The character of a fisherman
The sea develops character within a person. That character maybe good or bad. But fishermen are colourful people with lots of stories to tell. They can also be very honest and genuine. They have a very earthy and natural form of existence.
In the 1930's the Filey fishermen had a tradition of visiting other places and attending church services there. They even held the services. They preached to more than one chapel in Robin Hoods Bay. They also visited the St Sepuchlre Street Chapel in Scarborough. Religion was important to many of the fisher people. It was highly unusual for other trades to take over the chapel services. Who would want to listen to a tailor or carpentor? Yet there is something about a fisherman that makes him more spiritual. His toil is honest. His occupation encourages the best qualities in a man - courage, hard work, and humility.
Canon Cooper - a writer in the 1930's recounts a tale. He write "A banker once was travelling with a lot of money about him, and one night had no place to rest in but a fishermans cottage. He was in a terrible fright lest he should be robbed while he was asleep, but before he went to bed, he saw the fisherman kneel down and say his prayers, and knew he would be alright".
Canon Cooper was talking to this banker on a hiking holiday. The banker "envied those whose occupation afforded scope for change, whether for better or worse, as for him, his life was like a horse at a mill which went round and round. He professed to envy the life of a fisherman who had fair weather and foul, and sometimes had a good catch and sometimes a bad one".
In 1948 John Robert Storr held the first "blessing of the boats" in Whitby. As the 120 herring boats in port started to leave he blessed them. That continues to this day supported by the Whitby Keelboat society and coblemans association. Nowadays it takes place in June or July and is an tradition loved by the visiting tourists.
Filey was a lawless place full of drunken seamen until a visiting preacher managed to convert them to the ways of the Lord. They still have a strong faith and belief nowadays. Now the hard work and courage needed to work at sea is reinforced with a strong sense of morality.
The sea is immensely beautiful. It inspires great works of art. It can be very calm but can bite you when least expected with fearful storms. The sea is full of experience and is emotionally charged. Its ideal for poetry. Shakespeare used the sea to symbolize the unconscious mind. The storms represented the repressed rage within us all.
Life at sea is hard and often dangerous. This helps to build character. We often gain strength and determination through adversity. People refer to the second World war and the Dunkirk spirit. It was a defeat yet it also sparked the determination needed for a long and hard war. It is the same with the seafarers as their life brings them together. They recognize the difficulties that they all face. It is difficult to find lifeboat station where there has ever been a lack of volunteers.
Many seamen are real characters - this is partly a result of their travels. They see the world. In centuries gone by many would not venture more than 50 miles outside of their home town. The age of the railways made travel easier. But in the eighteenth century many seafarers would see more of the world in one week than a townie would see in his whole life. They visited places as far away as New Zealand and South Africa. They spoke foreign languages whilst the land lubbers considered Scotland to be a foreign country!
In other ways fishermen held great beliefs. Life at sea often involved luck - both good luck and bad luck. Many fishermen and sailors died at sea especially in the age of sailing boats. Huge storms can build up out of nowhere. So a seaman looks to forces outside the realms of normal reality linked to luck. Such is the source of many superstitions in the fishing communities. These strange customs and beliefs go right up the coast. They are different everywhere. In Scarborough black cats were considered lucky. Such was the extent of this that any black cat was likely to be stolen. In other places the black cat was considered bad luck.
Most of these superstitions were of course irrational. Random things may happen - a wreck may occur and the people look for wierd coincidences. Some may associate the wreck with a black cat, others may remember seeing a rat that day. But whenever that random circumstance occurs again the sailor would heed the warning. Fishing was such a dangerous occupation with so many dying and injured. The fishermen would seek any way to improve their chances of avoiding bad luck. This would result in many strange but colourful habits and beliefs.
OTHER ARTICLES
• Primitive Methodism amongst the Scarborough Filey and Flamborough fishing communities
• Sea shanties and the filey Fishermen's choir
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• Robin Hood's Bay - The Storm family website
• Filey fishermen in 1862 - yawls and cobles
• The fishing community in Flamborough head - superstition and bad luck
• The fishermen and fisheries of Robin Hood's Bay in 1838
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards
• Trawling and overfishing - Filey fishing
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• The Harwood and Bullamore fishing family history in Scarborough
• Church first and Church last - Filey methodists and St Oswald's
• The Crimlisk fishing family history in Scarborough Filey and Hull
• The loss of the Scarborough trawler Heritage in 1993
• The Womens work in the Filey fishing industry
• Dennis Allen - stories from the sea
• Characters of Scarborough - colourful eccentrics and notorious drunks
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