Category: History

The Tale of the Herring website

The Tale of the Herring

The Tale of the Herring was a project celebrating the fishing heritage in five ports in eastern England, Amble, Newbiggin, Cullercoats, North Shields and Lowestoft.

It includes a touring exhibition and website run by Newcastle University’s Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats, and work with schools during 2011 – and an appeal to the public for photographs, stories and information about the herring fisheries.

I guess we’re a bit late (no-one told us about it at the time – neither my old university, or the National Lottery Fund’s PR folks – bah!) but it’s well worth a look for the photos alone.

Fishing grew from a subsistence occupation to a thriving industry along the east coast during the 19th and 20th centuries; it became a way of life rather than a job, with everyone in the community having a role to play.

It was seasonal work, and the biggest event of the year was the arrival of the herring, which happened in different months in different harbours, starting in Scotland in June and ending in Lowestoft in November. During this period, Scottish herring girls would follow the boats as they moved down the coast, joining the local women to gut, salt and pack thousands of tons of herring.

My thanks to Liz Burke for finding the website and passing on the tip!

PS – I’ve been asked to draw folks’ attention to a current  project celebrating the herring fishery through drama and which is designed to involve communities in various ways including  singing and knitting. See the Follow the Herring website.

Launch day inches closer for the restored motor launch Mary


Ben Wales has written with news of the progress of his restoration of the 18ft motor launch Mary.

The clinker built little boat was used by the smart Royal Lymington Yacht Club, and was also used in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk.

Ben reminds me that we’ve been following his project for four years now! Good for him – it’s great to see that his persistence is now so close to paying off.

Here’s what Ben says:

‘We had to take down the tent cover over the winter as it almost got destroyed by the storms in December and January.

‘While the main work was on hold we did a test engine line up, as I will need to make a new forward engine mount support bracket.

‘In March we set up the tent cover and began to lay the new solid timber forward deck in pitch pine – the planks are fitted tight and screwed down with A4 stainless screws finished with a dowel.

The deck will be sanded, caulked and varnished, and replaced with bronze deck fittings.

Work has now began on the aft deck; the steering blocks for the steering cables have been fitted and a fuel tank installed – this has to be done before the deck can be laid.

‘I hope to have a progress report later next month for you – and maybe Mary will be ready for a summer launch.

‘Regards, Ben’

Thanks Ben! It would be great to see Mary afloat and glistening with varnish in the coming weeks.

Margate’s time ball is working again

Margate time ball

Margate’s time ball on the town’s clock tower is working again, thanks to the efforts of Margate Civic Society and others including the Hollywood director and graphic designer Arnold Schwartzman.

Click on the thumbnail above to see a FaceBook video clip of it operating. I hope the chap who made it won’t mind…

Originally designed to enable seafarers to set their chronometers, the Margate Time Ball operated for the first time in over 90 years on Saturday 24th May at 1pm, and from now on will drop at 1pm each day.

There’s a nice article by Mr Schwartzman in this copy of the Civic Society’s newsletter from which we learn that the director grew up in the town, and that for many years he has for many years treasured a set of crested china Margate Clock Towersfor many years

Originally designed to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, the Margate Clock Tower at the junction
of Marine Drive and Marine Terrace was not in fact  completed and brought into action .

Built by public subscription at the cost of £1,300, the 80ft Portland Stone tower is in the elaborate ‘French Renaissance’ style. The ball mechanism has not operated since the mid-1890s, when local residents complained about the noise it made.

The idea of the time ball was first proposed by Captain Robert Wauchope of the Royal Navy- a Royal Navy and were first introduced in 1829, when the Admiralty set up the world’s first time-ball at Portsmouth Harbour. In 1833 it was followed by another at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

Ramsgate’s Clock Tower was an obvious site for a time ball, not least because it would have been visible to many of the ships passing from the Channel to the Thames Estuary on their way to the great ports of London.

In his article, Mr Schwartzman reports that of the 150 public time balls installed around the world, notably those in Mauritius, St Helena, Cape of Good Hope, Madras, Western Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Bombay and Washington DC, more than 60 survive, including one at Deal, Kent that was first set up in 1855.

The Deal ball was the first to be operated by a direct signal via the South Eastern Railway: atAt 12:57 GMT, the ball was lifted to the top were it was held, then at 13:00 GMT an electrical impulse, sent down the railway’s wires from Greenwich released the catches so that the ball dropped.

Radio time-signals introduced in the 1920s made the time-balls obsolete.

PS There’s some smile-inducing British Pathé-style shenanigans involving young sailorsand young women on Margate beach here.