A DONKEYMAN'S JOURNEY - RESEARCH NOTES
(Extract from a talk given to Grimsby Writers Group - November 2018)
I want to share with you an account of my experience in researching my novel, ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’ – in other words, to invite you to join me on that journey.
First – what’s the book about? A couple of years ago I was submitting a manuscript to an agency, and they asked me for my ‘elevator pitch’. And I thought: ‘What’s the way I stand in a lift got to do with getting my book published?’
So I Googled the term and discovered that what they wanted was a pithy description of my novel that I could deliver to fellow-passengers during a short elevator ride.
Of course, they don’t tell you how, out of the blue, to announce to a bunch of complete strangers the fact that you’ve written a book. I plucked up the nerve to do that once in the doctor’s surgery, only to be met with a wall of embarrassed silence, and pitying looks that seemed to say: ‘Oh, you poor man.’
Still, assuming anyone I meet in a lift could care less, here’s my elevator pitch for ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’.
‘A Donkeyman’s Journey is an historical novel, based on the lives of my own great-grandparents, charting the fortunes and disasters of a Latvian immigrant couple raising a family among the booming fishing trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’
I’ve wanted to write this book since I started scribbling seriously around 20 years ago. Partly a roots-related thing I suppose. But also being a lover of puzzles, I wanted to have a go at re-constructing the broken vase that was my family’s story, even if the few remaining original pieces needed supplementing with fresh clay and quite a lot of glue.
But what’s all this got to do with donkeys, do I hear you ask? No? Well I am going to tell you – but not until later on. Some of you with nautical knowledge might guess, but I’d ask you not to give the game away just yet.
With a word count approaching 200,000 I decided to bisect the manuscript as follows:
Volume One – The Latvian Exile (covering 1872-89)
Volume Two – The Loyal Englishman (1889-1917)
But I’ll be covering the whole work in this presentation.
Now, why the need for all this research?
My previous novels included 2 science fiction and 2 black comedy thrillers, none of which required much in the way of research. So I began writing without much more than very rudimentary plans, and found that approach fun to begin with. But the result was hours and hours of backtracking, unravelling and re-working. So I decided that this time my approach would definitely be to bite the bullet and – plan ahead!
MAIN RESEARCH HEADINGS
Although very personal to me, ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’ was going to be my first – perhaps my only – historical novel. And there was no way in which I could produce credible historical fiction without doing a certain amount of research. In retrospect, though I took a largely undisciplined approach in real time, I would say the areas of research I identified fell under 4 specific headings.
First, there was the general historical backdrop – the actual known history within which the characters were going to act out their parts.
Second was what I would call ‘a sense of place’. I would need to acquire a mental image of the locations in which the real and imaginary events took place. I wanted to feel that I was writing from within those times and locations, and not just remotely from the future looking back. A tall order, and others must decide if I’ve come anywhere close to succeeding.
Third came the need for quite a bit of knowledge of the fishing industry as it developed from a handful of sailing smacks to huge fleets of steam and diesel-driven trawlers. I would also require a smattering of mechanical knowledge, or at least a basic understanding of steam fishing vessels of the period and their engines.
Finally, and – for me – probably the most important and fascinating facet of my story would be its main characters – my great-grandparents and their offspring, about whom very little is known, except for the usual birth, marriage and death notices on record.
GENERAL HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The events of my novel take place in 4 periods & locations, namely:
Latvia (1878 – 1917)
South Shields (1885 – 1895)
Grimsby (1895 – 1917) and
London (1899).
First heading now – Latvian general history – dry as dust, yes?
LATVIAN GENERAL HISTORY
Well, this is just my opinion, but certainly in the case of Latvia, I would disagree. Consider this: Latvia’s national history museum in Riga is called The Latvian Museum of Occupation – because that’s what the country’s history has been mostly about – the presence of various foreign powers suppressing the indigenous population’s desire for a national identity. Here are highlights obtained from Wikipedia:
12th century – Latvians were advanced farmers, fishermen and traders
12th-13th centuries – German crusaders bring destruction and oppression in the name of Christianity, and take control
16th century – Poland mostly in power, some aggression from Russia
17th century – Sweden mostly in power, Russia still knocking at the door
18th century – falls to Russia and becomes part of the Russian empire
19th century – still part of the Russian Empire – significant events:
1812 – Riga besieged by the French
1818-20 – serfdom abolished in Courland / Livonia
1861 – serfdom abolished in Latgale
1868 – Latvian Society founded
1877 – opening of railway from Tukums to the capital
1891 – Russian is declared the official language
20th century – significant events:
1905 – Demonstration brutally suppressed by Russian army
1917 – Germans in power
1918-40 – independence at last, but …
1940-41 – occupied by USSR
1941-45 – occupied by Nazi Germany
1945-91 – satellite of USSR
1991 – independence finally recognised worldwide
I’ve omitted so much here, especially the period of international conflict from 1914 to 1918, because events involving Latvia were so complex. But I think this gives you a sense of how the Latvian people suffered under occupation.
To give you a better idea of the relationship of Latvians with their Russian rulers and German landlords during the 19th century, I want to show you a passage from a most informative little pamphlet entitled ‘Latvia and Latvians’, produced by the Latvian Welfare Fund, Central Board Daugavas Vanagi (1978).
'When Sweden lost its final battle against Peter the Great of Russia at the beginning of the 18th century, Latvia, with exception of Kurzeme, was incorporated into the Russian empire. The opening of the 19th century found the entire Latvian territory under Russian rule. The German nobility retained its local positions and land in Latvia and had a free hand in the administration of the province.
'Although greatly oppressed by the German masters, the Latvians managed to survive as industrious peasants who tenaciously clung to their traditions and culture and always tried to improve their education. One must recognise the fact that among the German aristocracy, and particularly among the German clergy, were enlightened people who tried to help the indigenous population. And so the 19th century witnessed a dramatic awakening of the national consciousness of the Latvian people and the emergence of educated Latvians who strove to achieve a better place for their people among the nations ruled by the Russian Tsar. By the beginning of the 20th century Latvia and Estonia were the educationally most advanced areas of Russia with the lowest incidence of illiteracy. Riga, the old Hanseatic city, and formerly largely dominated by German aristocracy and merchants, admitted an ever-increasing number of educated and skilled Latvian craftsmen, merchants, property owners and members of the professions.
'The Latvians also survived all attempts by the Russian authorities to russify them, and despite the fact that before the First World War their secondary and higher education had to be acquired in Russian or German, the educated Latvians managed to ensure that Latvian eventually came into its own as a language of literature and instruction.'
SOUTH SHIELDS GENERAL HISTORY
South Shields’ location on the south bank of the Tyne where it meets the North Sea made it an important trading and fishing port. It also sat on top of a significant coal seam, and the St Hilda’s pit provided much work alongside fishing, so that workers from the 2 most dangerous jobs would have been able to drink side by side in the town’s pubs.
Historical data are readily available on Wikipedia. I also managed to acquire a copy of Michael J Hallowell’s ‘South Shields Through Time’, a collection of photos of old buildings that helped me visualise areas of the town where the action took place. Also invaluable was a replica Ordnance Survey map of the town from 1895 - the very year that my grandfather was born in Taylor Street.
GRIMSBY GENERAL HISTORY
Having grown up in the town, the significance of the fishing industry could not have escaped my notice.
A major contributor to Grimsby’s success as a world centre for fish landings and processing was the direct rail link with London – something that its main rivals such as Hull and Fleetwood, didn’t have in the late 19th century.
The town’s contribution of fighting men in the 1914-18 conflict, mostly referred to as the Grimsby Chums, was significant (some 8,000 men), as well as calamitous, the 10th and 11th Lincolns suffering high numbers of casualties in the early stages of their mobilisation. The tragic decision to place men from the same street in the same platoons meant that heavier losses affected some neghbourhoods worse than others.
My main sources on how WW1 affected Grimsby were: Grimsby In The Great War by Stephen Wade and LincolnshireGenWeb project, which includes the Grimsby Roll of Honour 1914-1919. Both these documents are available on the Internet.
Many useful facts concerning improvements to the town’s infrastructure, together with local Council affairs and public celebrations, were gleaned from Bob Lincoln’s ‘Rise of Grimsby Volume 2’, covering the period between 1865 and 1913. I managed to buy a dilapidated copy of this book from www.abebooks.co.uk, a very useful on-line source of second-hand books.
Probably my foremost contributor of interesting stories and historical events has been my old friend, now sadly deceased, George Handeline Black. George worked for many years as librarian for the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, and his knowledge of Grimsby’s and Cleethorpes’ history was, I believe, second to none.
Some time before he died, George kindly handed me a memory stick containing all of his snippets, which I had the pleasure of sorting and cataloguing for Grimsby Reference and Local History Library. (Jennie Cartwright of Lincs Inspire tells me the intention is to produce a printed version, but I suspect that will depend on funding.)
Earlier this year we lost another accomplished local historian, Alan Dowling, who published several fascinating books. It was Alan’s publication, ‘Grimsby: Making the Town 1800-1914’, together with George Black’s collection, that helped me understand how the town’s residential areas and amenities developed during the period I was interested in.
It was at the Reference & Local History Library that I was able to access the following printed works and essays, providing further background about the town’s businesses, housing and infrastructure: Cook’s and Kelly’s Directories, The Development of Educational Facilities in Grimsby 1870-1902 (W.P. Knight 1967), The Development of Sanitation and Housing in Grimsby 1875-1914 (T.G. Hall 1983), and The Sanitary Idea (Cynthia J Stringfellow 1991).
LONDON GENERAL HISTORY
History-wise the short visit to London didn’t require much more than superficial knowledge beyond the layout of Harley Street as a medical district and the development of Regent’s Park. I found most of what I needed in Wikipedia.
LOCATIONS & SENSE OF PLACE
This concerns the locations in my book where the action happens.
In Latvia, the story opens in the village of Kaive, in the Tukums district of Kurland, a region to the west of Riga. This is the birth village of my great-grandfather – but more of that later.
He travels by rail to Riga to begin his apprenticeship from the county town of Tukums, passing a collection of seaside resorts known collectively as Jurmala. (He returns to Jurmala while courting Juhla).
Later he encounters South Shields, Grimsby and, briefly, Marylebone in London.
LATVIAN LOCATIONS
My father’s sister, my Aunt Brenda took a sightseeing holiday in Riga in the 1980s. This was before the break-up of the USSR, so she found herself in a tightly controlled group under the beady eye of a government-appointed guide. As a result her experiences were limited mainly to the old town area, which nevertheless certainly has its share of architectural treasures.
Later, in 2004, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, my wife Julie and I took a scheduled flight from Schiphol for a pleasant fortnight’s stay in a converted monastery in Riga’s old town. It was nice to freely explore the area on foot, and we also used the excellent public transport to visit the beautiful resort of Jurmala with its majestic Russian & German holiday homes.
A service bus took us to the town of Tukums, where my great-grandfather’s family would have worshipped at the attractive Lutheran church. It gave me an eerie feeling to walk those same streets. Unfortunately, although people were very friendly, nobody spoke any English, and I was unable to unearth any family-related information.
Soon after returning home, I learned that my Uncle Ken had made contact via the Internet with a Latvian gentleman by the name of Aigars Evardson. Aigars was also seeking information about his own great-grandfather, believed born somewhere in the Tukums area. As the surname isn’t common in Latvia, there must be a good chance that we were related.
