Going below

As I get older I seem to spend more time reflecting on the past (probably because there's more of it than the future) and I quite often think back to my teenage years as a crew member on one of my grandfathers fishing smacks. I was born into a Northend fishing family of many, many generations that worked mainly in the Wash ( a stretch of water between King's Lynn and the North sea filled with shifting sandbanks and deep channels). The catch was mostly cockles and occasionally mussels, once in a while I would go shrimping with my father (the Wash was home to the unique 'pink' shrimp) but I do remember at least once we went fishing for spratt's...very exciting but unfortunately spratt's all but disappeared in large numbers by the late 60's.

Anyhow, I thought that I should probably immortalise my memories of the old fishing fleet and its odd assortment of characters and traditions and I will begin with that least looked forward to event 'the early morning tide'....whether it was summer or winter the early tides meant going below (what locals call putting out to sea) at ungodly hours of 2 and 3 in the morning, an especially unpleasant prospect if your smack didn't have a wheelhouse and steering a course meant standing at the rear of the hold, or even worse, sitting aft with a tiller in hand....the only comfort a mug of hot, sweet tea and plenty of baccy.