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After my years in the RAF, I found it difficult to go back to civilian life. For a very short time I went back to my previous job of servicing radios and TVs . The BBC television service had started a year or two before the outbreak of war, but it was shut down very shortly before war broke out as it was found that the TV transmitter at Alexandra Palace in London provided an excellent navigation tool for incoming bombers. Now it had been restarted, and in spite of only operating for a few hours each day, was becoming extremely popular. Learning the new technology of television was interesting, but after a few months I wanted a more demanding job that used the skills and knowledge I had learned in the service and at TRE. Eventually I joined a new company, Pye Marine that was attempting to break into the growing maritime electronics market. The parent company was well known for its radio receivers and now it was also getting into TV and VHF communications.

Pye Marine had opened a manufacturing facility in Lowestoft, a fishing port on the East Coast of Norfolk that also had several shipyards that built fishing trawlers for the North Sea and arctic fleets. Our laboratory was set up in an abandoned water tower, which provided a magnificent view of the surrounding town and harbor, and provided plenty of exercise from climbing up and down the many stairs. In the first few months I designed a transmitter/receiver for small craft, and took it through the necessary Govt: approval testing. This was completed satisfactorily and I was then sent to Lille in France to investigate a new echo sounding "Fish Finder" that was being promoted as an answer to many of the problems of finding deep water fish. The inventor however had little practical electronics or shipboard experience, and had built it in an enormous square box with a complex system of switches and knobs that practically guaranteed the system would be almost impossible to operate at sea. Our company bought the rights to the basic invention and I was given the task of developing a practical machine. This introduced me to the life of the deep-sea fisherman and five years of close contact with the sea.

Up to this time most echo sounders were basically electro-mechanical devices. A large capacitor was charged to a very high voltage and then discharged, by means of an electro-mechanical relay, through the ultrasonic transducer let into the hull of the ship. This system was extremely simple but had two major disadvantages. First it required very thick, heavy, low resistance cables to the transducer, to reduce the losses from the very high DC current, which limited the distance between the transmitting transducer and transmitter and made installation difficult. Second, the transducer transmitted an extremely short ultrasonic spike of very high energy when the current was applied, but then continued to "ring" exponentially for some time as the capacitor was discharged. These decaying oscillations effectively blocked the reception of small echoes from targets very close to the large echo that was generated by the seabed, in particular it prevented the echo sounder from detecting bottom-feeding fish. 

The trawl nets of that era were very large, and were believed to have an opening of about 6 feet above the huge rolling steel weights that held them down to the seabed. Although the echo sounders of those days could identify shoals of fish on their paper recorders, when the net was towed across the position they indicated, very often nothing was caught. On the other hand good catches were frequently made when the echo sounder showed no fish echoes at all. For these reasons the use of the echo sounder for finding fish was regarded as somewhat ineffective and most skippers basically relied on experience and intuition. We hoped that our new equipment would change these ideas.

Once we had completed the initial development of our "Fish Finder", we discovered that we could find small objects only a few inches from the seabed. We excited the transducer at its resonant frequency of 30khz with a very short square wave of that frequency which also eliminated the "ringing" when the transmission ceased. In addition, as no DC currents were involved we could use a very long matched cable between the transmitter and the transducer with little loss of signal. In one experiment we mounted a transducer on the top of the net, at the end of almost a mile of cable and measured the net opening. To everyone's surprise the net only opened about a foot, and as the old echo sounders could not discern objects that close to the sea bed, the mysteries of catching fish versus the results from the electro-mechanical echo sounders were explained. I believe that we were the first people to use a sonar system in this manner and this resulted in the development of the towed transducer arrays.

I did not know when I started this work how the previous echo sounders were designed and operated, which was probably to my advantage. I looked at the design and development of our new equipment with an unbiased attitude. I used my experience of radar circuitry, coupled with the basic ideas of the French inventor, and had no idea at the time that we were developing a new technology. However, before we had finished, the French inventor and I were awarded the very basic patent for "The use of continuous wave transmissions for underwater signaling".

There followed a period when we had many visitors coming to our laboratory, ranging from NATO officials and Royal Navy officers to fishing skippers. At the request of the RAF, and to help prove our claims regarding the accuracy of the equipment, we installed a set in an air-sea rescue launch and hunted for instrument packages from experimental rockets. At that time the British military used a rocket range in the Irish Sea to test their experimental missiles, but had difficulty in finding the instrument package from the rocket once the test flight was completed. We tossed about in the Irish Sea for a while and successfully picked up all the targets that we had been asked to find.

