Tales of the ring netters
December 2011
‘Dodie Icey’: On the right is George ‘Dodie Icey’ Alexander, with Albert Watt, skipper of the Ceol na Mara.
by Tom Ralston
When it was my turn to give a talk to my Rotary, I thought I would tell them of the days of the herring fishing, a subject of which they would know little.
My forays to the library resulted in my amassing a confusion of figures; hundreds of boats, thousands of men and so many tons of herring that the boring liturgy would have sent them all to sleep.
Then I realised a staggering fact.
When I left school and went to the fishing from Campbeltown in 1950, there were around 40 herring boats fishing from the port. Each boat carried six men. There was no prawn fishing in those days, so the entire year’s earnings of those 240 men came from herring fishing alone.
How many jobs ashore are required to service one man working at sea?
There were the men who built the boats and the engines; the men and women who made the nets and the ropes, the corks and the lead sinkers; the men who made the boxes and the baskets; the lorry drivers; the people who processed the herring; right down to the shop assistants who sold the end product.
For the purpose of my talk, I chose to multiply the 240 fishermen by five. That, if you add on the original 240 men, gives a total of 1,440 jobs.
Let’s round it down to 1,000, I thought, then no-one can accuse me of exaggerating.
So, in 1950 a minimum of 1,000 jobs in the U.K. were dependent on the fishing efforts of the Campbeltown fleet alone. This total is greatly increased if one takes in the other Clyde ports – Carradale, Tarbert, Dunure, Maidens and Girvan – and does not bear thinking about if one takes in the Moray Firth fleets of drifters.
Today I do not think there is one single job in the U.K. that is totally dependent on the herring fishing of the entire British fishing fleet.
Not long ago my wife and I were on holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, on the Red Sea. At the airport I fell into conversation with a man, perhaps 10 years younger than me, who had been born in Whitby.
When I told him that I had spent several seasons fishing for herring from that port, he asked if I had been on the ring-net boats. When I replied that I had, he told me that he had been ‘adopted’ by the crew of the Nobles Again, a Campbeltown ring-netter. It was common for young Whitby lads to frequent the boats, running errands and generally helping out.
This man looked me in the eye and said, forcefully; “I wish I had met you earlier. You are very privileged indeed to have been part of that culture. I remember Jock Taylor, the skipper of the Nobles Again, very well. He was an outstanding man by any standard, but I can tell you that I have never met finer men in all of my life than the crew of that boat.”
His flight was called, and he left. I never learned his name.
What was so special about the skippers and crews who manned the boats of that era?
They were, in common with all fishermen, individuals. They went their own ways, in their own time and were, in many respects, masters of their own destinies. To a large extent choice has been taken from their successors who are bound by regulations drawn up by people who have no understanding of the sea, the fishing or of its traditional values.
They learned how to nurse their boats – by today’s standards tiny – through storms that now defeat much more powerful boats. This skill was not learned in a classroom. I have no recollection of any of these boats being lost as a result of bad weather, despite their crossing the Minches, one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the U.K., loaded and light, time and again, in winter and in summer.
They learned the ways of the herring; how to find them and how to kill them, using only the senses that God had given them.
Most of this knowledge is now lost. A friend refers to modern day skippers as “carpet slippered screen-watchers” and to deckhands as “shelter-deck labourers”. Today, not many of the crews speak English; Eastern European and Filipino workers are commonplace. Where are our Scottish skippers of tomorrow going to come from?
Very soon there will be no-one left to tell first-hand the tales of these ring-net men, the last of the Seekers and the last of the Hunters, none of whom are fishing now.
My first captain
In Gayfield Place, the tenement in Campbeltown where I was born, I met the first of my captains.
Donald Brown occupied a room and kitchen on the right of the entrance close. This was a bad position, vulnerable to us as youngsters tying his door handle to the one opposite, then knocking on both doors.
Brown, as he was commonly called, hailed from Carradale, a village some 15 miles north of Campbeltown, where in his earlier days he had been a fisherman. A big, soft-spoken man, inclined to stoutness, he was easy-going and good-natured. To the despair of the ladies who – because their husbands were away in the Services – made up the bulk of his neighbours, he kept ferrets in his coal cellar. Needless to say, he was not married.
One of my earliest recollections of Brown was the day his chimney caught fire. This caused a great commotion among the rest of the tenants, some of whom had their washings hanging out to dry directly in line with the soot which fell as a result of the fire. Brown denied all knowledge of this conflagration, despite the fact that his face was blackened and his house – seen through the tiny crack which was all that he would allow the door to be opened – was redolent of sooty fumes.
As a result of this fire the MacBrayne brothers prevailed upon Donald to get his chimney cleaned and engaged one of the Foster brothers to do the job.
