1880
MELANCHOLY OCCURRENCE TO A CELLARDYKE FISHING BOAT. The Cellardyke deep sea going boat Garland, Adam Watson master, arrived early hour yesterday morning Anstruther, and reported the loss of one of the crew, and the miraculous escape of others, during the gale. The crew were work on their big lines Wednesday when the storm rose upon them that they were forced to leave their gear and flee for shelter to the land. Thus close reefed the Garland was steering towards Aberdeen when she was struck by towering billow, which swept the deck and hurled two the crew overboard. They were both young and powerful men, one Thomas Watson, the son of Thomas Watson, (Martin) was observed but for a minute, and then disappeared for ever in the boiling abyss. His companion was more fortunate, and caught hold of the spar which another of the crew had thrown to his hand; but those in the boat were scarce in a better situation at this terrible moment. The same fatal sea had broken the leg and otherwise seriously injured John Stewart, and thus disabled, or rather helpless, in that furious tempest, nearly an hour elapsed before the crew could succeed in tacking the boat to save their all but exhausted comrade clinging to the spar with the last grasp of despair. The long interval between the casualty and the arrival of the boat also tells its own tale of the fury of the gale, as every effort had been made to afford help at the earliest moment to the injured men. A touching incident then occurred as the young widow, as usual with the mothers and wives of our fishermen on the occasion storm, was waiting on the pier to welcome one, alas she was never to meet again. Thomas Watson, than whom a more gallant and true-hearted fisherman was not on the Scottish shore, he was about twenty-seven years of age, and has left a widow and one orphan child. A strange fatality would seem to hang over the Fife coast, as this is the fifth fisherman Cellardyke drowned since the opening of the present year. Disasters were long and lamentably common by the swamping of the boats in a heavy sea. But this danger thing of the past since the introduction of a deck on deep sea craft; but as they are not provided with bulwarks rails, this very source of safety to the boats is new peril the crew, who have thus scarcely more protection than if standing on a naked ledge of rock washed by every wave. Taught, however, by such terrible experiences of the necessity of a rail guard, the fishermen of the coast are now adopting the expectant of fitting iron stanchions to the gunwale, to attach chains ropes for this purpose during storm.
No fewer than six crews are at present fitting out from Cellardyke for the herring Drave at the Western Isles. With so little to encourage them while working the big hook at home, no one can wonder at the remarkable exodus which in early summer, as in late autumn, is scattering our Fifeshire boats all over the coast of the empire. The little squadron in question is to sail as soon as the gear been put in order and stowed under hatches. They steer through the Canal to the Clyde and theme to the Lewis, where a new and rather curious feature has been introduced into the fishing engagements of the season. It helps, however, to check the risk or “gambling element,” which enters only too largely into Scottish fish curing. There are manifold cases where £5O and more of bounty money has been paid to a crew who have not fished five crans of herrings, but to guard against any such anomaly in future our Fife crews are engaged on the now recognised rule by which the engaged bounty in full is only paid after the usual compliment of two hundred cram. Thus less herrings means less bounty, till in the event of such a possibility as the catch being limited to ten crans the crew would receive like number of pounds and no more by way of premium or bounty. The current price is 20s a cran, and the recent discovery of herrings in the open sea holds out, it is said, the most tempting prospect of an early and successful at the Hebrides.
We continue to hear good reports from the Shetland Isles. No one requires to be told of the unexampled wealth of the northern seas, but the improved system of fishing Introduced by the Cellardyke crews is being attended with splendid success. Their hauls are all the talk In Lerwick; nor is their toil in vain, as with the harvest at the very door, they receive fully 6s the hundredweight for cod and ling, which, however, are denuded of their head and entrails before delivery to the merchants. Halibut is also finding its way to the fresh market, and the state and prospects of the Fife crews are said to be all that their best friends can wish.
1881
The East of Fife and the National Fishery Exhibition in Norwich.—The telegram announcing that the jurors, after three days’ deliberation, had awarded the premium of for the best steam fisher to our townsman, Councillor Wm. Jarvis, was received with little satisfaction by his neighbours and friends. The Forth was a trice decorated with bunting, and the feeling of the hour was almost akin to a local jubilee. The prize has been awarded for the model of craft of about fifty tons, with elliptic stern and lines like a yacht, fitted with steam propeller so as to obtain a speed of about thirteen knots an hour. The Councillor also obtained a silver medal for the model of fishing boat of the ordinary scale and construction, but with an auxiliary screw; and the same honour has been assigned to another townsman. Mr Alexander Cunningham, for a miniature of the handsome boat he is now building for St Andrews owners Cellardyke shore. It is likewise fitted up with the working model of an engine, and is otherwise complete in all the appurtenances and fittings of a deep sea fisher. It interesting note that all these models are rigged with fore and aft sails, which is likely, in a very short time, to supersede the luggers of to-day. The other local exhibits are the model a steam fishing smack by Councillor Millar, West Anstruther, and that of Fifeshire herring boat Mr Alex. Thomson. The locality is likewise honourably represented Messrs Martin, Cellardyke, who obtained a diploma for their fisher apparel, and Messrs Sharpe and Murray, who secured a bronze medal for their oilskins and another for their cured herrings.