Pye Marine accepted an invitation to present a paper on our equipment at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization meeting in Hamburg, and I was asked to represent the company and make the presentation. It was extremely well received and really put the system on the map. However before we could promote the commercial use of the equipment we had to gain some practical experience, and so I set off to Grimsby, one of the major fishing ports on the East Coast of England. Here I found out the hard way of some of the practical issues involved in installing and operating the equipment.

"Valetta"   

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Arrangements had been made to install the equipment on a deep-sea trawler I will call "Valetta", (the names of ships and people have been changed for reasons that will become obvious) Valetta was owned by a very old company that had operated from the time of the sailing fishing boats. They were an extremely conservative operation and at that time would not put diesel engines in their vessels because they believed in the utter reliability of steam. Valetta therefore was propelled by a triple expansion three cylinder steam engine with oil fired boilers. It gave us a cruising speed of about 13 knots and was a monstrous machine, large and solid, but of the utmost reliability. This was quite comforting when sailing in a gale up in the Arctic Ocean several hundred miles from any port. It was also extremely quiet, and because of the "elasticity" of the steam engine gave a much smoother ride in bad weather compared to a similar ship equipped with diesel power. Valetta was just over 240 feet long and carried a crew of around 40. Living conditions were not luxurious, but adequate and comfortable.

The bridge of a trawler very similar to "Valetta" taken from the bow looking aft.

Most of the crew had sailed with Sam, the skipper, for several years, including the cook. He was a small, bald, elderly man given to hitting the bottle, and Sam always had his cabin searched once we got to sea. That did not stop him occasionally sneaking a bottle on board and then we existed on sandwiches and tea until he sobered up. He always provided excellent food for us all, and always had the meals on time. The crew often complained that there was too much fish in our diet, but it was there for the taking and always fresh. "Cookie" insisted that fish had to be one day old before it was fit to eat, so every morning he would wade through the fish on deck picking out the best and filling a large basket. This was tied to the rails alongside the galley to be used the next day. There was little time for anything but working, eating and sleeping, and the latter two were often passed by when catches were very large. When the weather was good everyone except the engineers, radio operator and the skipper were handling the fishing gear or gutting and storing the catch. Once the weather was too bad to fish, except for the two or three people running the ship, most of the crew went to their bunks. The violent motion of the ship made it much more comfortable to lie down. In bad weather the meals consisted of sandwiches as the motion of the ship was too violent to cook other foods.

The financial arrangements for skipper and crew were steeped in history, and may still be used today for all I know. The owners of the ship virtually leased it to the skipper. At the end of a trip when the catch was sold, first all of the expenses, fuel, food and so on were taken from the proceeds. The money remaining was then divided into "shares" (100, I believe). The owners took so many shares, say 25, the skipper received a certain number, say 10, the chief engineer 6, the radio operator 5, the first mate 6 and so on throughout the whole crew. A good skipper made a lot of money, and so did all of the men. A good skipper therefore had his pick of men, who signed up for one trip at a time but usually stayed with him for years. A poor skipper on the other hand often had a problem in finding a crew at all. 

The captain of Valetta, Sam, was one of the top earning skippers sailing out of Grimsby and a real character. He had first gone to sea as boy on a fishing boat and was a first class seaman. He was also a Lt: Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve and had commanded a minesweeper in the English Channel during the war. He proved to be an excellent mentor and friend, teaching me a great deal about fishing and the sea. Eventually he would leave me alone on the bridge for hours at a time to run the vessel and encouraged me to sit for my "ticket" and become a fishing skipper. I enjoyed going to sea, occasionally but it was not a job that appealed to me.

Our new "Fish-Finding" equipment surpassed our expectations, and soon Sam was using it continuously. We found fish in places that had never been fished previously, and enjoyed some extremely profitable and short trips, filling the fish holds several days earlier than expected. But I am going too quickly; the stories that evolved around these arctic trips will come later. First I must recount the experiences of the installation of the equipment.

There were two parts to the installation, first mounting the transducers in the hull of the ship and second, fitting the electronic equipment. To mount the transducers the ship had to be pulled out of the water. Once up on the slip, two slots were cut into the hull, (about 24ins by 8 ins), to receive the transducer housings and the housings and their streamlined plates were then welded in place. The transducers were then bolted into the housing and finally, before the ship could be returned to the sea, I had to check the installation mechanically and electrically. I had to make sure the housings were correctly positioned, the transducers themselves bolted firmly in the housings, make the connections inside the vessel and securely tighten the watertight glands.