Now the Fosters were well-known for the habit of riding a bicycle the length of the hall when anyone knocked on their door. It was a matter of honour that the caller should protest that whichever brother answered the door was not the required one, which resulted in this poor man having to turn the cycle around ‘arse over tit’ because of the width of the corridor and pedal back down the 15 feet of hallway, then the hilarious process would start again with the ‘correct’ brother.
The great day dawned.
Davie Foster arrived with his rods strapped to the crossbar of his bicycle, and work commenced.
Brown was on the ground floor of a three-storey building, so a lot of rods had to be screwed together to enable the brush to reach the top of the chimney, a time-consuming job.
An acknowledged expert at delegating work, Brown deployed my pal, Cecil Finn, and me to stand across the road to watch for the brush appearing from the chimney can, and to report this sighting to him. Now the limited attention span of two young lads is a tiny fraction of that of one young lad, so the first sign we had that all was not well was when there arose from the rear of the building a great uproar.
While our attention was diverted, the brush had emerged from the top of the chimney and had bent backward away from us and was showering soot freely on to the washing lines, full of what had been nice clean washing.
When peace had been restored, Davie announced that as a result of the severe bend in the cane, caused by the weight of the brush pulling it down to one side of the chimney can, he could not pull it back the way it had gone up.
A noisy meeting was convened in the back yard before someone produced a ladder, with which Davie climbed from the top landing of the building on to the roof, accompanied by loud and conflicting advice from an agitated convention of ladies. Safely at the chimney head, he took off the brush, allowing Brown to withdraw the freed canes back into the house.
Declaring himself dissatisfied with the job, Davie clambered back up on to the roof bearing a heavy metal sphere designed to take the brush, suspended on a rope, down the chimney.
This ball, accompanied by the brush, arrived at some speed – with a great cloud of soot – down the wrong chimney into the kitchen of the house directly above Brown’s, a house occupied by the diminutive but vociferous Willie MacAulay and his sister. The resulting discussion filled in any missing words in our budding vocabularies.
I would hazard a guess that the preferred reading of the Foster brothers was Wild West tales. If we approached them on the pavement, it was practice to adopt a gunslinger’s pose, our eyes fixed on theirs whilst our hands hovered – one at each hip – for a quick draw. We would turn as we passed until we were backing away from one another. Unless someone ‘went for their guns’, which provoked yet another bloodless gun battle on the streets.
One day several of us were walking from Dalintober towards the town, on the seaward side of the Esplanade. There is a low wall – perhaps a metre high – on the inside of this pavement. We spied one of the brothers cycling towards us, the bike loaded with the chimney sweeping equipment. We dived over the wall and hid until he was close, when we stood up and opened fire with imaginary six-guns. We certainly caught him unawares, for he immediately ‘went for his guns’ – and fell off the bike.
We took to our heels.
How Dodie got his nickname
Many nomadic fishermen worked out of Mallaig, and from this rich field I would choose one whose presence is essential at the fireside to which I would invite my friends.
George Alexander, known better as Dodie Icey – as I thought – hailed from Gamrie. He was a short barrel of a man, although the first time I met him after he retired he told me that he had lost weight, “half a hunnerwecht” to use his words. Unmarried, he was a kenspeckle figure, dressed in a grey jersey under his neat grey tweed jacket, with a matching fore-and-aft hat, dispensing pinches of snuff to the unwary.
Only recently I discovered that his nickname was ‘Ae shee’ in Doric. This in English means ‘One shoe’, and relates to an occasion, long ago, when a forebear lost one of his shoes in snow.
His accent was pure Buchan, as was used by two old fellows who met when out for a stroll. “Did ee hear ‘at aul Peter wiz deed?” asked one. “Na! Fan did ‘e dee ‘n fit did ‘e dee o?”
Dod skippered drifters all around Britain, but his last boat, the Bracoden, was a steel trawler which he had built for him on the Clyde. Early one morning in the sprat-fishing season I met him on Mallaig pier and asked how the previous night’s fishing had been. He said, “Aye, yon local boatie, ye ken, the Bunch o’ Wifies – weel, he hid twa or three lifts early on in the nicht, but I dinna ken if he got any mair or no”. I knew there was no such craft as the Bunch o’ Wifies, but it was a while before I realised he was referring to The Five Sisters.
When Dodie retired a few years ago, he amazed everyone by booking an extended cruise in a liner. No doubt seeking to air his knowledge on the subject, a contemporary told him that at some time on the voyage he would be invited to dine at the Captain’s table. Dodie’s retort – “Na, na, Ah’m no peyin a’ thae bawbees tae eat wi’ the crew” – passed instantly into legend.
During the war Dodie had spent some time with the Navy aboard a drifter in Scapa Flow. A successful fisherman, he helped many a young lad get started as a boat-owner and was as honest as the day is long.
Gamrie is renowned for its church-going, and Dodie took delight in poking gentle fun at his fellow townsmen. He once told a spellbound group, who knew that he dabbled on the stock market, that he had suffered greatly the previous weekend. He had, he said, become convinced on the Saturday morning that he had to sell all his shares in Imperial Tobacco, Distillers, and Scottish & Newcastle Brewers, but had been unable to contact his stockbroker until Monday.