This was an opportunity not to be missed. So I exchanged e-mails with Aigars, and we agreed to meet when Julie and I paid our second visit to Latvia – this time, on a mission.
It was in 2006 that we made that trip, and this time I hired a car from the airport. We had booked a hotel in Jurmala, in order to get a better look at the resort and its varied architecture. Also there was direct access to the sandy beach, which seemed to go on forever along the Baltic coast.
We met Aigars, his wife, young daughter and nephew (who had a smattering of school English) in a restaurant close to our hotel. It turned out Aigars was a colonel in the police force, and principal of the Jurmala police training college. So next morning we set out for Tukums. When we arrived at the Lutheran church there were lots of bows and serious faces from the staff who looked after the old records.
The large, heavy books were already open at the required places, as if a police colonel mustn’t be made to wait. I must admit that I had to take their word that the entries were valid, because to me the ancient script was all but undecipherable. However, it appeared that the records evidenced the births of 2 brothers in the village of Kaive (about 8 miles away), the elder being my great-grandfather Carl Evardson, and the younger being Fritz, great-grandfather to Aigars.
All very excited at this revelation, we set off for Kaive. The village is famous in Latvia for its ancient oak, of unknown age, which legend has it should be touched by anyone leaving the country – presumably to ensure their return. (I only found out about this legend later via Wikipedia, and verified it with a further spooky visit, courtesy of Google Earth.) Unfortunately our visit to the family’s home village proved fruitless, nobody there having heard of anyone with our shared surname. By now you’ll probably understand that this wasn’t so surprising, given the level of social upheaval that this little country had gone through since the 1860s.
Just last year on a flight to Cyprus my wife struck up a conversation with a lady by the name of Ruta, who turned out to be Latvian.
We arranged to meet during the course of our holiday and I told her about the book I was trying to write. I had more or less finished the draft of the Latvian part, and she kindly agreed to read it and assess it for credibility, that is, whether she felt as if the action was taking place in the period Latvia that she could recognise. Later she e-mailed me a ‘thumbs up’ together with some very helpful suggestions.
So, all in all, I felt I had provided a credible backdrop to the Latvian sections of my book.
SOUTH SHIELDS LOCATIONS
In the case of South Shields, however, I must confess that I never actually got to visit the town. But I have flown over it in cyberspace, again courtesy of Google Earth. Also I fortunately came across a replica of an 1895 Ordnance Survey map, reproduced by Alan Godfrey Maps. This proved invaluable in helping my protagonist find his way around the town, even to the detailed pinpointing of the house where his first son was born, in the same year that the original O.S. map was drawn.
On yet another holiday Julie & I met a couple from Tyneside, the male partner George admitting to some knowledge of South Shields. He kindly offered to read my South Shields section and eventually e-mailed his approval of the draft as a believable setting with which he could identify. So I was happy with that.
GRIMSBY, CLEETHORPES & LONDON LOCATIONS
Being a native of Grimsby, it was inevitable that the historical research mentioned earlier would spill over and affect the notion of ‘sense of place’ that I was hoping to create.
Throughout the writing process I collected and saved relevant pictures and articles from Grimsby Telegraph’s Bygones that portrayed Grimsby & Cleethorpes between 1895 and 1917.
An event that really sticks in my memory was a spontaneous bicycle tour of Grimsby Fish Docks Estate in 2008. I had intended to take a photo of the Docks railway crossing, to contrast with one taken by the noted Observer photographer, Jane Bown, in the 60s.
Her picture was of a group of dock workers cycling over the railway crossing to start their morning’s work – and I was – still am – convinced that one of those boiler-suited cyclists was my father John, on his way to the Consolidated Fisheries engineering workshops. Ms Bown’s view made the cover of the Observer Magazine, and I bought a copy directly from her. I can't show Ms Bown's photo for copyright reasons. But I can assure you that the two photos display two entirely contrasting views of this iconic entrance to Grimsby Docks.
Having taken the 2008 shot – obviously of a more derelict scene, I couldn’t resist continuing onto the Docks and taking a further 60 or 70 snaps. I suspect if I tried that today I wouldn’t get far, but at that time there were very few barriers and nobody challenged me.
I cycled through what was akin to a ghost town – with many empty spaces but also with many derelict old buildings still standing along Gorton Street, Fish Dock, Wharneford and Auckland Roads. The vivid sensation of imagining the Docks as they once must have been has stayed with me. I also have the photographic record of that period of enormous change. (If you'd like to see those photos, e-mail me at [email protected]).
A more recent opportunity to mentally re-construct a part of the town that’s seen recent upheaval was a guided tour of the East Marsh hosted by a literary acquaintance, Billy Dasein. He’s a proud East Marshian, living with his father on Rutland Street, and I wanted to find the houses that my ancestors once occupied: 56 and 59 Grafton Street, and 97 and 120 Guildford Street. Of these, only 59 Grafton Street remains, all of the others now replaced by newer buildings. But it was uplifting to walk those streets, even if the soles of my shoes had to make do with new concrete and tarmac where cobbles might once have been set.
As for London, I’ve visited our capital many times, but never the Georgian streets of Marylebone, or Regent’s Park. These locations play a relatively small part in the story, for a short period in 1899 when my great-grandfather takes his son (my grandfather) to see a Harley Street specialist after incurring an injury to his kneecap.
Google Earth was useful here again, enabling me to describe the journey from the father’s and son’s boarding house to the doctor’s clinic, along with an outing to Regent’s Park zoo.
FISHING & MARINE ENGINEERING
Under this heading I needed a sound understanding of the industry’s structure, some basic knowledge of steam power, the beginnings of unionisation of the engineers & trawler crews, & the great industrial stand-off, now almost forgotten, known as the 1901 Great Grimsby Lockout.
On these subjects, as my father was a fitter on the docks I grew up listening to his stories about the trawlers, and the lives of the ordinary deckhands, with whom he played fives & threes (dominoes) occasionally.
The amount of engineering knowledge that I was able to retain was minimal. This wasn’t too much of a problem as I didn’t need to go into great detail about things mechanical. But I did ask an engineering friend, Stuart Conolly, to give my manuscript a read-through and he didn’t find any glaring errors.
I’m going to quote a couple of extracts – this first one involves some aspects of engineering.
IMPROVISATIONS
Carl spent the next morning checking over the Fairmont’s engines and mechanical gear, as well as supervising coal loading, so she’d be ready to put to sea again the following day. Around ten o’clock skipper Dobson came aboard to examine the nets and trawls, and organise any necessary mending.
“Morning, Charley.”
“Morning, skipper. Good trip, this last one, eh?”
“Not bad. But we’d do better still if we had more room to stow fish. It galls me to leave behind easy pickings for want of space.”
“I know, skipper. That’s the only problem with these converted tugs. But they handle well and give you that little bit more power when you need it.”
“Can you afford to give up some of your coal hole space?”
Carl shook his head. “Not really. We’re stowing the bare minimum of fuel as it is. It was touch and go last trip that we might have to raise the sails – not a good idea with all that weight of fish, especially if the weather turned nasty. And I’m no sailor. I don’t know the difference between a rope and a sheet.”
“A rope is a sheet, Charley. But I know what you mean. I sailed a bit in the old days, but I wouldn’t want to go back to that. It breaks my heart when I think of the casualties – all those good lads lost. And a headwind coming home could slow you down and spoil the catch.”
Carl was impressed by Mike Dobson’s sense of humanity, almost balancing his instinctive self-interest. They’d not had any exchange that you could call a conversation since Dobson first set him on, and the skipper’s reputation was as a man of dour demeanour and few words.
“I’ve a vague idea in the back of my mind, skipper.”
Dobson smiled. “For God’s sake, Charley, call me Mike when we’re not at sea. It makes me feel more human. Let’s hear this idea of yours, then.”
“When I said I couldn’t give you any coal hole space, I meant you couldn’t have it for the whole trip.”
Dobson frowned.
“Hear me out, Mike. The firm that converted your tugs into trawlers did a fine job, giving you as much fish storage as could fit comfortably amidships, without affecting the Fairmont’s stability. But, to be honest, the amount of coal storage the original builders allowed is only just enough for my needs. It’s a constant battle to maximise the efficiency of the engine while giving you what you ask for. That’s why I daren’t give up any of my coal space for the whole trip.”
Dobson pursed his lips. “So, how can you let me have more storage then?”
“By giving up the space vacated by the coal we burn.”
Now there was a glint in the skipper’s eyes. Yet he sounded dubious. “How could we stow fish next to the remaining coal, without contaminating it?”
“It would entail fabricating a stout metal plate, fitting into grooves in the coal storage bin. By careful trimming, when the main fish pounds were nearly full, I would rake all the remaining coal to the for’ard end of the bin, fit the metal plate in the groove and wash out that end of the bin, using the empty space for stowing up to, say, ten extra standard fish boxes.”
“I like the sound of this, Charley. Keep talking.”
“As you say, the challenge would be preventing the remaining coal from contaminating the fish. You’d need a bespoke canvas or tarpaulin bag that fitted snugly into the vacant space.”
The skipper sounded impressed. “There must still be sail makers in Grimsby who could make such a bag. I’ll ask at the chandlers. What about the metal plate and grooves? That would surely involve some precision cutting and welding. Do you know anyone who could tackle that?”
Carl laughed. “I think I do, Mike. I spent a number of years as a welder on a timber steamer between Riga and Tyneside. But I’d need access to a decent workshop with cutting tools and welding gear.”
Mike scratched his head. “I don’t know. The fitters here are very protective of their trade. I doubt if they’d allow my own man in one of their fitting shops. But if you’d plan and design what’s needed, I’ll employ one of the engineering firms to do the work, and you can oversee the job for me.”
“I’d be pleased to do that, Mike. When do you want to do the work?”
“Can you do the measuring up today?”
“Sorry. We’re already coaled up.”
“Next trip in, then, so the plate and canvas bag can be fabricated in time for fitting next time we’re ashore after that.”
Carl picked up on the sequence of events. “And the welders can come on board to fit the grooves. We should only need to lay over for an extra day. There’d be hardly any disruption to the fishing.”
“I like the way you see things as if you had an interest in the whole business, Charley.”
“But I do, Mike. Your vessel pays my wages.”
Mike screwed up his face, from which Carl deduced he was doing some mental arithmetic.
“Listen to me, Charley. If you can pull this off, and it brings an extra ten boxes of prime fish to market each trip, I’ll pay you a poundage on top of your weekly wage. And the same goes for my other boat, the Fairfield. But, Charley …”
“Yes, Mike?”
“This is between you and me. Yes?”
(Funnily enough, I’ve since learned that the idea of converting part of the coal hole for fish storage became a reality during trips on the bigger post-war trawlers. According to ex-fisherman John Nicklin in his fascinating 1998 book ‘The Loss of the Motor Trawler Gaul’ the practice figured in the chain of events leading to that Hull trawler’s sad loss.)
The extract I’m now going to read involves the sharp practices exercised by some of the more unscrupulous trawler owners.
THE FORTY THIEVES
When not at sea, Charley’s early morning walks on the docks became more regular as the years progressed. Perhaps it was a simple case of habit, but with the house resembling bedlam once the children were awake, he found it relaxing to enjoy this quiet period around dawn, to take the freshened air, and to turn any pressing issues over in his mind.