For acoustic reasons the transducers had to be sited in a position that happened to place them under the boilers. With the ship on the slip no electrical power could be generated, as the auxiliary diesels required cooling water. I therefore had to make my way down to the engine room, lift the flooring grids and crawl under the boilers lit only by a flashlight. The bilge held several inches of a stinking mixture of seawater, fish offal, and fuel oil. It was hot under the boilers, and in this environment I had to crawl on hands and knees, with only a couple of feet of headroom. I had to find the transducer housing, solder the connections using a blow torch and a soldering iron, apply insulation, and screw down the water tight seals, realizing all the time that there would be no "second chance" if something was done incorrectly. I finally gave the OK and first thing the next morning the ship was returned to the water. After only a few hours sleep, we anxiously went back under the boilers to check the watertight seals. There was no leakage and the electricians then took over the task of running the remainder of the conduits and wiring, while we began to install the electronics.  

The "Fish-Finder" control panel sits on the power pack and transmitter.
The small box,  lower left,  is the "Fish-Click" . 
It gave a loud click every time the transmission produced a fish echo. 
(An old and very poor picture)

The ship's Chief Engineer had shown me how to operate the auxiliary diesels that were almost the same as those I had run in the RAF so I started them up and with the ship now in the water, power was no longer a problem. The work progressed smoothly and late that evening, the electricians had finished their work and were leaving. I was working on the bridge when a man dressed in overalls climbed the bridge ladder. "Did you start that diesel"? He demanded in a very belligerent tone, "Yes, why?" I replied, puzzled. He then said that he was a union shop steward, was walking home after work, saw lights on in the ship and heard the diesel running. He knew none of his union members were working that late and the union contract required that a union electrician be present whenever the generators on any ship were running in port. I explained that I had the permission of the owners, I had diesel experience, and we had to finish the installation before morning and so on. He was adamant that I shut off the diesel immediately or, he threatened, he would have the entire port out on strike.

At that time in the UK the dock worker’s unions were extremely powerful, and it so happened that the manager of the shipping company that owned Valetta had been discussing the legal aspects of the union contract over lunch that day. I suddenly remembered some of the things we had talked about. "Well you're a union member" I told the Shop Steward, "You stay and run the diesel". I reminded him that under the union contract no member could refuse to work when required. I pointed out that if he refused to stay I had every right to operate the diesel without him. He very reluctantly took a chair on the bridge, but every half an hour or so he asked "How much longer" and complained how tired he was after working all day. I must admit that we dragged out the work and it was early morning by the time I asked him to shut down the diesel and we left for our hotel to get a little sleep.

I reported the incident to the ship owners the next morning. They had suffered severe union problems earlier that year and thought that this was the joke of the season. That afternoon I piled my things on board Valetta and on the next tide we sailed down the Humber River and steamed out into the North Sea. 

Sea-Time.

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Once past the lighthouse at the mouth of the Humber River, Sam the skipper, set course for Norway and after making sure that all was well, he left the bridge. The Mate then took over running the ship and told me that unless there was a problem Sam never came up into the wheelhouse from his cabin under the bridge, until the third day out of port. Later when I got to know Sam very well, he confided in me that he was always seasick for the first two days of every trip, and had been ever since he first went to sea at the age of 13. After a few hours of rocking around in a heavy swell in the North Sea I too began to feel queasy and made for my bunk. I had found out that it took me 24 hours to overcome the nausea.

The trip across the North Sea was uneventful, except that the Valetta, which seemed such a huge vessel in port, seemed to get smaller and smaller the further we sailed out into the ocean. We passed several inbound trawlers, and as always there was plenty of radio chat with the intent of finding which were the most fruitful fishing grounds. This also revealed the somewhat twisted philosophy of the fisherman. I happened to comment that those homeward bound trawlers were lucky, they would soon be in port with the crew enjoying all the night life of Grimsby (such as it was). "Oh no", said the Mate, "We're much luckier than them, we'll be coming home when they're still out fishing on their next trip".

