Once Aboard A Cornish Lugger

Paul Greenwood

Description

Former Cornish fisherman Paul Greenwood vividly describes life as a young crewman aboard the Looe lugger Iris in the 1960s. His frank account of the hardships he encountered at sea in "Once Aboard a Cornish Lugger", overcoming sea-sickness, fatigue, cold and wet while working by day and night hauling nets and lines is a brilliant evocation of a bygone age that contrasts with modern conditions in the fishing industry. This account pays tribute to the crewmen he left behind.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Cornualles
• Local history
• Cornwall

Informations

• Publié par: Polperro Heritage Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780957646117
• Langue: English

Extrait

Once Aboard A Cornish Lugger
Paul Greenwood
I dedicate this book to my old skipper Thomas Frank ‘Moogie’ Pengelly (1920-2002)
Contents

Title Page Dedication Preface Introduction Chapter 1 Early Days Chapter 2 The Iris and her Crew Chapter 3 Toughening Up Chapter 4 Teatime Chapter 5 Sleeping Chapter 6 Local Characters Chapter 7 Sharking Chapter 8 Barking the Nets Chapter 9 Herring Fishing Chapter 10 April Gales Chapter 11 The Engines Chapter 12 Working Big Shoals Chapter 12a Superstitions Chapter 14 Fog Chapter 15 Heavy Fishing Chapter 16 A New Fishery Chapter 17 A New Role Postscript Glossary About the Author Acknowledgements Plates Copyright
Preface
D uring the last few years of his retirement, I did my very best to persuade my old skipper, Frank Pengelly, that he should put pen to paper and write his life story. If he had done so, it would have been a fascinating and, I think, historically important composition, because he was the very last lugger skipper left in the port of Looe. His knowledge (common to many when he was a young man) had become unique, and he was the final guardian of it. Frank knew the fishing seasons for the drift nets and long lines, as well as the fishing grounds that covered hundreds of square miles of the channel. Without charts he could navigate the coast from Portland Bill to Lands End, his only aids being a clock, a compass and a tide book.
Unfortunately, by the time he did get around to doing something about it, he was very ill and sadly, he passed on before any real progress had been made.
As a boy I served for four and a half years on his lugger the Iris . I overcame sea sickness and learned my job on deck working the nets and lines with the other four crew men. Frank, or ‘Moogie’ as he was known as, always played his cards very close to his chest. He was the skipper, we were the crew, and provided we did our job on deck, that’s all he required; there was very little encouragement given to learn more.
There are now only a handful of us left who remember those days, and as ‘Moogie’ left it too late, I thought that someone ought to try and record the way of life on those boats before it has all faded from living memory.
Frank’s knowledge was vast, and I can’t pretend for one minute to be able to write the account that he could have written. He was the skipper, I was the boy, so we are coming at the story from two very different angles. But my memories of the time I spent on the Iris are still very vivid, (how could they not be?) and by conferring with the few others remaining from those days, I have endeavoured to keep the account as accurate as possible, although by virtue it is a very personal one.
But before I launch into that tale, I should like to paint in the background history of the Cornish lugger. From the mighty three-masted craft of the smuggling and privateering days of the eighteenth century, to the massive fishing fleets of the late nineteenth century, and the twilight years of the mid to late twentieth century. So you will understand that the those few remaining luggers I write about, working out their last days around the Cornish coast in the 1960s were not there by accident, they had a long, and a proud history.
Paul Greenwood Looe 2007
Introduction
F rom the seventeenth to the mid twentieth century the lugger, in its various forms, was the principle vessel of the Cornish fishing industry. The early boats were clinker built double-ended craft, between 20 and 40 feet in length, with a wide beam and deep draught. Contemporary drawings show open boats, stepping two and three masts. They were used for hand lining to catch hake, whiting, pollack etc, long lining for turbot, ray and conger as well as working short fleets of hand bred drift nets to catch pilchards, herring and mackerel.
Marketing was limited to what the local fish jowters could hawk around the villages and farms. The only fish handled in bulk were pilchards. These were salt cured and pressed into barrels, to be exported to Spain and Italy as a Lent food and to the West Indies where the plantation owners fed them to their slaves. The early luggers looked to be slow sailers and must have been heavy to row in a calm, but they didn’t work very far from home, and as time was not their master, I suppose it mattered little.
Speed only became important when the revenue cutters had to be out paced in the smuggling days of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It was then that we caught a glimpse of what the Cornish shipwrights could really do.