Not that he felt at all burdened by any particular problems of late. He and Matilda had been blessed with six lively children, the youngest of whom, Gertruda Otilya Amelia, was now approaching three years old, and proved a true delight, ever smiling and lively.
Sadly more recently the stillbirth of a seventh child, named Rosie for burial purposes, had marred the joy that they had previously experienced. For a while, understandably, his wife had been inconsolable. But he trusted that time would heal her anguish, and that she would take comfort in the rude health of their remaining offspring.
For some reason he had set out earlier than usual this morning, the hint of first light not quite ready to put out its feelers above the eastern horizon. And there was something else unusual about this pre-dawn period, for at once he heard the unmistakeable clip clopping and clatter of a group of horse-drawn carts, approaching from the direction of Cleethorpes.
Instinctively he ducked into a shop doorway, and watched from the shadows as the train of four empty wagons passed him and turned onto the dock estate at Riby Square.
Intrigued, he decided to follow and investigate.
To maintain the best cover, he accessed the docks via Humber Street and the adjoining alleyways, with an ear cocked for audible clues as to the destination of the curious procession.
He soon realised it was the fish pontoon.
Although still referred to as a pontoon, the landing quay had long been upgraded to a concrete dock wall, and as he peered from behind one of the buyer’s sheds, he saw in the half-light that, as chance would have it, just one trawler was moored there. He knew it, and the firm to whose fleet it belonged.
Depending on the tides, there was nothing unusual in a recently docked trawler’s cargo being offloaded at this, or any other hour of the day or night. The team of lumpers (as the official unloading labourers were known) would be primed to attend the tide and shift the full boxes or ‘kits’ of fish onto the pontoon, iced up and ready for the morning’s market.
However the men in the carts were not official lumpers. He knew many of the usual crowd, but recognised none of these fellows. A figure darted about among them, pointing and directing them towards those boxes he wanted removing and loaded onto the carts.
The operation was performed swiftly and efficiently, and soon the carts were moving off, via Riby Square and across the railway lines towards the West Marsh area. He followed far enough behind so that they wouldn’t see him or hear his clogs on the cobbles, and saw them turn into one of the timber yards alongside the Alexandra Dock.
Though he peered from a good distance away, obscured by the gloom of an alley just off Ranter’s Wharf, the now breaking dawn revealed a peculiar sight. A small group of men appeared to be conducting an auction of sorts, and as deals were struck for each cartload of prime fish in turn, their purchases were driven away in different directions, presumably for re-icing, storing and distribution.
He knew better than to risk being seen or challenging any of the men concerned, so he decided to return to the pontoon and try to work out what had just taken place.
He arrived at the dock to find the vessel’s mate completing his final tally of the trawler’s surviving cargo and, recognising the man, approached him.
“Morning, Bob. Good catch, eh?”
The mate seemed nervous.
“Oh, er, morning, Charley. Bit early for your usual walk?”
“Yes. Couldn’t sleep.” He cast his eye over the deck. “Looks like you’ll land some good quality fish this morning. And if there’s only this boat, this lot ‘ll fetch a good price on the market.”
“We’re hoping so,” the man confirmed. “Well, I’d better get on with the tally. The lumpers ‘ll be here soon.” Then he asked shiftily, “Have you been here long?”
“Not that long. Be seeing you, Bob.”
“Yeah. Mind how you go.”
Though said glibly, Charley realised this was probably good advice, in view of what he believed he’d just witnessed.
He made his way home, where over breakfast he related the morning’s experience to Matilda.
“What do you think was going on, dear?” she asked, wide eyed. “Were those men with the wagons stealing the fish? Do you think you should tell the police?”
“I don’t think it was exactly theft. I believe the owner was fully aware of what was going on. He was probably present at that strange auction at the timber yard.”
“I don’t understand, Charley. What would be the point of an owner taking his own fish?”
“Ever since the men were forced to accept part of their wages in poundage, there’s been mistrust as to whether the owners have been paying full value for what’s been due to the crews. I’ve tended to put that down to sour grapes, because the men have never really been able to properly check their final poundage figures.”
Matilda frowned. “But surely it’s just a simple matter of multiplying the profit for the trip by each man’s poundage rate, according to his job?”
“Yes, but, for a start, do you recall the objections that John Collins and I raised when the system was first mooted?”
“You mean, that some of the owners could inflate certain costs, because they have interests in the firms supplying things like coal and ice?”
“That’s right, and then there was the little item of directors’ and officials’ fees. The unions were never granted the right to audit those figures. I’m not saying all of the owners are rigging the system in their own favour, but it’s widely suspected that it’s not operated fairly.”
She poured them both some more tea. “But what’s all this got to do with what you saw this morning?”
“It’s this. One trick that I’ve heard men talk about is where a few or even just one ship happens to have made a particular tide – especially an early morning one, when it’s still dark.
“Allegedly, seeing an opportunity to save on poundage, the vessel owner sends a fleet of wagons to take off the top layer of fish – the last caught and therefore the freshest – before the mate tallies the catch ready for the lumpers to offload it in time for the regular fish auction.
“The wagons then cart away this fish, never officially landed, to a private auction where two or more complicit buyers carve up the load at a price they’re all happy with. And, of course, all of that valuable prime fish is left out of the official tally, so it’s not included in working out the profit. And the poor bloody fishermen are thus deprived of their full poundage on the trip, which they’ve been relying on to make up their wages.”
“And you think that’s what happened today?”
“I’m almost certain of it.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Well, for a start, I don’t see any point in involving the police. They’d naturally side with the owners, some of whom, as you know, are magistrates used to doling out judgment on us lesser mortals. In any case, as the owners are carting away their own fish, it can hardly qualify as theft, can it?”
“No, but surely what you’ve described is a fraud on the honest fishermen.”
“You’re right. But I suspect our guardians of the law would, rightly or wrongly, deem relatively low level fraud as a civil matter rather than a serious crime. That would mean hiring lawyers, and even if the union took it on, the net result after legal costs would be little or no gain.”
“You’ll mention this to John Collins, though?”
“I think I should, yes.”
She sighed. “I’m beginning to understand why people call some of the owners ‘the forty thieves’.”
“Yes? Well, here’s something else for your encyclopaedia of Grimsby jargon. When I hear men speak about such goings on, they use a special name to describe those cartloads of fish being taken away to a secret market. And it’s a name that’s very apt, speaking as someone who’s witnessed it.”
She cocked her head to one side. “And what’s that?”
“The ghost train.”
OTHER FISHING SOURCES
Most of what I needed to supplement my basic knowledge of the industry was provided by an exceptional essay by John Holroyd entitled ‘The Grimsby Lockout of 1901’. I read and unashamedly took detailed notes from the copy in the Central Library’s archives, because the notorious lockout and associated unionisation forms a short but significant section of my book.
Another book that provided me with a lot of interesting background was Vince McDonagh’s ‘Feeding the Nation’, commissioned by the Fish Merchants Association. I borrowed a copy from a friend but I suspect the library will own one.
One interesting fact gleaned from Mr McDonagh’s book was that Cleethorpes had its own little fishing industry for a while. In 1900 Cleethorpes had 60 fishermen & merchants working from Brighton St slipway; oysters were sent to London by train. Skipper Jack Priestley fished off the beach in the early 1900s, taking his boat up to Killingholme for plentiful cod & codling – the boat almost sinking on getting back to Cleethorpes. He skippered boats owned by Cleethorpes shellfish merchant Bill Anderson, the best known being ‘Shepherd Lad’ & ‘Shepherd Lass’. Unfortunately in 1903 the Cleethorpes oyster beds closed due to sewer outfall contamination.
But up until then Cleethorpes oysters were apparently renowned for their aphrodisiac qualities. (This reminds me of the story of the fisherman who took his girlfriend to a local café one evening & treated her to a dozen oysters, only to return the following morning to complain that 3 of them hadn’t worked!)
FAMILY HISTORY
I’ll begin this section with a list of the main family characters:
Kahrl Evardson (1858-1917)
Juhla Rachoan (c1868-1922)
- Kahrl John (1895-1976)
- Emil Robert (1897-1917)
- Lily Karolina (1898-1972)
- Alfred Rudolf (1900-1941)
- Harold Emile (1901-1968)
- Gertruda Otilya (1902-1964)
From my first years in school I realised that my surname was uncommon, and my father had told me that our family came from Latvia. As that country lay behind the Iron Curtain it was a mystery to me, aligned with Russia and populated by oppressed people. Hazy collective family memory portrayed my great-grandparents’ migration as some sort of heroic escape, though no details were ever forthcoming.
That same collective memory had it that the couple worked on a freighter plying a route between Riga – the Latvian capital – and Tyneside. The outward cargo was timber while coal provided the return ballast. He was an engineer and she a cabin maid (the ship carried a handful of fare-paying passengers).
My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Juhla Otilya Matilda Rachoan. (I can imagine Kahrl falling in love with her for her name alone.) Their first child was my grandfather and his birth was registered at South Shields in 1895.
I was never able to find a record of their marriage. It could have taken place in Latvia, and that country suffered several upheavals between 1914 and the close of the communist era, possibly causing records to be lost. With no evidence to support it, I created a fictitious wedding for them aboard ship while moored at Riga. (I’ll explain the reason for this later).
From the dates on the list you might be able to glean a couple of pertinent facts:
3 of the males were killed in the 2 World Wars – my great-grandfather and his second eldest son Emil in WW1, and my father's uncle Alf in WW2. Both my great-grandparents died at relatively early ages (59 and 54). They were also quite late in starting a family (though they obviously soon got the hang of it). As a result my great-grandfather never met any of his grandchildren, and my great-grandmother only when they were babes in arms or toddlers. This would have created a significant damper on the flow of oral history, as they could have passed on nothing about their own lives to their grandchildren - a factor that left gaping holes in the collective family memory.
FAMILY MEMORY
Because of those gaping holes there isn’t much to add. I did glean some information from my father, aunts and uncles, though mostly dimmed by the passage of years. For reasons I never fully understood I had little contact with my grandparents, something I now greatly regret. I’m still left with a long list of questions for my Granddad.
Family memory can sometimes be less than reliable, of course. Each person will put his or her own slant on what they think they remember. Also people like to populate their family history with famous characters. For example, my grandmother’s maiden name was Smith – not an easy name to research, as you can imagine. One suggestion was that past research had established a genealogical link with Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. However 5 minutes in Wickipedia reveals that, although Pocahontas did wed a British captain, it wasn’t John Smith. He, in fact, never married, and there is certainly no recorded progeny attributed to him. Always question family memory.
PUBLIC RECORDS
I used Ancestry for my British research, paying one month’s subscription of about £12 and carrying out all I needed to do in that month. I’m pretty sure you can access similar sites using the computers at Grimsby Library’s Family History Archives. But there wasn’t much for me to have to check because my distant cousin Kevin Smith (then residing in New Zealand, which is distant enough) did most of the hard work when he initiated an Evardson Family Tribal Pages website in 2002, which he was kind enough to let me access.
When it came to the Latvian records, there is now a web-based service called Raduratski that allows access to indices and scans of original birth, death and marriage record books.
I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t found any public record of my great-grandparents’ marriage, and it turns out that it was simply because the records hadn’t been uploaded at the time I was looking. It seemed I would have to invent a wedding for them and, to fit in with factual & fictional events I had already worked into my draft manuscript, I chose the year 1889.