Two days later the coast of Norway came into view and we soon sailed between the mainland and the string of islands along the Norwegian coast. Sam told me that this was the most picturesque part of the voyage, and as this was my first trip to this region, he provided me with a deck chair that I placed behind the funnel where I was warm and out of the wind. I stayed there, except for meals, throughout all the long hours of daylight, this being late summer, and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. For a mile or so at Bergen we actually sailed through the town, with streets, shops and traffic on either side, but then as we sailed further North we entered the world of ice, cold majestic fiords, tiny villages and even single farms, all miles from any other habitation. There were few if any roads in this beautiful mountainous country, the Mail Boats that sailed regularly up and down the coast being the only method of transport.

Bergen was a delightful town

Eventually we reached the North Cape and now there was only the Arctic Ocean between us and the North Pole. But before we actually started fishing, we had to visit Honningsvag, on an island just off the North Cape. It contained the jetty to which we moored, a row of houses, one road, a hospital that provided services for the area, and a radio station. It turned out that the radio station was the prime reason for our few hours in this port. Sam frequently fished rather closer to the coast than Norwegian or Soviet law permitted, and the Norwegian gunboat that policed this area had to sail between Honningsvag and North Cape to reach the area we were intending to fish. Sam had made friends with one of the ladies who worked at the local maritime radio station and she would send a warning message when the gunboat made its passage through the straits. A short visit was therefore necessary to leave the gifts of nylons, perfume and so on that rewarded her for providing the "early warning". 

Sam had had also made friends with the mayor of Honningsvag, and once we had tied up he called for me to come up onto the bridge and be introduced. We had only been alongside a few minutes when a large American automobile rolled up. Out of it stepped first the customs officer and then the mayor. Not what I expected, but a tall broad shouldered young man dressed in cowboy boots, blue jeans and a Stetson. I was introduced and he greeted me in a loud American accent; "Welcome to Honningsvag any friend of Sam's a friend of mine" and watched as the customs officer helped pack the booze that Sam had brought for his friend into the trunk of the car. The mayor had apparently lived in Chicago for some time and had brought his love of the USA back to the most northerly continuously inhabited place on the European continent.  

Honningsvarg.   Very much built up since my visit

We only stayed a few hours but during this time Sam pointed out the features of the harbor, including an area of shallow water and rocks that lay a mile or so away. He recounted the happenings of the previous year when two or three trawlers were tied up in the harbor, and Sam was giving a little party to the other skippers. He suddenly told them that time was getting short and they should get back to their own ships. At the same time he called the chief engineer to get steam up and be ready to move as soon as his guests had left. They muttered a bit about his lack of hospitality, but Sam had been watching the harbor through the porthole behind them while they were talking and had seen a brand new trawler, on it's maiden voyage, heading directly for this shallow area. As he put it "We had the warps out and hauled her off the rocks within a few minutes of her going aground". I asked Sam why he had not signaled her in some way to tell the skipper he was heading for trouble. "He was responsible for his own ship, he was in charge, not me", Sam said. Sam and his crew also collected a handsome amount of salvage money from the episode. This was a man who would drop every thing to help another ship when safety of life was at stake, but otherwise was a hard and tough individual who believed we must each accept our own responsibilities. 
                    
I once met the ship in Grimsby to check on the echo sounding equipment and noticed the forward "gallows" (the steel structure that supported the hawsers that towed the net), on one beam was bent out of shape. Apparently Sam had shot his trawl and was fishing, when another trawler tried to fish the same grounds. Sam objected to him fishing "his" spot, so as Sam said, "He was getting in my way and I just hit him".

In a similar vein Sam told me of one his exploits during the war. He had been sent to pick up a new minesweeper being built in Florida and while waiting for the commissioning, he was sent for training in the handling of the ship. Bear in mind that by this time Sam had been skipper of an operational minesweeper in the English Channel for nearly two years of the war, and had suffered bombing and shelling while sweeping all types of mines. The training vessel sailed out into the Gulf of Mexico, and the young instructor explained that this was the first of a new training program in which they would sweep and explode real mines rather than the dummies they had previously used. As they started their first run. Sam asked the instructor "Are you going to sweep at this speed". "Oh yes" he was told "This was the recommended speed". As Sam so graphically told me, "So I went into the chart room, wedged myself under the chart table and held on tight". "What happened"? I asked, "Oh no one was hurt but they blew the stern off the ship" was his reply.