As steam trawlers are being gradually introduced on the coast, steam fishing-boats most in short time called into requisition on the Scotch coast. Mr. Jarvis’ model steamer will meet the requirements at drifting, long-line, and, if need be, trawling, for though the latter branch of fishing industry is not liked by Scotch fishermen still the time appears to have come when they will have to adopt it. It will be satisfactory to our Scotch friends to know that the jurors of fishing-boat models took into conference with them Mr. Murray of Cellardyke, a gentleman well conversant with the requirements of the Scotch coast.
1882
BODY FOUND. —The body of the young Cellardyke fisherman. Alex. Gardiner, who perished at his father’s side in the offing on the 10th Feb., or about ten weeks ago, was found in the trawl net of the St Monance boat ” Branch,” Thom Watt, master, on Friday morning. The interment took place in Kilrenny Churchyard on the following day, when a very large company of friends and neighbours joined in the last mournful rites over this lamented young fisherman
AN EVENTFUL LIFE STORY.—Softly, as when an infant sinks to rest on its mother’s bosom, the father, Mr John Doig, of Cellardyke, passed away on Friday morning, having all but completed his eighty-fifth year. The fisher towns of Fife have many an adopted child, but our patriarch came of a stock who have worked net and line in the old home for at least six generations. But let us pause over his interesting story—the living register, so to speak, of the events and changes in the little world around us. He was the contemporary of no fewer than six parochial ministers, having been born in the last years of the fiery but eloquent William Beat, when the population of the whole parish was scarcely one thousand, or about a third of the inhabitants to-day of Cellardyke. His schoolmaster was poor Peter Davidson, who, when dismissed as dominie of Kilrenny, taught in a dingy cellar, crowded to the door with rosy urchins, whom he kept in order by the unsparing use of the lash, which, indeed, was considered at this time in all the schools of the coast as ” the only secret of good government,” as Dr Chalmers and Professor Tennant knew to their cost. Peter sank so low that he could not afford a watch, but he fell on a strange device to measure the heave-out of his pupils. Fastening a button by a piece of cord to a nail, and setting it a-twirling as the door shuts, woe betide the hapless youth if it ceased to do so before his return. Like his father, John grew up for the sea, his first adventure being to Wick in the herring boat “Janet,” just six and twenty feet long. They had fifteen nets in all, but they fished two hundred barrels, at 8s a cran—” a capital drave’ in those days, as the old veteran liked to tell when speaking of the splendid harvests of recent years. In the course of time he sailed his own boats—the “Thistle,” for instance, spoken of in her day though but four and thirty feet long ; and the ” Providence,” built in 1838, when she was as much talked of at the bulwark as the three and fifty feet clippers of the present hour. Thus manifold have been the changes that have taken place in the equipment of the sea, but we are not sure if the coast is represented to-day by a better or braver race than the old fathers, as when the two Cellardyke boats weathered the admiral ship to windward of the Bell Rock—that admiral being our sailor King, William the Fourth, who told Sir James Black years after how cleverly he had been beaten by the Scotch cockleshells, be compared them to the floating castle under his command. Our old friend was one of the most quiet and sedate of men, but it was with him, as with the ancient Highlanders In war, “lambs in the camp, but lions in the field,” for we have heard it from childhood that a more resolute and fearless hand never held a tiller when the black squall was wildest on land and sea. He also knew as few had done the perils of the storm. He was one of the survivors of the ill-fated “Flora,” which was capsized in the offing off Balcomie Castle In 1819 as detailed in the History of Cellardyke.” He had, however, a still more miraculous escape on the 15th December 1858. It was on the occasion of a fearful storm, when additional moorings were needed for the fishing fleet in Anstruther harbour So he was engaged with the pilot boat when, the current running stronger than in a mill stream, carried him amongst the breakers, roaring like a whirlpool beyond the piers. The first sea filled the boat to the gunwale, and there, at the mercy of the great crested breakers, he was left to struggle without a single oar or Implement of rescue. A wild cry rose on the shore, “Can nothing be done to save him?” shrieked a crowd of wives and mothers, but the bravest could only shake his head and turn away in despair. Not so the intrepid fisherman, who was face to face with it all. “I felt God to be very near me. and that I would be saved,” he has told us, and buoyed up with this unconquerable hope, he struggled on, striving with all his might, though only with a bit of plank, to keep the boat before the waves as they one by one rolled high overhead. So the wrestle went on, but he seemed only to escape one danger to encounter another, especially when he approached the beetling rock, to leeward. No one thought, however, of a landing, no often did he disappear in the towering surf; but at last the boat, as if shot along by a giant arm, was thrown upon the strand. The wave, black as the grave, rolled back as if to return with redoubled strength to claim its victim, but in that Instant a dauntless band of young fishermen, sprang forward, and with the crash of the tempest drowned for the moment in the deafening cheer that rose by one impulse from the assembled hundreds, pulled the boat and our hero beyond the reach of the breakers. Such are some of the reminiscences of the interesting veteran who has just gone from his place, as when some ancient tree falls by the wayside. His venerable spouse led the way some years ago to the narrow house; but to the last he was soothed and comforted by the children and grandchildren, whom he has, been privileged to see grow up to honour and usefulness around him.