Recently – October 2018 – I received correspondence from another distant relative – this time in Queensland' Australia (a lady called Jo Wickens), who had come across the record that I was lacking, now on the Raduratski site. The original document was difficult to read (being mostly handwritten in old German script, which even most modern German’s can’t decipher), but the index was transposed to modern print and recorded their marriage as having taken place – guess when? That’s right – in 1889. Well, it could have been within 6 years of that, so maybe it’s not so spooky, but I must admit a shiver went up my back when I first saw that document. A word against Carl’s name that I was able to decipher was ‘Masschinist’, which translates from German as ‘engineer’. Nice to have that confirmed as well.
Other public records that have been very informative are the 1901 & 1911 Census forms. The 1911 census records the 3 lodgers who lived with the family at that time. I believe sub-letting & taking in lodgers was by no means uncommon. These forms also demonstrate how people freely changed their names, e.g. Carl could be Kahrl & he seems to have settled on Charley – possibly to sound more English. Juhla also forsook her lovely name and adopted one of her middle names, Matilda – probably for the same reason.
The NELC archives – as opposed to the Central Library Reference & Local History section – are kept in a remote corner of the Town Hall.
They are available to the public, but you have to make an appointment. I did so through Jennie Cartwright of LincsInspire, my objective being to obtain evidence of my great-grandfather’s employment as a trawler engineer between the years 1897 & 1914.
The archives don’t contain all the records – just a sample (I believe for some obscure reason you have to go to Canada for the full caboodle). And guess what? I found no evidence whatsoever that any Evardson sailed out of Grimsby on a trawler during that period (& yes, I did check close variations of the name).
So there was a mystery. What was Charley Evardson doing during all that time? The 1901 & 1911 census forms had him as a chief engineer in the fishing industry – but they may have been two of the years where there was a gap in the Grimsby archive records. Still, it did seem strange that there was no record at all of his fishing career in the sample. There had to be something else.
I experimented with various search words & phrases on Google & eventually came up with a site entitled: 1915crewlists.rmg.co.uk - & struck gold! The record covered only that one year, but it contained the comings & goings not just of my great-grandfather, but also his son Emil & 2 of their 3 lodgers – not on trawlers, but on merchant vessels. For there was a steady & sizeable traffic of coal transporters in & out of Grimsby’s commercial docks both before & during WW1. My guess (or supposition for the purposes of my story) was that this wasn’t my great-granddad’s only experience of working on the freighters. The records show the rates of pay the merchant seamen were receiving - & they were superior to those obtainable in fishing at that time (even allowing for a reasonable poundage). This was true even though Charley was signing on, not usually as an engineer, but as a stoker or trimmer (presumably because the competition for engineers’ positions was so fierce). Even so, with overtime freely available on the freighters (but unheard of aboard a trawler) there was consistently good money to be made, & less danger than trawlermen faced, as coal freight comprised mostly inshore trade. The downside was that you stayed with a ship for longer periods, for there was no guarantee that you would pick up another one at the drop of a hat.
(For the uninitiated, a trimmer was the guy who kept the hold cargo level & stable, which involved getting in there & raking the coal as it shifted about in heavy seas. Poundage was introduced by the owners after the 1901 lockout, where part of the former basic pay was converted to a share of the trawler’s profits (& losses), sometimes to the fishermen’s advantage, but sometimes not, at least until the really big trawlers came along after WW2 to plunder the fishing grounds more efficiently.)
Perhaps it’s a bit of a myth, then, to describe every seafaring household in Grimsby as a ‘fishing family’. And – in the case of Charley & Matilda – there was another dimension.
The 1911 census describes their eldest son John Evardson (15) as a grocer working from home. In other words their house at 97 Guildford Street was a shop. My father had mentioned this when I asked him what he remembered about his grandparents. He also remembered that the shop burned down in 1912.
In my book I’ve worked on the assumption that the shop was intended to provide their eldest son with a trade that he could manage with his injured leg. The childhood injury (actual cause unknown for certain) was the reason for the visit to London to consult a Harley Street doctor. I remember from the few occasions I was taken to see my grandparents that he wore a special boot because his injured leg was shorter than the other.
I wanted more information about the fire, so I visited the then old Grimsby Reference Library & spent a couple of hours trawling through the microfiche records of the Grimsby News & Grimsby Gazette for 1912. Once I had found one report, the other was easy. Each was very comprehensive & there was also a very strange bonus – a photograph taken by the Gazette photographer, with family members almost theatrically posed in positions that said nothing of the drama they had lived through only a few hours earlier.
The 1913 Kelly’s Directory for Lincolnshire lists C Evardson as a shopkeeper at 120 Guildford Street. This suggests that, after the fire, the family picked itself up and started again in presumably rented shop premises close to or on the corner with Wellington Street. From the newspapers’ account of the fire, we know that number 97 had been rented so that, apart from the destroyed stock and a few personal possessions, the financial loss to the family may not have been all that great.
I am now going to quote the section in my book that covers those events of the night of May 6th 1912.
THE EVARDSON SHOP FIRE
Just before midnight on Sunday the fifth of May, young Sidney Woodhead of number ninety-six Guildford Street decided to walk to the commercial dock, where he understood the butter boat to Denmark was taking on hands.
It was bad luck for him – though, as it turned out, fortunate for others – that the information he had been given was incorrect, and he made his way back home, worrying about where he was going to find work.
In the wee small hours of Monday he turned into Guildford Street, and was immediately aware that something was wrong. In the distance he could swear his mother was in the middle of the street, shouting and wringing her hands. Being a fit lad, he broke into a sprint that brought him to her side in less than a minute.
“Mum! What’s up?” he gasped.
But he only needed to look where she was pointing for the answer. Nevertheless she couldn’t help sobbing and saying, “Matilda’s shop’s on fire, Sid! The shop’s on fire!”
Seeing that flames had already taken over the whole of the lower floor of the mid-terrace building, he said, “There’s nothing we can do, Mum. We must raise the alarm.”
Then he ran into their own house, emerging seconds later bearing a tin penny whistle, which he blew loudly and repeatedly.
Matilda, who had been sleeping in the main bedroom above the shop, was the first person to hear the screech of the whistle from the street below her, barely seconds after being woken by what she thought was the tinkling of breaking glass. She realised the reason for the alarm when she noticed wisps of smoke creeping under her bedroom door.
Charley had recently sailed, and expected to be away from home for at least three weeks. The Karlsberg brothers were also at sea, leaving Big John with young John and Emil in the long bedroom at the back, Alfred and Harold in the walk-through room that led to it, and Lily and Gertie in the side room off the landing. No sounds came from any of their rooms, suggesting that none of them was awake.
She quickly pulled on her dressing gown and slippers and rushed out onto the landing, where she banged repeatedly on the adjacent bedroom doors, her eye on the well of smoke that told her there was no going down the staircase.
“Lily! Gertie! Alfred! Harold!” she screamed, still banging as hard as she could. “Put something on and get to the back!” Screams immediately emanated from the girls’ room, and their door flew open. They rushed out, sobbing, straight into their mother’s arms.
Not worrying whether the younger boys were dressed or not, she dashed across the landing and shoved their door wide open, throwing the girls into the room and instinctively pulling the door shut behind her.
At about this time two police constables arrived at the scene of the fire, almost instantaneously, though from opposite directions, having heard young Sid’s tin whistle alarm. Though they each attempted to locate telephones to alert the fire brigade, neither of them was able to get through. However a man by the name of Charles Hall, of Stanley Street, had seen the glow of the fire above the rooftops and cycled to the Town Hall, from where the fire brigade was mustered.
Inside the burning house there was pandemonium. Fortunately young John was able to keep his head and smashed through the rear bedroom window, via which each of the occupants was able to crawl out onto an outhouse roof, and from there be helped down to the ground by neighbours who had gathered in the back garden.
Once alerted, the fire brigade arrived within minutes, but could only concentrate their efforts on preventing the spread of the fire to the neighbouring dwellings. They were unable to save anything of the family’s property, except from amongst the rubble on the following morning, when a tin box containing some of the children’s undamaged clothing was found. Another small tin containing about five pounds – the previous week’s takings – was also recovered.
To Matilda, the events of the night were like an awful dream – with the one exception that, on waking, she discovered that their predicament was all too real. She and the girls shed many tears that night, but were kindly taken in, with the rest of the household, by their neighbour Mrs Clarke, who lived at number one-o-one.
A bizarre twist occurred the following morning when one of the local newspaper’s photographers, clearly more used to studio work, arranged them as a nonchalant group, appearing more like a family on a day trip to Skegness than destitute victims of a terrible disaster. Thus was the family depicted – with Big John Krutzberg seated next to Matilda in place of the head of household – in the weekend pictorial edition of the paper.
MORE PUBLIC RECORDS
Military records & news reports revealed the following:
Emil Robert Evardson (b c1897; d 21st March 1917)
Third Hand, Steam Trawler Queensborough (Grimsby)
Drowned as a result of attack by enemy submarine
Age 20, son of Mrs Evardson, 56 Grafton Street, Grimsby, born at Grimsby
Charles Evardson (b c1863; d 18th August 1917)
Donkeyman, SS Ardens (London)
Drowned as a result of attack by enemy submarine
Age 54, born in Russia
If you’re about to query Charley’s age in 1917, I can only assume he knocked a few years off when registering, for fear of being refused employment. The news report said:
'Whilst proceeding south to London with a cargo of coal at 6.15 p.m. a torpedo from a German submarine struck the ARDENS amidships, the explosion tearing out her port side and causing the mainmast to fall. The wake from the torpedo had been sighted, but with insufficient time to take any avoiding action. The only crew man killed was an engine room donkey man, the engines were blown to pieces, so that the ship lost her weigh almost immediately.
'The rest of the crew abandoned ship at once, getting clear and rowing for land. At 6.25 p.m. she was seen to turn over on one side and break in two, going down at 6.30 p.m. After rowing for about five minutes, the periscope of a submarine was seen following them, but this disappeared as a number of patrol boats approached. The survivors, which included two injured crew, were picked up by the Filey lifeboat and other craft and landed at Filey.'
A spot of Googling reveals that a donkeyman was the name given to the person in charge of all things mechanical on board the old steam fishing smacks and trawlers. (I understand the term survived into the modern Merchant Navy as describing anyone who worked in the engine room.)
OTHER DOCUMENTS
In 1888 my grandfather returned briefly to Latvia – reason, unknown. This is supported by a Russian Imperial visa document, passed to me by my father, covering the period 29th December 1888 to 10th January 1889. This was just before he was married, and it suggests he was already resident and presumably working in the UK as a single man.
This is a fascinating document, which contains much useful information.
It includes a handwritten note stating that ‘4 years & 2 months ago Karol Evardson set sail in a steamer (name illegible) in the capacity of a welder …’
This document provided a focal point on which I could base much of the plot of the first volume of my novel. I had it that Carl intended to use the 12 days to return to Riga to try & clear his name, having been accused of murdering a policeman in October 1884.
I’m now going to quote the scene where the killing takes place. As young men Carl & his friend Rudolf had been in the habit of attending political rallies, which were often disguised as cultural meetings. Latvian nationalism & socialism were usually the main subject matter of these meetings, but the two young men always played it safe & avoided direct involvement in revolutionary politics.