Valetta was extremely well equipped with electronic devices, but on one trip while off Iceland, one of the radar sets broke down. Although there was another operational radar, Sam did not like to rely on one system only and explained that we would have to stop fishing and steam over to the Faeroe Isles to get the system repaired. Why not go into Reykjavik I asked, as it was less then half the distance, but Sam shook his head and said that the ship would be impounded if we ventured into Icelandic waters. Then he explained that a couple of years previously the Valetta had been fishing near the boundary of the Icelandic territorial waters and at that time there was debate on where the legal limits were. Valetta was stopped and boarded by an Icelandic gunboat and although Sam showed them his charts, his Loran navigation figures and so on, the ship was arrested and told to proceed under escort to Reykjavik, with an armed sailor placed on board to see that this was done. Sam took his time in hauling the nets and preparing to sail, and it was late afternoon before Valetta, with the gunboat alongside, set off for the harbor which lay about a hundred miles away. Sam knew it would be a very dark night, and he knew Valetta could outrun the gunboat, so once it became dark he shut off all the navigation lights, turned away and headed for the open sea. By the time the gunboat realized what had happened, Valetta was well into international waters. The only problem was the armed guard but there was not much the poor fellow could do, even with his gun, and being a sensible man he sat down with the rest of the crew to a good meal and a sound night's sleep. He was later put on board an outgoing trawler they met off Scotland that dropped him in Reykjavik a few days later.

My trips took place during the "Cold War" and being an ex naval officer Sam had been given a camera and asked to photograph every Soviet vessel he saw during our trips. We often fished along the northern coast of Russia, and subsequently we frequently met ships from that country. On one occasion Sam pulled out his camera, to take the required picture, while I was looking at the Soviet ship through field glasses. An officer with a camera was standing on bridge of the other vessel busy taking photographs of us. We waved to each other and sailed on our way. There was no hostility among the fishing fraternity

For the duration of the war there had been little or no fishing in the Arctic and now the catches were larger than had ever been seen. On several occasions we had the decks piled so high with fish that we had to stop hauling the trawl net until they could be gutted and stored down below on the ice. One day we lay for almost ten hours clearing the decks for the next haul. The net was so filled with fish that we could not get it on board and the mate had to walk out on the mass of fish to attach a hawser so that we could pull in the catch a bit at a time.

Early one morning one of the crew came down to my cabin and told me the skipper wanted me on the bridge. "Look at that" said Sam pointing to where two square rigged three mast sailing ships, with all sails set were plowing through the sea only about half a mile away. "Take a good look, you may never see two ships like that together again". Magnificent as they overtook us in a strong wind, they were apparently training vessels from some of the Scandinavian countries. One of my more pleasant experiences, but unfortunately in the excitement I completely forgot to take a picture.

I also spent time in the lab developing new equipment, and working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries on various projects that involved the use of sonar in the fishing industry. I had several trips on their research vessels, in particular those out of Lowestoft and Grimsby. These were extremely interesting trips working with some of the well known fisheries scientists. Here the ability to operate our equipment remotely was of real value and enabled us to find out a great deal about the performance of the deepwater trawl. Working with them we also developed the "Fish Counter" that gave audible warning of the presence and size of any fish shoals that were located very close to the sea bed. All of these trips also took me to the Arctic and we soon settled into what appeared to be a very natural rhythm as many times we were working with 24hours of daylight or in the winter 24 hours of darkness. We would have breakfast at 7am and fish until lunch time around 1pm. Then we would go to our cabins and sleep until late afternoon when we would have our evening meal around 7pm and then fish until 2 or 3 in the morning. 

Soviet Contacts.

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At this time my company received a contract to equip a number of new Soviet trawlers with our "Fish Finder. They were being built at Lowestoft, where our factory and labs were situated, . The head of the Soviet purchasing mission was a very pleasant individual who spoke perfect English, but at any formal meeting would only talk in Russian through an interpreter. His British opposite number would take full advantage of this and make the most outrageous comments about him loudly in English, while the Russian sat with a big smile on his face as if he did not understand. Later we learned that he did the same in reverse. Away from the formal sessions they were extremely good friends. 

Of course politics invariably entered into our business, Gentlemen on both sides, who had no obvious reason for being there, routinely appeared at our technical meetings. On one occasion the work on the installation of the equipment was halted. A message was received from Moscow asking what affect the Fish Finder would have on the magnetic compass and we were not to proceed further until this had been resolved. We assured the Russians that our equipment would have no effect whatever, but apparently this was not good enough and we were told to wait until an expert arrived from Moscow to conduct tests. A week or so later I was called to the foyer of our laboratory to meet two Russian gentlemen. They looked like characters out of the movies both in long black trench coats and black fedoras, one carrying a large suitcase. One spoke excellent English and we all retired to the lab where we had a Fish Finder ready for them, set up and operating. From the suitcase they took a very large ships compass which they stood at a measured distance from the equipment and gave the command, "Switch on", and after a few seconds, "Switch off". This was repeated with the compass in a few different positions, then it was packed into the case, we all shook hands and they left. They were not in the lab for more than ten minutes. Two days later we were given the go ahead to carry on the installation. 

