Visual Journalist | Visiting Grandparents, Tales from Bob

Later that day, I went to my Grandparents' house and talked to my Granda Bob for a few hours. He was a fisherman for over 30 years, from when he was 15 years old in the early 1960's until the 90's, and I knew he had some tales from his experiences at sea.

Granda (left)

There were lots of stories, so I will just write out a few from the notes I took down.

Mine | Boat named the Mimosa, some time in the early 80's. Fishing just off the River Tyne, about 10 miles from the piers where boats have been going up and down for years. They brought up a large net full of stuff and in amongst the prawns was a sea mine.

It was on board for around 5 or 6 hours until the navy and the authorities arrived, where it could have exploded at any time. I asked if he was nervous, and he said he thought "if it gans off, it gans off"

Bomb disposal team arrived, they attached rope and buoys to the mine and took it over to near St Mary's lighthouse where they put on an explosive charge and detonated it.

Granda said it went off about 150 yards away and they could feel the explosion in their feet.

Strange Noise | When Granda was an apprentice in the 60's. Lots of European boats were after the herring with drift nets, big factory ships. Their boat was anchored at night, and my Granda had to ring the bell when the drift net ships were near, otherwise their nets would creep up the mast and take it down. 

One night, he is on watch and hears an odd noise, "sshm, sshm..", he looks over the boat and sees a black shape the size of the boat (around 54ft?) so he runs inside, shutting the doors and windows. 

The next day the skipper says it was a herring whale scraping along the boat to get the barnacles off its back, the noise was the water spraying from its blowhole.

Ladybirds | Granda and the rest of the crew were fishing somewhere down south, and saw a red cloud approaching the boat. It was a swarm of ladybirds that landed, covering the entire deck. 

(There is a voice recording of this, but I need to figure out how to post it here…)

Photo from Grandparents' kitchen, of the Lindisfarne boat

built in Buckie, Scotland (BCK.147)

The rest of the notes taken from my conversation with him. It's a shame to think that if my Granda didn't speak about these events, no one would ever know that these things happened. I came away from it all having an even greater respect and admiration for him, as it was a physically and mentally demanding line of work.