MURDER IN RIGA (FICTITIOUS)
The two friends were by now old hands at picking out the plain clothed policemen who attended these meetings. In fact, it had become a sort of game for them. But there were a few uniformed officers in attendance too, standing close to the doors and clearly on the lookout for any trouble that might break out at such a large gathering.
Soon the audience was assembled. Everyone stood, as bringing in so many chairs would have been out of the question. Though most would not have heard them before, when the performers took to their makeshift stage the crowd allowed them the benefit of the doubt by applauding politely.
The young poet’s name was Janis Plieksan, though he liked to call himself Rainis. He and his little troop turned out to be very entertaining.
They began with some sets of traditional tunes, played skilfully on a multi-strung kokle, as well as a reed whistle or stabule, and an ornate but musically annoying rattle known as a trejdeksnis. Fortunately the fellow who played the latter used it sparingly. In between each set of tunes the long-haired Rainis would recite a piece of poetry, either from Latvia’s literary tradition, such as it was, or one of his own compositions.
But none of these could be said to be more than innocently patriotic in a wholesome, pastoral sort of way.
Rainis and his friends next sang several Latvian folk songs, accompanied by the same instruments. These were performed very competently, and were received by the large audience with much enthusiasm.
The songs themselves were innocuous enough, concerning mildly flirtatious meetings between milkmaids and woodsmen, some containing clear sexual symbolism which might have offended a female or juvenile ear, but skirting around the taboo subjects of Latvian nationality and foreign oppression.
As the evening progressed however, the subject matter of the poems and songs became less subtle and more stirringly patriotic, so that openly anti-Russian and anti-German phrases, together with blatant lampooning and chastising of both the occupying races, brought the evening’s entertainment to a close with a crescendo of frenzied applause.
Kahrl could easily imagine that many of the ethnic Latvians in attendance would take home memories of the gentle folk songs and beautiful music, together with the culminating message that Latvia deserved to exist as an independent state, free to seek her own destiny. They would thereafter connect those two strands, ever more to associate the idealistic concept of a rural idyll (which, in truth, had probably never existed) with the blurred vision of their country as a sovereign nation.
As the crowd moved out through the large warehouse doors, and the performers packed away their books and instruments, there came the sudden cry of “Stop! Thief!”
Finding himself in the melee and not far from the place where the call had originated, Kahrl noticed a constable in pursuit of a large man carrying a box – presumably containing fruit. He told himself to mind his own business, but his instinct was to follow in case he might be of some assistance. From the eager panting behind him, it was obvious that the bitch was of a like mind.
The thief and the policeman disappeared around a corner, and when Kahrl and his dog followed they almost bumped into the two men, struggling for ownership of the box.
Almost straight away the heavy article fell to the ground, so that the contest was now between the thief and the policeman, the first of whom, to Kahrl’s consternation, produced a long-bladed knife.
Kahrl stood back, for he knew nothing would be achieved from putting himself in danger. But the bitch, her nature being such, threw herself at the pair and then with a loud yelp! immediately fell away, apparently injured. Kahrl noticed a splash of blood on her fur, but she was too close to the grappling men for him to help her, until the policeman too fell to the ground, clutching his side.
Now the assailant made off, only glancing back once, before disappearing into the blackness of the night.
Kahrl had to a make a heartbreaking choice now. He stepped past the dog and went first to the policeman to check his injury, only to find the knife still protruding from the poor fellow’s side. He grabbed the handle, wondering whether or not the blade should be removed, when he heard an angry voice behind him.
It was then that the awful shock hit him like a steam hammer. The anger was being directed at him! He glanced in the direction of his accusers, as more angry people gathered behind them.
“Hey, you there! Stop! Hold that man!”
“He’s just stabbed that policeman!”
* * *
Appalled at the accusation levelled against him, his first reaction was to try and explain the situation. Surely they would understand. They must see he wasn’t the type to carry out such a heinous assault. They only had to look at the way he was dressed to realise he was a gentleman!
Then it occurred to him that most of these people were poor working men, as he had been several years before, to whom the cut of someone’s clothing was no guarantee of their honesty, nor of their ability to commit an act of violence.
In an instant his perspective shifted to view the scene from where they stood, seeing what they saw – a man holding the handle of a knife, whose blade had penetrated several inches into the side of an officer of the law.
There could be only one conclusion, and so just one course of action he could take.
He let go of the dagger, lowered the body gently to the ground, took to his heels and ran.
He ran as fast as he had ever run in his life, past the fine houses just beyond the market and far out towards the shanties, before circling back into the city, where he slowed his pace, partly to avoid unwanted attention, but mostly because he was exhausted. He kept to the dark, back streets, avoiding the occasional lamplight and melting into the shadows, until at last his escape route brought him to the back door of the Black Pig.
The sweat from his exertion, having cooled and condensed, now ran down his back in icy rivulets, making him shiver, even as he sneaked through the still warm kitchen, where he tried to ignore the stares of the scullery maids.
From here he took the back stairs to the upper floor and made for his apartments. He glanced to either side of him as he unlocked his door, entered his room, and locked himself in again before collapsing onto his bed.
He lay stunned, his mind racing in all the wrong directions, for a full fifteen minutes, before voicing the inevitable conclusion to his mental turmoil.
“I can’t stay here.”
There were, apart from his good friend Rudolf, several other devotees of the lectures who would recognise him if described as a wanted felon. Some would be only too eager to name him, as he had by now earned a reputation as argumentative, on the few occasions when he could be bothered to air an opinion.
It would be just a matter of time before there came a knock on his door, and he’d be taken into custody. With witnesses to assert his guilt, there could be only one possible outcome.
So he gathered a few belongings into his old knapsack, together with his secret store of ready cash.
Without further ado he left his lodgings of six years, wondering if he would ever see them again. He retraced his steps and exited the building via the kitchen, once again taking the back streets towards a temporary hiding place he hoped would never occur to the authorities.
FINAL NOTE
There’s so much more I could have referred to, including the function of graving docks, the gale of May 1895 that sounded the death knell for sailing smacks & opened the door to steam, how many of the early steam trawlers were converted tugs, origins of the otter trawl and the infamous 1901 lockout. Plus many more items I needed to verify (usually via the Internet).
As I said at the start, this wasn’t meant to be a ‘how to do’ session – just an example of the sort of research that can underpin the historical novel.
It must by now be obvious that I relied extensively on the Internet. After all, if someone’s already done the work, why re-invent the wheel? High-level reference sources such as Google and Wikipedia can often provide instant results, or at least useful links that can save hours of painstaking research. Not always the case, but often a good place to start.
(Extract from a talk given to Grimsby Writers Group - November 2018)
I want to share with you an account of my experience in researching my novel, ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’ – in other words, to invite you to join me on that journey.
First – what’s the book about? A couple of years ago I was submitting a manuscript to an agency, and they asked me for my ‘elevator pitch’. And I thought: ‘What’s the way I stand in a lift got to do with getting my book published?’
So I Googled the term and discovered that what they wanted was a pithy description of my novel that I could deliver to fellow-passengers during a short elevator ride.
Of course, they don’t tell you how, out of the blue, to announce to a bunch of complete strangers the fact that you’ve written a book. I plucked up the nerve to do that once in the doctor’s surgery, only to be met with a wall of embarrassed silence, and pitying looks that seemed to say: ‘Oh, you poor man.’
Still, assuming anyone I meet in a lift could care less, here’s my elevator pitch for ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’.
‘A Donkeyman’s Journey is an historical novel, based on the lives of my own great-grandparents, charting the fortunes and disasters of a Latvian immigrant couple raising a family among the booming fishing trade of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’
I’ve wanted to write this book since I started scribbling seriously around 20 years ago. Partly a roots-related thing I suppose. But also being a lover of puzzles, I wanted to have a go at re-constructing the broken vase that was my family’s story, even if the few remaining original pieces needed supplementing with fresh clay and quite a lot of glue.
But what’s all this got to do with donkeys, do I hear you ask? No? Well I am going to tell you – but not until later on. Some of you with nautical knowledge might guess, but I’d ask you not to give the game away just yet.
With a word count approaching 200,000 I decided to bisect the manuscript as follows:
Volume One – The Latvian Exile (covering 1872-89)
Volume Two – The Loyal Englishman (1889-1917)
But I’ll be covering the whole work in this presentation.
Now, why the need for all this research?
My previous novels included 2 science fiction and 2 black comedy thrillers, none of which required much in the way of research. So I began writing without much more than very rudimentary plans, and found that approach fun to begin with. But the result was hours and hours of backtracking, unravelling and re-working. So I decided that this time my approach would definitely be to bite the bullet and – plan ahead!
MAIN RESEARCH HEADINGS
Although very personal to me, ‘A Donkeyman’s Journey’ was going to be my first – perhaps my only – historical novel. And there was no way in which I could produce credible historical fiction without doing a certain amount of research. In retrospect, though I took a largely undisciplined approach in real time, I would say the areas of research I identified fell under 4 specific headings.
First, there was the general historical backdrop – the actual known history within which the characters were going to act out their parts.
Second was what I would call ‘a sense of place’. I would need to acquire a mental image of the locations in which the real and imaginary events took place. I wanted to feel that I was writing from within those times and locations, and not just remotely from the future looking back. A tall order, and others must decide if I’ve come anywhere close to succeeding.
Third came the need for quite a bit of knowledge of the fishing industry as it developed from a handful of sailing smacks to huge fleets of steam and diesel-driven trawlers. I would also require a smattering of mechanical knowledge, or at least a basic understanding of steam fishing vessels of the period and their engines.
Finally, and – for me – probably the most important and fascinating facet of my story would be its main characters – my great-grandparents and their offspring, about whom very little is known, except for the usual birth, marriage and death notices on record.
GENERAL HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The events of my novel take place in 4 periods & locations, namely:
Latvia (1878 – 1917)
South Shields (1885 – 1895)
Grimsby (1895 – 1917) and
London (1899).
First heading now – Latvian general history – dry as dust, yes?
LATVIAN GENERAL HISTORY
Well, this is just my opinion, but certainly in the case of Latvia, I would disagree. Consider this: Latvia’s national history museum in Riga is called The Latvian Museum of Occupation – because that’s what the country’s history has been mostly about – the presence of various foreign powers suppressing the indigenous population’s desire for a national identity. Here are highlights obtained from Wikipedia:
12th century – Latvians were advanced farmers, fishermen and traders
12th-13th centuries – German crusaders bring destruction and oppression in the name of Christianity, and take control
16th century – Poland mostly in power, some aggression from Russia
17th century – Sweden mostly in power, Russia still knocking at the door
18th century – falls to Russia and becomes part of the Russian empire
19th century – still part of the Russian Empire – significant events:
1812 – Riga besieged by the French
1818-20 – serfdom abolished in Courland / Livonia
1861 – serfdom abolished in Latgale
1868 – Latvian Society founded
1877 – opening of railway from Tukums to the capital
1891 – Russian is declared the official language
20th century – significant events:
1905 – Demonstration brutally suppressed by Russian army
1917 – Germans in power
1918-40 – independence at last, but …
1940-41 – occupied by USSR
1941-45 – occupied by Nazi Germany
1945-91 – satellite of USSR
1991 – independence finally recognised worldwide
I’ve omitted so much here, especially the period of international conflict from 1914 to 1918, because events involving Latvia were so complex. But I think this gives you a sense of how the Latvian people suffered under occupation.