Apparently the equipment in the first vessels they received worked to their satisfaction as they then inquired if we would be prepared to equip other Soviet vessels that were already built. Everything was agreed and I was preparing to travel to the Soviet Union to supervise the installation but the idea was ultimately dropped. As we learned later, the problem was that the fishing vessels operated out of a port that was also a naval establishment and was therefore off limits to non-Soviet citizens.

I also sailed on several small seine net fishing boats out of Buckie in Scotland when we were installing our equipment on this fleet. These were wooden vessels about 60 to 100 feet long that were very different from Valetta. They had a small enclosed bridge amidships which usually also contained the galley. Forward was the fish hold where the catch was stored on ice; aft was the living quarters for the five or six man crew. Amidships was the engine room holding the Gardner diesel engine and associated mechanical equipment. Every seine net boat I sailed in had a Gardner diesel because the engine had such an excellent reputation for reliability. This was comforting when in bad weather on these small craft. I remember sailing out of a tiny port on the North coast of Scotland, when the weather unexpectedly turned very bad. We were in the channel between Scotland and the Orkney Isles, and because of tide and weather the seas were so high and the current so strong that we could only remain stationary by running the Gardner flat out. With high rocky cliffs on either side we dare not slacken engine RPM or we would end up wrecked on the shore. It was disturbing to lie hanging on tightly to my bunk knowing that only a couple of inches of wood separated us from the sea, but comforting to know we had a reliable engine. After about eight hours the weather improved, the current slackened and we managed to get into a small port in the Orkneys.

These small vessels usually fished around the Scottish coast and I got to visit some of the tiny fishing ports on the North and West of the country. Some were extremely remote, especially those on the outer islands, but we always found good company and a good whiskey in the local pub. The scenery was magnificent. This was close living at the extreme as we all slept in bunks arranged around the mess table in the only cabin in the ship. At one end was the stairs up to the bridge and the galley and a door to the engine room. The center of the mess room was taken up by the table and the surrounding bench that were shaped to follow the curve of the hull with bunks set behind the bench. We only had to slip out of our bunks to be sitting at the table ready for breakfast. This too was an almost totally close society in which everyone knew everyone else and few outside the seine net fishing industry truly understood the life of the fishermen. It was also a dangerous business and every year people were lost from storms and other accidents.

A typical seine net fishing boat. A poor picture.

We had to have our own company boat for development work, and the first one we had was an ex RAF air sea rescue launch. It had been purchased from one of our company VPs who had bought it for his personal use. About 60 ft long, it was fitted with two new diesels and was a very good sea going craft with plenty of room for four to live on board. Unfortunately we did not appreciate the condition of the hull of the vessel. On a trip back from Grimsby we first lost a propeller when one prop bracket fell off, and then we developed a leak in the bow. The leak was partially held in check with old clothes and rags and the pumps kept down the water to a reasonable level. However as a precaution we radioed for the lifeboat which took us all off except Jack the skipper, and one other man. Jack set off to bring the boat back to Lowestoft, a trip of around 200 miles. There were a few anxious moments, but she finally arrived in harbor and was hauled up onto the slip for repair. As she came out of the water one of the new diesels dropped through the bottom of the boat which was found to be almost totally rusted through. The diesels were removed and sold, the vessel scrapped. 

From then on we rented a wooden 100ft ex-wartime Fairmile that had the original four high speed gasoline engines replaced with two diesels which gave us a maximum speed of about 12 knots. The vessel was a war time relic and really too large as there were seldom more than four or five of us working on her at any one time.

Jack once more took command. He was a magnificent seaman who had first gone to sea in the sailing fishing boats of the very early 1900s; He was in his early seventies, a small man but fit and able. He could keep us entertained for hours with his stories of the many adventures he had experienced. After hours of sailing around in the North Sea carrying out our tests, when we told Jack we wanted to get back to port, he seemed to have an instinctive sense of direction. He would look around the horizon, although there was no land visible, look at the surface of the sea around the boat and tell who ever was at the helm to "Steer so-and-so degrees, and we'll see the coast in about an hour". Sure enough at the appointed time the end of the pier at Lowestoft would come into view. Jack found it extremely difficult to explain how he arrived at this information, perhaps he had some instinctive reasoning, or an unrecognized memory of all the turns and twists we had made during the day since leaving harbor. We later found that many of the old-time skippers had this ability. With the advent of radar, loran and other navigational systems it appeared to be a lost skill with the modern seamen.

