On our recent holiday to the north Yorkshire coast, we visited a couple of little fishing villages, as well as the town of Whitby. The fishing industry has declined compared to what it must have been, and although there are fishing boats going out every day, and every night – we watched them from our holiday cottage, it is not the huge industry it once was.
Now fishing has almost become part of heritage tourism with people taking photos and painting pictures of the ‘quaint’ cottages and picturesque boats, and lobster and crab pots.Tourists buy knick-knacks and souvenirs showing jolly fisher folk, bearded old tars with their pipes, rosy cheeks and cheeky grins, and their fisher women in long dresses, aprons and hats with a piece of fabric at the back extending over their neck and shoulders. How fetching these women looked, the pretty young ones with curving cheeks, the old apple-faced women, some with pipes.
The reality of life for these people were horrendous. The men would often row out to catch fish; they couldn’t wait for a nice day they had to go out what ever the weather conditions because it was their livelihood, their families depended on it. They didn’t have the modern quick-dirty or hard-wearing fabrics we have now; their clothes would have been sodden and caked in salt and reeking of fish oil. They didn’t have the machinery and mechanical aids we have now. A fisherman’s life is hard enough with all the technology and modern appliances we have, but then when everything was done by hand it is almost unimaginable.
Fisher wives and daughters had their part in this life; there are stories of them gathering bait, bare-foot across the rocks of the shore-line. They had to fillet and maybe salt the fish which was brought ashore, they had to somehow feed and clothe their families. Their long dresses would have been kirtled to their waists but still they would have got wet, sodden, and so many layers of heavy fabric. The reason they had the long pieces of fabric at the back of their head-gear was to protect them from sun, wind and rain. They may have had their pretty Sunday-best hats to show off in church, but their everyday bonnets would have been practical. If a woman is heard using bad language these days, she might still be described as a fish-wife; what an insult to those strong women whose lives were unimaginable.
We are horrified by the whaling industry, it seems barbaric and cruel to us. A hundred and more years ago whaling put food on the table of poor people, and money in their pockets to send their children to school properly clad with the hope of gaining an education to take them away from their gruelling lives. Whale fishing wasn’t for gratuitous fun; it was hard, it was extremely dangerous, it was unbelievable unpleasant… they didn’t do it for sport. They couldn’t afford in any way to be squeamish about how they earned their living.
Like everyone else, I was there photographing the pretty little places, nearly empty of year-round residents as the properties have been let off to tourist and visitors or bought as second homes.
Lois Elsden 