To give you a better idea of the relationship of Latvians with their Russian rulers and German landlords during the 19th century, I want to show you a passage from a most informative little pamphlet entitled ‘Latvia and Latvians’, produced by the Latvian Welfare Fund, Central Board Daugavas Vanagi (1978).
'When Sweden lost its final battle against Peter the Great of Russia at the beginning of the 18th century, Latvia, with exception of Kurzeme, was incorporated into the Russian empire. The opening of the 19th century found the entire Latvian territory under Russian rule. The German nobility retained its local positions and land in Latvia and had a free hand in the administration of the province.
'Although greatly oppressed by the German masters, the Latvians managed to survive as industrious peasants who tenaciously clung to their traditions and culture and always tried to improve their education. One must recognise the fact that among the German aristocracy, and particularly among the German clergy, were enlightened people who tried to help the indigenous population. And so the 19th century witnessed a dramatic awakening of the national consciousness of the Latvian people and the emergence of educated Latvians who strove to achieve a better place for their people among the nations ruled by the Russian Tsar. By the beginning of the 20th century Latvia and Estonia were the educationally most advanced areas of Russia with the lowest incidence of illiteracy. Riga, the old Hanseatic city, and formerly largely dominated by German aristocracy and merchants, admitted an ever-increasing number of educated and skilled Latvian craftsmen, merchants, property owners and members of the professions.
'The Latvians also survived all attempts by the Russian authorities to russify them, and despite the fact that before the First World War their secondary and higher education had to be acquired in Russian or German, the educated Latvians managed to ensure that Latvian eventually came into its own as a language of literature and instruction.'
SOUTH SHIELDS GENERAL HISTORY
South Shields’ location on the south bank of the Tyne where it meets the North Sea made it an important trading and fishing port. It also sat on top of a significant coal seam, and the St Hilda’s pit provided much work alongside fishing, so that workers from the 2 most dangerous jobs would have been able to drink side by side in the town’s pubs.
Historical data are readily available on Wikipedia. I also managed to acquire a copy of Michael J Hallowell’s ‘South Shields Through Time’, a collection of photos of old buildings that helped me visualise areas of the town where the action took place. Also invaluable was a replica Ordnance Survey map of the town from 1895 - the very year that my grandfather was born in Taylor Street.
GRIMSBY GENERAL HISTORY
Having grown up in the town, the significance of the fishing industry could not have escaped my notice.
A major contributor to Grimsby’s success as a world centre for fish landings and processing was the direct rail link with London – something that its main rivals such as Hull and Fleetwood, didn’t have in the late 19th century.
The town’s contribution of fighting men in the 1914-18 conflict, mostly referred to as the Grimsby Chums, was significant (some 8,000 men), as well as calamitous, the 10th and 11th Lincolns suffering high numbers of casualties in the early stages of their mobilisation. The tragic decision to place men from the same street in the same platoons meant that heavier losses affected some neghbourhoods worse than others.
My main sources on how WW1 affected Grimsby were: Grimsby In The Great War by Stephen Wade and LincolnshireGenWeb project, which includes the Grimsby Roll of Honour 1914-1919. Both these documents are available on the Internet.
Many useful facts concerning improvements to the town’s infrastructure, together with local Council affairs and public celebrations, were gleaned from Bob Lincoln’s ‘Rise of Grimsby Volume 2’, covering the period between 1865 and 1913. I managed to buy a dilapidated copy of this book from www.abebooks.co.uk, a very useful on-line source of second-hand books.
Probably my foremost contributor of interesting stories and historical events has been my old friend, now sadly deceased, George Handeline Black. George worked for many years as librarian for the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, and his knowledge of Grimsby’s and Cleethorpes’ history was, I believe, second to none.
Some time before he died, George kindly handed me a memory stick containing all of his snippets, which I had the pleasure of sorting and cataloguing for Grimsby Reference and Local History Library. (Jennie Cartwright of Lincs Inspire tells me the intention is to produce a printed version, but I suspect that will depend on funding.)
Earlier this year we lost another accomplished local historian, Alan Dowling, who published several fascinating books. It was Alan’s publication, ‘Grimsby: Making the Town 1800-1914’, together with George Black’s collection, that helped me understand how the town’s residential areas and amenities developed during the period I was interested in.
It was at the Reference & Local History Library that I was able to access the following printed works and essays, providing further background about the town’s businesses, housing and infrastructure: Cook’s and Kelly’s Directories, The Development of Educational Facilities in Grimsby 1870-1902 (W.P. Knight 1967), The Development of Sanitation and Housing in Grimsby 1875-1914 (T.G. Hall 1983), and The Sanitary Idea (Cynthia J Stringfellow 1991).
LONDON GENERAL HISTORY
History-wise the short visit to London didn’t require much more than superficial knowledge beyond the layout of Harley Street as a medical district and the development of Regent’s Park. I found most of what I needed in Wikipedia.
LOCATIONS & SENSE OF PLACE
This concerns the locations in my book where the action happens.
In Latvia, the story opens in the village of Kaive, in the Tukums district of Kurland, a region to the west of Riga. This is the birth village of my great-grandfather – but more of that later.
He travels by rail to Riga to begin his apprenticeship from the county town of Tukums, passing a collection of seaside resorts known collectively as Jurmala. (He returns to Jurmala while courting Juhla).
Later he encounters South Shields, Grimsby and, briefly, Marylebone in London.
LATVIAN LOCATIONS
My father’s sister, my Aunt Brenda took a sightseeing holiday in Riga in the 1980s. This was before the break-up of the USSR, so she found herself in a tightly controlled group under the beady eye of a government-appointed guide. As a result her experiences were limited mainly to the old town area, which nevertheless certainly has its share of architectural treasures.
Later, in 2004, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, my wife Julie and I took a scheduled flight from Schiphol for a pleasant fortnight’s stay in a converted monastery in Riga’s old town. It was nice to freely explore the area on foot, and we also used the excellent public transport to visit the beautiful resort of Jurmala with its majestic Russian & German holiday homes.
A service bus took us to the town of Tukums, where my great-grandfather’s family would have worshipped at the attractive Lutheran church. It gave me an eerie feeling to walk those same streets. Unfortunately, although people were very friendly, nobody spoke any English, and I was unable to unearth any family-related information.
Soon after returning home, I learned that my Uncle Ken had made contact via the Internet with a Latvian gentleman by the name of Aigars Evardson. Aigars was also seeking information about his own great-grandfather, believed born somewhere in the Tukums area. As the surname isn’t common in Latvia, there must be a good chance that we were related.
This was an opportunity not to be missed. So I exchanged e-mails with Aigars, and we agreed to meet when Julie and I paid our second visit to Latvia – this time, on a mission.
It was in 2006 that we made that trip, and this time I hired a car from the airport. We had booked a hotel in Jurmala, in order to get a better look at the resort and its varied architecture. Also there was direct access to the sandy beach, which seemed to go on forever along the Baltic coast.
We met Aigars, his wife, young daughter and nephew (who had a smattering of school English) in a restaurant close to our hotel. It turned out Aigars was a colonel in the police force, and principal of the Jurmala police training college. So next morning we set out for Tukums. When we arrived at the Lutheran church there were lots of bows and serious faces from the staff who looked after the old records.
The large, heavy books were already open at the required places, as if a police colonel mustn’t be made to wait. I must admit that I had to take their word that the entries were valid, because to me the ancient script was all but undecipherable. However, it appeared that the records evidenced the births of 2 brothers in the village of Kaive (about 8 miles away), the elder being my great-grandfather Carl Evardson, and the younger being Fritz, great-grandfather to Aigars.
All very excited at this revelation, we set off for Kaive. The village is famous in Latvia for its ancient oak, of unknown age, which legend has it should be touched by anyone leaving the country – presumably to ensure their return. (I only found out about this legend later via Wikipedia, and verified it with a further spooky visit, courtesy of Google Earth.) Unfortunately our visit to the family’s home village proved fruitless, nobody there having heard of anyone with our shared surname. By now you’ll probably understand that this wasn’t so surprising, given the level of social upheaval that this little country had gone through since the 1860s.
Just last year on a flight to Cyprus my wife struck up a conversation with a lady by the name of Ruta, who turned out to be Latvian.
We arranged to meet during the course of our holiday and I told her about the book I was trying to write. I had more or less finished the draft of the Latvian part, and she kindly agreed to read it and assess it for credibility, that is, whether she felt as if the action was taking place in the period Latvia that she could recognise. Later she e-mailed me a ‘thumbs up’ together with some very helpful suggestions.
So, all in all, I felt I had provided a credible backdrop to the Latvian sections of my book.
SOUTH SHIELDS LOCATIONS
In the case of South Shields, however, I must confess that I never actually got to visit the town. But I have flown over it in cyberspace, again courtesy of Google Earth. Also I fortunately came across a replica of an 1895 Ordnance Survey map, reproduced by Alan Godfrey Maps. This proved invaluable in helping my protagonist find his way around the town, even to the detailed pinpointing of the house where his first son was born, in the same year that the original O.S. map was drawn.
On yet another holiday Julie & I met a couple from Tyneside, the male partner George admitting to some knowledge of South Shields. He kindly offered to read my South Shields section and eventually e-mailed his approval of the draft as a believable setting with which he could identify. So I was happy with that.
GRIMSBY, CLEETHORPES & LONDON LOCATIONS
Being a native of Grimsby, it was inevitable that the historical research mentioned earlier would spill over and affect the notion of ‘sense of place’ that I was hoping to create.
Throughout the writing process I collected and saved relevant pictures and articles from Grimsby Telegraph’s Bygones that portrayed Grimsby & Cleethorpes between 1895 and 1917.
An event that really sticks in my memory was a spontaneous bicycle tour of Grimsby Fish Docks Estate in 2008. I had intended to take a photo of the Docks railway crossing, to contrast with one taken by the noted Observer photographer, Jane Bown, in the 60s.
Her picture was of a group of dock workers cycling over the railway crossing to start their morning’s work – and I was – still am – convinced that one of those boiler-suited cyclists was my father John, on his way to the Consolidated Fisheries engineering workshops. Ms Bown’s view made the cover of the Observer Magazine, and I bought a copy directly from her. I can't show Ms Bown's photo for copyright reasons. But I can assure you that the two photos display two entirely contrasting views of this iconic entrance to Grimsby Docks.
Having taken the 2008 shot – obviously of a more derelict scene, I couldn’t resist continuing onto the Docks and taking a further 60 or 70 snaps. I suspect if I tried that today I wouldn’t get far, but at that time there were very few barriers and nobody challenged me.
I cycled through what was akin to a ghost town – with many empty spaces but also with many derelict old buildings still standing along Gorton Street, Fish Dock, Wharneford and Auckland Roads. The vivid sensation of imagining the Docks as they once must have been has stayed with me. I also have the photographic record of that period of enormous change. (If you'd like to see those photos, e-mail me at [email protected]).
A more recent opportunity to mentally re-construct a part of the town that’s seen recent upheaval was a guided tour of the East Marsh hosted by a literary acquaintance, Billy Dasein. He’s a proud East Marshian, living with his father on Rutland Street, and I wanted to find the houses that my ancestors once occupied: 56 and 59 Grafton Street, and 97 and 120 Guildford Street. Of these, only 59 Grafton Street remains, all of the others now replaced by newer buildings. But it was uplifting to walk those streets, even if the soles of my shoes had to make do with new concrete and tarmac where cobbles might once have been set.