The Fairmile took us on many trips including being chased by the Coast Guard. We had sailed to London to demonstrate our equipment, indeed we had the thrill of stopping all the traffic while London Bridge opened to allow us through, as our mast was just a little too tall to pass though the closed bridge. Sailing back to Lowestoft the weather was worse than we expected, so instead of heading straight out to sea and then up the Channel we decided to take the longer route, stay close in shore and seek the protection of the outer banks. Immediately we got out of the Thames river we could see another vessel similar to our own, really getting a beating from the waves as it came up parallel to us but a few miles further out in the open sea. The wind and seas increased and we decided to spend the night in Felixtowe harbor and continue in the morning. We had only been moored up for about half an hour when the other vessel came in and tied up outside us. We helped them with their mooring lines, saw it was a Coast Guard vessel and invited the skipper and chief over for a drink and a chat. Then the reason why they were following us became apparent. They could not understand why a private yacht would be leaving the Thames late in the day and sailing into such a storm. They assumed we must be smuggling drugs or other forbidden items and therefore followed us to see where we were heading. We explained what we doing and invited them to look around if they wished, but they were now happy to sit and spend a pleasant evening with us.

Sam and the Valetta were closely linked and therefore I have described him in that section, but I also met an amazing number of real characters during my sea-time. There was the skipper on one of the research trawlers, ex Royal Navy, who could not accept the fact that he was on a fishing boat and not still in the navy. He always appeared in full dress uniform whenever we were leaving or entering port. The scientists and other crewmembers always wore the appropriate fisherman's gear, rubber boots, oilskins and sou'westers and as many jerseys as possible to keep out the usually cold and damp wind. Coming into port on his vessel was always a joke even when the port was but a tiny harbor miles from any major area of civilization. As we steamed in the skipper would appear on the bridge in full dress uniform, gold braid and peaked cap, even to the pair of dark glasses that gave him a McArthur like appearance.

The skipper of another research trawler was an extremely experienced captain, who ran his ship with a tight hand. He too had been going to sea for many years and had commanded a vessel throughout the war. However his hobby while at sea was doing petit point embroidery, and it always seemed so contradictory to see this tough grizzled man sitting with his embroidery hoop and multi colored yarns, asking my opinion as to the most suitable color for some section of his work.

There were also some real characters in the ranks of fishing skippers. Jumping Jack, so named because he was reputed to jump down through the bridge window onto the deck about ten feet below when he became infuriated with the slow reaction of the crew to his orders. There was Parson John; an ex minister turned fishing skipper. The Parson always spoke in a refined voice, even on the radio when all about him were using the most profane language. Sam would deliberately rile the Parson, by telling him about some fxxxxxg incident, while giving me a wink, Parson John would then launch into a very serious sermon designed to save Sam's soul and stop him using this terrible language. Parson John also could not tell a lie and consequently Sam would always quiz him regarding his catches and where he had been fishing. Other skippers would invariably lie about these things and confuse the issue. While Sam talked to them the radio operator would be madly trying to pin point their transmission on the direction finder, often to find they were nowhere near their claimed position. Then Sam would launch into a thoughtful soliloquy. "He says he is North of Spitzbergen but his signal is East of there so he must be getting a good catch or he wouldn't lie about where he was". The radio bearing would be laid out on the chart and. all the known or believed factors put together in an effort to arrive at the true position.

While we were getting good catches the radio operator on the trawler would be told to shut down the transmitters. Even the daily report to the Head Office was banned. Then we would have to steam long enough so that when we once again transmitted it was from a totally different place and the excuse would be made that we had experienced radio trouble. It was a poor excuse as we had more radio equipment than most naval ships. On one trip we had to send messages for a British gun boat working in the Arctic as they could not raise their base on their own transmitter.

One seine net skipper was a strange mixture of "Born again Christian" and alcoholic. After tying up one evening in the harbor in the Orkneys, all the crew, including me, received a sermon on the evil things that would happen to us if we ventured into the local pub. As there was nowhere else to go it made no difference, and the mate muttered wistfully as we ambled down the dark street, "I don't know when the old man is worst, when he's on the booze or when he’s on the religion". Inevitably when he was "On the booze" the crew always had to carry him back to the boat but they avoided the sermon.

