags lay close to his chair. He gave a little sign to Maggie and she lifted them into his lap where, already, his oilskins and boots were stowed together in a bulky bundle. She stepped back and stood looking at him.

  ‘Gus, is it wise for you to go?’

  ‘You want me to find Brice, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re not really fit,’ Maggie said. ‘And you haven’t been to sea for years. Leave it to the crew of the Bright Star.’

  ‘Brice is my nephew. My own kith and kin. I belong to go out and look for him. And if he’s out there, still alive, I swear by Almighty God I shall find him and bring him back to you. As to my being fit, I’m just about as strong as a horse! Tes just that my legs aren’t much use to me and that won’t matter much in a boat.’

  ‘You’re an obstinate man.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  ‘You will take care?’

  ‘Be sure of that.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll wheel you down.’

  When they returned to the fish-quay, they found that two or three boats had moved, thus making room for the Bright Star at the farthest end of the quay, the best place for getting away. The mast had been stepped and the sails hoisted and Ralph Ellis and his crew were carrying casks of fresh water aboard, together with the blankets, clothes and provisions which Betsy Coit and the other Emmet men’s wives were hurriedly bringing to the quayside. Ralph Ellis’s wife was there, too, and so were the wives of some of his crew; and altogether such a crowd had gathered at the far end of the quay that Jim, arriving with his bag of provisions, had difficulty in getting through.

  Just after one o’clock Pony Jenkin, the Bright Star’s first hand, lifted Gus from his wheelchair, carried him aboard in his arms, and put him to sit on a straw pallet placed on a coil of rope in the stern. In another few minutes the boat had cast off; there was a regular creak and spla
sh as her great sweeps were brought into play; and, with the floodtide strong against her, she was moving slowly and cumbrously towards the narrow harbour mouth. Maggie lifted a hand to wave and Jim beside her did the same. Gus touched the peak of his cap in response, then turned his bearded face to the sea.

  The watching crowd were almost silent, perhaps because many people there felt the boat’s mission to be forlorn, but as it slowly drew away, Betsy Coit, at the quayside, called after it in a clear voice that carried across the harbour pool.

  ‘The Lord bless you, Bright Star, and grant you find our men alive.’

  And everywhere along the quay the voices of two or three hundred people, who had heard Betsy Coit’s prayer, quietly said ‘Amen’.

  For a while longer the crowd remained, watching as the Bright Star moved from the harbour into the bay and stood out to sea. Then people began to disperse; the fishermen returned to their work of unloading their catches; a few jowsters, already supplied, drove away in their carts. But one fisherman, Matthew Crowle, came over to where Maggie was talking to Betsy Coit and the three other Emmet wives.

  ‘Tedn only the Bright Star that’ll be looking out for that punt,’ he said. ‘Tes all of us. The whole fleet. We’ll be out at the Bara Breck again tonight and we shall be sailing well spread out so that if she’s there we shall surely see her. Of course it’ll be dark by the time we get there and if there’s fog like there was last night we shan’t see nothing at all. But tomorrow we shall wait till it clears ‒ we’re all agreed on that ‒ and we shall be keeping a sharp look-out. The whole lot of us. One and all.’

  He touched his cap and walked away and Maggie, absently watching him, found herself thinking of Rachel Tallack. She turned to speak to Betsy Coit.

  ‘Has anyone seen Mrs Tallack? Has she been told what’s happened?’

  The four women eyed one another. None knew the answer. They shook their heads.

  ‘I’d forgotten all about her,’ Ann Pascoe said, ‘and, wicked or not, tes only the truth.’