Asked if he thought his shares were headed for a fall, he replied deadpan, “Na, but I jeest took the thocht that if I was tae dee, and a’ my neighbours fun oot that I had shares in booze an’ baccy, they widna come tae the funeral”.
I will never forget my first visit to Gamrie, one lovely Sunday afternoon many years ago. Ina and I, on the way back to Mallaig, were at one of the junctions that lead down into the village. We decided, as we were ahead of schedule, to go down to the village to find Dod, though we had no idea of his address.
We followed the steep road down to the village, passing the higher up, modern villas, then the older houses, down to the very narrow road that separates the village from the sea.
As we drove along very slowly, we spotted two men leaning against the low sea wall. Drawing nearer, I recognised them as fishermen who had landed fish at Mallaig.
They stared intently at the car and, as we drew closer, we saw them transfer their attention from the number plate – which they obviously did not recognise – to the occupants.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched their intense scrutiny as they bent to look inside the car. We turned at the end of the road and, as we approached the pair again, I stopped and wound down the window.
“It’s a fine day,” I offered.
After a short pause, one of them replied, “Aye, fairly that”.
“I’m looking for a Mr Alexander, George Alexander,” I said.
There was no reply, so I said,“You’ll maybe know him better as Dodie Icey. Where does he live?”
Another painful pause, accompanied by an even closer inspection of us both before one of them replied; “Aye, aye. Faa’s speirin?”
Dod fairly laughed when I told him. In this close knit community no query posed by a stranger would be answered until the questioner had identified himself.
I chanced upon Dod one Friday on Mallaig pier as he was making his way home for the weekend. As we chatted, another fisherman called to him. “Mind an’ keep clear o’ …… on your wey hame noo; nae stoppin for a dram.”
I asked Dodie where this chap had referred to. He shook his head and advised me to keep clear of it at any cost.
He had gone one day with two of his pals to this remote country inn for “a wee dram” and was intrigued to see one of “thae wee things lik a Christmas tree, ye ken fit Ah mean – fan the barmaid pits a gless ower them an presses doon, they firl roon an roon, an watter scoots aa roon aboot the gless, an washes it.
“Weel, there wis an aul lad sittin in the corner eatin crisps an drinkin a pint o beer. Fan he hid finished, he squeezed past us an leant ower the bar. He took oot his falsers an pit them ower this thing tae wash aa the bits o crisps awa!”
Ina and I went on holiday with Dodie on several occasions, but his inability to moderate his Doric speech often led to confusion.
Such was the case when we arrived at a hotel in Manchester where we were to spend the night. After we had eaten, Dod and I elected to go for a stroll before turning in.
There had been severe flooding and Dod was a wee bit worried about the safety of his car, in which we had travelled. As we neared the hut in which the hotel’s security guard sat, Dod hailed him.
“Hey min! Foo far abune the high watter mark ur we here?”
“Pardon,” replied the poor man, not having understood a word.
“Ah’m speerin, foo far abune the high watter mark ur we here?”
This question, delivered in a louder voice than before, struck the fellow dumb.
Dod waited for a moment for a reply before roaring, angrily, “Hey ma loon. Ur ye tryin tae mak a feel o’ me?”
I judged it a suitable time to translate Dod’s query, and will never forget the look of relief on the man’s face.
Dod also caused consternation when he approached a young lady at the immigration desk in Kuala Lumpur airport. He was dragging his case with one hand and in the other he bore a sheaf of papers. Holding them out he asked, “Noo then, ma quine. Fit is’t ye’re seekin fae me?
He had his last holiday with us on a rented boat on the Canal du Midi, in Southern France. We discovered that we could buy quite drinkable wine for one Euro per litre, so at around 10.30 every morning I would teasingly ask if he wanted coffee, or a glass of wine. I believe we used a greater volume of wine than fuel on that trip.
I asked him, nearing the end of the holiday, if he had enjoyed himself.
“Michty, aye!” he replied. Then, after thinking for a wee while he added, referring to the muscular problem that is increasingly affecting my mobility; “Ah’d say that if ye iver think o a holiday in a boat again, Tommy, ye should pick somethin aboot thirty thoosan tons bigger nor this ane”.
Dod died in March 2006, quietly and quickly, sitting in a chair in the kitchen of the house he had been born in. I know that his passing was just as he would have wished it.
He was buried beside his parents, his ancient ‘fore an’ aft’ hat on his chest.
My wife and I miss him greatly.
Tom Ralston came ashore in1964 to start a fish buying business. Became Coxswain/ Mechanic of Mallaig Lifeboat; awarded a Bronze medal; was a J.P. in the Lochaber area; retired in 1991 and went to Fife. Has written five books.
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