As for London, I’ve visited our capital many times, but never the Georgian streets of Marylebone, or Regent’s Park. These locations play a relatively small part in the story, for a short period in 1899 when my great-grandfather takes his son (my grandfather) to see a Harley Street specialist after incurring an injury to his kneecap.
Google Earth was useful here again, enabling me to describe the journey from the father’s and son’s boarding house to the doctor’s clinic, along with an outing to Regent’s Park zoo.
FISHING & MARINE ENGINEERING
Under this heading I needed a sound understanding of the industry’s structure, some basic knowledge of steam power, the beginnings of unionisation of the engineers & trawler crews, & the great industrial stand-off, now almost forgotten, known as the 1901 Great Grimsby Lockout.
On these subjects, as my father was a fitter on the docks I grew up listening to his stories about the trawlers, and the lives of the ordinary deckhands, with whom he played fives & threes (dominoes) occasionally.
The amount of engineering knowledge that I was able to retain was minimal. This wasn’t too much of a problem as I didn’t need to go into great detail about things mechanical. But I did ask an engineering friend, Stuart Conolly, to give my manuscript a read-through and he didn’t find any glaring errors.
I’m going to quote a couple of extracts – this first one involves some aspects of engineering.
IMPROVISATIONS
Carl spent the next morning checking over the Fairmont’s engines and mechanical gear, as well as supervising coal loading, so she’d be ready to put to sea again the following day. Around ten o’clock skipper Dobson came aboard to examine the nets and trawls, and organise any necessary mending.
“Morning, Charley.”
“Morning, skipper. Good trip, this last one, eh?”
“Not bad. But we’d do better still if we had more room to stow fish. It galls me to leave behind easy pickings for want of space.”
“I know, skipper. That’s the only problem with these converted tugs. But they handle well and give you that little bit more power when you need it.”
“Can you afford to give up some of your coal hole space?”
Carl shook his head. “Not really. We’re stowing the bare minimum of fuel as it is. It was touch and go last trip that we might have to raise the sails – not a good idea with all that weight of fish, especially if the weather turned nasty. And I’m no sailor. I don’t know the difference between a rope and a sheet.”
“A rope is a sheet, Charley. But I know what you mean. I sailed a bit in the old days, but I wouldn’t want to go back to that. It breaks my heart when I think of the casualties – all those good lads lost. And a headwind coming home could slow you down and spoil the catch.”
Carl was impressed by Mike Dobson’s sense of humanity, almost balancing his instinctive self-interest. They’d not had any exchange that you could call a conversation since Dobson first set him on, and the skipper’s reputation was as a man of dour demeanour and few words.
“I’ve a vague idea in the back of my mind, skipper.”
Dobson smiled. “For God’s sake, Charley, call me Mike when we’re not at sea. It makes me feel more human. Let’s hear this idea of yours, then.”
“When I said I couldn’t give you any coal hole space, I meant you couldn’t have it for the whole trip.”
Dobson frowned.
“Hear me out, Mike. The firm that converted your tugs into trawlers did a fine job, giving you as much fish storage as could fit comfortably amidships, without affecting the Fairmont’s stability. But, to be honest, the amount of coal storage the original builders allowed is only just enough for my needs. It’s a constant battle to maximise the efficiency of the engine while giving you what you ask for. That’s why I daren’t give up any of my coal space for the whole trip.”
Dobson pursed his lips. “So, how can you let me have more storage then?”
“By giving up the space vacated by the coal we burn.”
Now there was a glint in the skipper’s eyes. Yet he sounded dubious. “How could we stow fish next to the remaining coal, without contaminating it?”
“It would entail fabricating a stout metal plate, fitting into grooves in the coal storage bin. By careful trimming, when the main fish pounds were nearly full, I would rake all the remaining coal to the for’ard end of the bin, fit the metal plate in the groove and wash out that end of the bin, using the empty space for stowing up to, say, ten extra standard fish boxes.”
“I like the sound of this, Charley. Keep talking.”
“As you say, the challenge would be preventing the remaining coal from contaminating the fish. You’d need a bespoke canvas or tarpaulin bag that fitted snugly into the vacant space.”
The skipper sounded impressed. “There must still be sail makers in Grimsby who could make such a bag. I’ll ask at the chandlers. What about the metal plate and grooves? That would surely involve some precision cutting and welding. Do you know anyone who could tackle that?”
Carl laughed. “I think I do, Mike. I spent a number of years as a welder on a timber steamer between Riga and Tyneside. But I’d need access to a decent workshop with cutting tools and welding gear.”
Mike scratched his head. “I don’t know. The fitters here are very protective of their trade. I doubt if they’d allow my own man in one of their fitting shops. But if you’d plan and design what’s needed, I’ll employ one of the engineering firms to do the work, and you can oversee the job for me.”
“I’d be pleased to do that, Mike. When do you want to do the work?”
“Can you do the measuring up today?”
“Sorry. We’re already coaled up.”
“Next trip in, then, so the plate and canvas bag can be fabricated in time for fitting next time we’re ashore after that.”
Carl picked up on the sequence of events. “And the welders can come on board to fit the grooves. We should only need to lay over for an extra day. There’d be hardly any disruption to the fishing.”
“I like the way you see things as if you had an interest in the whole business, Charley.”
“But I do, Mike. Your vessel pays my wages.”
Mike screwed up his face, from which Carl deduced he was doing some mental arithmetic.
“Listen to me, Charley. If you can pull this off, and it brings an extra ten boxes of prime fish to market each trip, I’ll pay you a poundage on top of your weekly wage. And the same goes for my other boat, the Fairfield. But, Charley …”
“Yes, Mike?”
“This is between you and me. Yes?”
(Funnily enough, I’ve since learned that the idea of converting part of the coal hole for fish storage became a reality during trips on the bigger post-war trawlers. According to ex-fisherman John Nicklin in his fascinating 1998 book ‘The Loss of the Motor Trawler Gaul’ the practice figured in the chain of events leading to that Hull trawler’s sad loss.)
The extract I’m now going to read involves the sharp practices exercised by some of the more unscrupulous trawler owners.
THE FORTY THIEVES
When not at sea, Charley’s early morning walks on the docks became more regular as the years progressed. Perhaps it was a simple case of habit, but with the house resembling bedlam once the children were awake, he found it relaxing to enjoy this quiet period around dawn, to take the freshened air, and to turn any pressing issues over in his mind.
Not that he felt at all burdened by any particular problems of late. He and Matilda had been blessed with six lively children, the youngest of whom, Gertruda Otilya Amelia, was now approaching three years old, and proved a true delight, ever smiling and lively.
Sadly more recently the stillbirth of a seventh child, named Rosie for burial purposes, had marred the joy that they had previously experienced. For a while, understandably, his wife had been inconsolable. But he trusted that time would heal her anguish, and that she would take comfort in the rude health of their remaining offspring.
For some reason he had set out earlier than usual this morning, the hint of first light not quite ready to put out its feelers above the eastern horizon. And there was something else unusual about this pre-dawn period, for at once he heard the unmistakeable clip clopping and clatter of a group of horse-drawn carts, approaching from the direction of Cleethorpes.
Instinctively he ducked into a shop doorway, and watched from the shadows as the train of four empty wagons passed him and turned onto the dock estate at Riby Square.
Intrigued, he decided to follow and investigate.
To maintain the best cover, he accessed the docks via Humber Street and the adjoining alleyways, with an ear cocked for audible clues as to the destination of the curious procession.
He soon realised it was the fish pontoon.
Although still referred to as a pontoon, the landing quay had long been upgraded to a concrete dock wall, and as he peered from behind one of the buyer’s sheds, he saw in the half-light that, as chance would have it, just one trawler was moored there. He knew it, and the firm to whose fleet it belonged.
Depending on the tides, there was nothing unusual in a recently docked trawler’s cargo being offloaded at this, or any other hour of the day or night. The team of lumpers (as the official unloading labourers were known) would be primed to attend the tide and shift the full boxes or ‘kits’ of fish onto the pontoon, iced up and ready for the morning’s market.
However the men in the carts were not official lumpers. He knew many of the usual crowd, but recognised none of these fellows. A figure darted about among them, pointing and directing them towards those boxes he wanted removing and loaded onto the carts.
The operation was performed swiftly and efficiently, and soon the carts were moving off, via Riby Square and across the railway lines towards the West Marsh area. He followed far enough behind so that they wouldn’t see him or hear his clogs on the cobbles, and saw them turn into one of the timber yards alongside the Alexandra Dock.
Though he peered from a good distance away, obscured by the gloom of an alley just off Ranter’s Wharf, the now breaking dawn revealed a peculiar sight. A small group of men appeared to be conducting an auction of sorts, and as deals were struck for each cartload of prime fish in turn, their purchases were driven away in different directions, presumably for re-icing, storing and distribution.
He knew better than to risk being seen or challenging any of the men concerned, so he decided to return to the pontoon and try to work out what had just taken place.
He arrived at the dock to find the vessel’s mate completing his final tally of the trawler’s surviving cargo and, recognising the man, approached him.
“Morning, Bob. Good catch, eh?”
The mate seemed nervous.
“Oh, er, morning, Charley. Bit early for your usual walk?”
“Yes. Couldn’t sleep.” He cast his eye over the deck. “Looks like you’ll land some good quality fish this morning. And if there’s only this boat, this lot ‘ll fetch a good price on the market.”
“We’re hoping so,” the man confirmed. “Well, I’d better get on with the tally. The lumpers ‘ll be here soon.” Then he asked shiftily, “Have you been here long?”
“Not that long. Be seeing you, Bob.”
“Yeah. Mind how you go.”
Though said glibly, Charley realised this was probably good advice, in view of what he believed he’d just witnessed.
He made his way home, where over breakfast he related the morning’s experience to Matilda.
“What do you think was going on, dear?” she asked, wide eyed. “Were those men with the wagons stealing the fish? Do you think you should tell the police?”
“I don’t think it was exactly theft. I believe the owner was fully aware of what was going on. He was probably present at that strange auction at the timber yard.”
“I don’t understand, Charley. What would be the point of an owner taking his own fish?”
“Ever since the men were forced to accept part of their wages in poundage, there’s been mistrust as to whether the owners have been paying full value for what’s been due to the crews. I’ve tended to put that down to sour grapes, because the men have never really been able to properly check their final poundage figures.”
Matilda frowned. “But surely it’s just a simple matter of multiplying the profit for the trip by each man’s poundage rate, according to his job?”
“Yes, but, for a start, do you recall the objections that John Collins and I raised when the system was first mooted?”
“You mean, that some of the owners could inflate certain costs, because they have interests in the firms supplying things like coal and ice?”
“That’s right, and then there was the little item of directors’ and officials’ fees. The unions were never granted the right to audit those figures. I’m not saying all of the owners are rigging the system in their own favour, but it’s widely suspected that it’s not operated fairly.”
She poured them both some more tea. “But what’s all this got to do with what you saw this morning?”
“It’s this. One trick that I’ve heard men talk about is where a few or even just one ship happens to have made a particular tide – especially an early morning one, when it’s still dark.
“Allegedly, seeing an opportunity to save on poundage, the vessel owner sends a fleet of wagons to take off the top layer of fish – the last caught and therefore the freshest – before the mate tallies the catch ready for the lumpers to offload it in time for the regular fish auction.