Another of the seine net boat skippers invited me to his house just outside Buckie for dinner one night. We had got on well during a trip together, but the evening to me was embarrassing. His wife served us at the well-laid out table in the dining room but ate by herself in the kitchen. She behaved like the perfect servant, only joining us for a few minutes to be introduced and from time to time to remove the used plates and serve another dish. I later found that he was a member of a sect called the "Wee Free" which believed that all women were made to be the servants of their husbands, and could quote the bible in support of their ideas. 

All seine net fishing was carried out comparatively close to shore and I visited many of the small but beautiful fishing ports. I lived in Buckie for some time during the installation of equipment and training the skippers, and made many friends in the community. This included the customs agent allocated to the local whiskey distillery who instilled in me a love of single malt Scotch whiskey.

I got to know the owner of the company that built some of the boats that I sailed on and it was fascinating to watch the design process. It was comparatively easy to decide on length, beam and so on and the cabin layout was almost standard, but when it came to the hull contour, sheer experience ruled the design. A scale model of the hull was made and we sat around while the designer and the new owner discussed the final shape. A little more fullness here or  smooth back this part and so on. Many of the decisions were made from stroking their hands along the lines of the model, but eventually the final design was arrived at and at least for this vessel worked out very well.

The deep sea fishing fraternity was a very closely-knit group of individuals and I was fortunate to be accepted into their society. It was an occupation that attracted the unconventional person. Being a deep sea fisherman meant spending three or four weeks at sea, then two or three days at home then back to sea again. On each trip there were two or three days of nothing to do while sailing out to the distant fishing grounds and again coming back. In between there were days of 20 hours standing outside, usually in the wet and cold, constantly in danger from the pitching deck, the straining wire ropes and the sharp knives used for gutting. On the other hand there were occasional days of warm sunshine and blue skies, and always the stark beauty of the sea. Certainly the rewards were high for the successful skipper and crew, but following a bad trip they could be minimal. All of this seemed to bind men to the business and to one another.

Danger was always there, and during the years that I was going to sea it often came very close. Storms blew up quickly and it was frightening to stand on the bridge and see the entire forward structure of the ship dissapear under the water when we punched through a large wave, and hear Sam muttering, "I hope they put those hatch covers on tight". Every year in those days one or two deep-sea trawlers had disappeared without a trace, but there was nothing to do but sit out the storms or run for calmer waters. During a storm it was virtually impossible to go outside and it was not uncommon for men to be lost overboard. On one occasion in fairly calm weather while hauling the trawl, the mate, who was leaning over the side conducting the operations, was washed overboard by an unexpectedly large wave. He managed to catch the end of the net. We thought he was lost but he appeared hanging onto the mesh as the catch was hauled on board. In the Arctic the sea was so cold that a man could only live for a short time in the water. As a consequence very few of the fishermen ever learned to swim, on the grounds that they would rather drown quickly if they went overboard than struggle to survive for 15 to 20 minutes. One ship lost it's skipper who went to the mess room by the outside route during a storm rather than use the longer inside stairs. He was never seen again, even though the boat searched the area for many hours. 

Typical of the many trawlers lost from icing.

Icing was the one danger feared by everyone. At times in the winter, high humidity would envelope an area in super cooled water vapor. Any vessel caught in this would soon become coated with ice. A one-inch hawser could very quickly become five or six inches in diameter from the freezing moisture, and the additional weight of ice on the ship's superstructure could very quickly capsize the vessel. At the first sign of icing the immediate reaction was steam out of the area as fast as possible while the crew tried to chip off the ice as it formed. Unfortunately the area of freezing moisture often covered many square miles of ocean, and could come down quite quickly. In those days the forecasting was not as accurate and detailed as it is today. Sam related that on one trip in Valetta they had to run to get out of the area of sudden icing. They were lucky and managed to get out before the icing got too bad, but another trawler was not so fortunate. Sam knew the skipper and they talked on the radio as the other ship slowly heeled over. Distance and the icing prevented any sort of rescue effort, but they talked quietly together until the skipper asked Sam to do his best to tell their families what happened and then -- silence.

I learned a lot about the sea during this period, and I also learned a great deal about people, -- and about myself. It is not possible to be shut up together on a ship, with unknown danger always present, without getting to know yourself and your fellow crew very well.

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