The final form of the smuggling lugger was a splendid fully-decked vessel, the largest of them being up to 75 feet in length; both clinker and carvel construction methods were employed. They stepped three masts, allowing a massive press of sail to be set.
It has been recorded that with a ‘whole sail’ breeze the fastest of them could make the one hundred miles from Cornwall to Roscoff in Brittany in eight hours. That’s an average speed of twelve knots, very smart sailing by today’s standards let alone two hundred plus years ago.
For their size, these craft were very heavily armed and the greatest of them carried twelve to sixteen cannon on the weather deck, and up to a dozen swivel guns, (these, loaded with grape shot, were the anti personnel weapons of the day) as well as a cutlass and a musket for each member of the crew. When running contraband, 30 men were considered sufficient to work the lugger and her cargo, and if necessary, take on a customs cutter. But when Britain was engaged in one of her many wars against France, Spain, Holland, America etc, letters of marque could be obtained. These documents licensed vessels to go privateering against the enemy. So, as well as running their illicit cargoes, they were also likely to be escorting a valuable prize into harbour. At such times, a crew of up to 60 hands was carried, enough men to fight the ship effectively and put a prize crew aboard the enemy ship, should they carry the day. Looking at the earnings of these vessels, (where records have survived) the money and employment they generated puts them on par with today’s tourist industry. Mind you, I suppose there is very little chance of getting killed, imprisoned or hung, for working in a knick-knack shop or a restaurant.
The Cornish smuggling luggers earned for themselves a ferocious reputation, but the crews were well rewarded for the risks they took. For a run to Guernsey or Roscoff and back, a crewman was paid ten pounds, probably more than he would earn in three months working as a fisherman. Any prize money was generously shared, keeping all hands keenly interested in the lugger’s success, and at the same time lifting families from poverty to plenty. Meanwhile the venture capitalists reaped huge dividends on their investments, and at the same time kept their hands clean.
Today we can still get some idea of just how big and profitable these contraband operations were because Zephaniah Job, the Polperro ‘smuggler’s banker’ kept detailed accounts of all his transactions, and some of them have survived. For over 20 years Mr Job was agent for, and part investor in, several well-found vessels engaged in smuggling, and if you convert his accounts into today’s money the results are quite amazing. He handled some £62 million in transactions of which £37 million was profit to the smugglers, and his was one of two operations active in one small fishing village.
Smuggling was very big business all around the coast of Britain. If ever its true figures could be calculated the results, I am sure, would be truly astounding. These ‘Free-traders’ as they liked to call themselves, dealt in any imported commodity that the government had seen fit to put a tax on, such as salt, tea, coffee, brandy, silk, wines, perfume and lace. When the French revolution began, a Polperro vessel, then engaged in loading her cargo at Roscoff, rescued some members of the Trelawny family who had been spending the summer at their villa in Brittany. The skipper of the lugger charged these frightened, rather minor Cornish aristocrats more for the Channel crossing than the modern ferry charges today. Spies, criminals, aristocracy on the run - the men with the big fast luggers carried anybody providing they had the gold to pay.
After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo the government of the day then had an opportunity to do something about the massive loss of revenue it was suffering, and they handed the task over to a well-manned battle-hardened Royal Navy. It proved to be well up to the job, setting up a coastal blockade of the Channel, and it was not long before the risks involved in running contraband became much too high to remain profitable. The big luggers (those that hadn’t been captured) were disarmed and re-employed as humble coastal traders. Smuggling did continue, but of necessity it became a low profile, small time operation. The glory days were now over.
The fishing lugger meanwhile had remained a slow cumbersome affair. Speed costs money and if it is not essential, then no one will invest in it.
In 1859 the great engineer I.K. Brunel completed his railway bridge over the river Tamar, and that changed everything. Cornwall was now no longer a remote, virtually inaccessible county. Fresh fish (amongst many other commodities) could now be transported to the markets of London, Manchester and Birmingham, and to make the best of these new opportunities, larger, faster and better-designed boats were required. These new craft had to be able to work fishing grounds a long way from their home port, and then return swiftly to land their catches, fresh and in time for the market trains. Prime fish, boxed and well iced for the journey, made top prices on the city markets.
Once again the shipwrights had to come up with the answers. Their forefathers had excelled in the quest for speed in the smuggling days, and now these men had to rise to the challenge of the opportunities bei