“The wagons then cart away this fish, never officially landed, to a private auction where two or more complicit buyers carve up the load at a price they’re all happy with. And, of course, all of that valuable prime fish is left out of the official tally, so it’s not included in working out the profit. And the poor bloody fishermen are thus deprived of their full poundage on the trip, which they’ve been relying on to make up their wages.”
“And you think that’s what happened today?”
“I’m almost certain of it.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Well, for a start, I don’t see any point in involving the police. They’d naturally side with the owners, some of whom, as you know, are magistrates used to doling out judgment on us lesser mortals. In any case, as the owners are carting away their own fish, it can hardly qualify as theft, can it?”
“No, but surely what you’ve described is a fraud on the honest fishermen.”
“You’re right. But I suspect our guardians of the law would, rightly or wrongly, deem relatively low level fraud as a civil matter rather than a serious crime. That would mean hiring lawyers, and even if the union took it on, the net result after legal costs would be little or no gain.”
“You’ll mention this to John Collins, though?”
“I think I should, yes.”
She sighed. “I’m beginning to understand why people call some of the owners ‘the forty thieves’.”
“Yes? Well, here’s something else for your encyclopaedia of Grimsby jargon. When I hear men speak about such goings on, they use a special name to describe those cartloads of fish being taken away to a secret market. And it’s a name that’s very apt, speaking as someone who’s witnessed it.”
She cocked her head to one side. “And what’s that?”
“The ghost train.”
OTHER FISHING SOURCES
Most of what I needed to supplement my basic knowledge of the industry was provided by an exceptional essay by John Holroyd entitled ‘The Grimsby Lockout of 1901’. I read and unashamedly took detailed notes from the copy in the Central Library’s archives, because the notorious lockout and associated unionisation forms a short but significant section of my book.
Another book that provided me with a lot of interesting background was Vince McDonagh’s ‘Feeding the Nation’, commissioned by the Fish Merchants Association. I borrowed a copy from a friend but I suspect the library will own one.
One interesting fact gleaned from Mr McDonagh’s book was that Cleethorpes had its own little fishing industry for a while. In 1900 Cleethorpes had 60 fishermen & merchants working from Brighton St slipway; oysters were sent to London by train. Skipper Jack Priestley fished off the beach in the early 1900s, taking his boat up to Killingholme for plentiful cod & codling – the boat almost sinking on getting back to Cleethorpes. He skippered boats owned by Cleethorpes shellfish merchant Bill Anderson, the best known being ‘Shepherd Lad’ & ‘Shepherd Lass’. Unfortunately in 1903 the Cleethorpes oyster beds closed due to sewer outfall contamination.
But up until then Cleethorpes oysters were apparently renowned for their aphrodisiac qualities. (This reminds me of the story of the fisherman who took his girlfriend to a local café one evening & treated her to a dozen oysters, only to return the following morning to complain that 3 of them hadn’t worked!)
FAMILY HISTORY
I’ll begin this section with a list of the main family characters:
Kahrl Evardson (1858-1917)
Juhla Rachoan (c1868-1922)
- Kahrl John (1895-1976)
- Emil Robert (1897-1917)
- Lily Karolina (1898-1972)
- Alfred Rudolf (1900-1941)
- Harold Emile (1901-1968)
- Gertruda Otilya (1902-1964)
From my first years in school I realised that my surname was uncommon, and my father had told me that our family came from Latvia. As that country lay behind the Iron Curtain it was a mystery to me, aligned with Russia and populated by oppressed people. Hazy collective family memory portrayed my great-grandparents’ migration as some sort of heroic escape, though no details were ever forthcoming.
That same collective memory had it that the couple worked on a freighter plying a route between Riga – the Latvian capital – and Tyneside. The outward cargo was timber while coal provided the return ballast. He was an engineer and she a cabin maid (the ship carried a handful of fare-paying passengers).
My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Juhla Otilya Matilda Rachoan. (I can imagine Kahrl falling in love with her for her name alone.) Their first child was my grandfather and his birth was registered at South Shields in 1895.
I was never able to find a record of their marriage. It could have taken place in Latvia, and that country suffered several upheavals between 1914 and the close of the communist era, possibly causing records to be lost. With no evidence to support it, I created a fictitious wedding for them aboard ship while moored at Riga. (I’ll explain the reason for this later).
From the dates on the list you might be able to glean a couple of pertinent facts:
3 of the males were killed in the 2 World Wars – my great-grandfather and his second eldest son Emil in WW1, and my father's uncle Alf in WW2. Both my great-grandparents died at relatively early ages (59 and 54). They were also quite late in starting a family (though they obviously soon got the hang of it). As a result my great-grandfather never met any of his grandchildren, and my great-grandmother only when they were babes in arms or toddlers. This would have created a significant damper on the flow of oral history, as they could have passed on nothing about their own lives to their grandchildren - a factor that left gaping holes in the collective family memory.
FAMILY MEMORY
Because of those gaping holes there isn’t much to add. I did glean some information from my father, aunts and uncles, though mostly dimmed by the passage of years. For reasons I never fully understood I had little contact with my grandparents, something I now greatly regret. I’m still left with a long list of questions for my Granddad.
Family memory can sometimes be less than reliable, of course. Each person will put his or her own slant on what they think they remember. Also people like to populate their family history with famous characters. For example, my grandmother’s maiden name was Smith – not an easy name to research, as you can imagine. One suggestion was that past research had established a genealogical link with Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. However 5 minutes in Wickipedia reveals that, although Pocahontas did wed a British captain, it wasn’t John Smith. He, in fact, never married, and there is certainly no recorded progeny attributed to him. Always question family memory.
PUBLIC RECORDS
I used Ancestry for my British research, paying one month’s subscription of about £12 and carrying out all I needed to do in that month. I’m pretty sure you can access similar sites using the computers at Grimsby Library’s Family History Archives. But there wasn’t much for me to have to check because my distant cousin Kevin Smith (then residing in New Zealand, which is distant enough) did most of the hard work when he initiated an Evardson Family Tribal Pages website in 2002, which he was kind enough to let me access.
When it came to the Latvian records, there is now a web-based service called Raduratski that allows access to indices and scans of original birth, death and marriage record books.
I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t found any public record of my great-grandparents’ marriage, and it turns out that it was simply because the records hadn’t been uploaded at the time I was looking. It seemed I would have to invent a wedding for them and, to fit in with factual & fictional events I had already worked into my draft manuscript, I chose the year 1889.
Recently – October 2018 – I received correspondence from another distant relative – this time in Queensland' Australia (a lady called Jo Wickens), who had come across the record that I was lacking, now on the Raduratski site. The original document was difficult to read (being mostly handwritten in old German script, which even most modern German’s can’t decipher), but the index was transposed to modern print and recorded their marriage as having taken place – guess when? That’s right – in 1889. Well, it could have been within 6 years of that, so maybe it’s not so spooky, but I must admit a shiver went up my back when I first saw that document. A word against Carl’s name that I was able to decipher was ‘Masschinist’, which translates from German as ‘engineer’. Nice to have that confirmed as well.
Other public records that have been very informative are the 1901 & 1911 Census forms. The 1911 census records the 3 lodgers who lived with the family at that time. I believe sub-letting & taking in lodgers was by no means uncommon. These forms also demonstrate how people freely changed their names, e.g. Carl could be Kahrl & he seems to have settled on Charley – possibly to sound more English. Juhla also forsook her lovely name and adopted one of her middle names, Matilda – probably for the same reason.
The NELC archives – as opposed to the Central Library Reference & Local History section – are kept in a remote corner of the Town Hall.
They are available to the public, but you have to make an appointment. I did so through Jennie Cartwright of LincsInspire, my objective being to obtain evidence of my great-grandfather’s employment as a trawler engineer between the years 1897 & 1914.
The archives don’t contain all the records – just a sample (I believe for some obscure reason you have to go to Canada for the full caboodle). And guess what? I found no evidence whatsoever that any Evardson sailed out of Grimsby on a trawler during that period (& yes, I did check close variations of the name).
So there was a mystery. What was Charley Evardson doing during all that time? The 1901 & 1911 census forms had him as a chief engineer in the fishing industry – but they may have been two of the years where there was a gap in the Grimsby archive records. Still, it did seem strange that there was no record at all of his fishing career in the sample. There had to be something else.
I experimented with various search words & phrases on Google & eventually came up with a site entitled: 1915crewlists.rmg.co.uk - & struck gold! The record covered only that one year, but it contained the comings & goings not just of my great-grandfather, but also his son Emil & 2 of their 3 lodgers – not on trawlers, but on merchant vessels. For there was a steady & sizeable traffic of coal transporters in & out of Grimsby’s commercial docks both before & during WW1. My guess (or supposition for the purposes of my story) was that this wasn’t my great-granddad’s only experience of working on the freighters. The records show the rates of pay the merchant seamen were receiving - & they were superior to those obtainable in fishing at that time (even allowing for a reasonable poundage). This was true even though Charley was signing on, not usually as an engineer, but as a stoker or trimmer (presumably because the competition for engineers’ positions was so fierce). Even so, with overtime freely available on the freighters (but unheard of aboard a trawler) there was consistently good money to be made, & less danger than trawlermen faced, as coal freight comprised mostly inshore trade. The downside was that you stayed with a ship for longer periods, for there was no guarantee that you would pick up another one at the drop of a hat.
(For the uninitiated, a trimmer was the guy who kept the hold cargo level & stable, which involved getting in there & raking the coal as it shifted about in heavy seas. Poundage was introduced by the owners after the 1901 lockout, where part of the former basic pay was converted to a share of the trawler’s profits (& losses), sometimes to the fishermen’s advantage, but sometimes not, at least until the really big trawlers came along after WW2 to plunder the fishing grounds more efficiently.)
Perhaps it’s a bit of a myth, then, to describe every seafaring household in Grimsby as a ‘fishing family’. And – in the case of Charley & Matilda – there was another dimension.
The 1911 census describes their eldest son John Evardson (15) as a grocer working from home. In other words their house at 97 Guildford Street was a shop. My father had mentioned this when I asked him what he remembered about his grandparents. He also remembered that the shop burned down in 1912.
In my book I’ve worked on the assumption that the shop was intended to provide their eldest son with a trade that he could manage with his injured leg. The childhood injury (actual cause unknown for certain) was the reason for the visit to London to consult a Harley Street doctor. I remember from the few occasions I was taken to see my grandparents that he wore a special boot because his injured leg was shorter than the other.
I wanted more information about the fire, so I visited the then old Grimsby Reference Library & spent a couple of hours trawling through the microfiche records of the Grimsby News & Grimsby Gazette for 1912. Once I had found one report, the other was easy. Each was very comprehensive & there was also a very strange bonus – a photograph taken by the Gazette photographer, with family members almost theatrically posed in positions that said nothing of the drama they had lived through only a few hours earlier.
The 1913 Kelly’s Directory for Lincolnshire lists C Evardson as a shopkeeper at 120 Guildford Street. This suggests that, after the fire, the family picked itself up and started again in presumably rented shop premises close to or on the corner with Wellington Street. From the newspapers’ account of the fire, we know that number 97 had been rented so that, apart from the destroyed stock and a few personal possessions, the financial loss to the family may not have been all that great.
I am now going to quote the section in my book that covers those events of the night of May 6th 1912.
THE EVARDSON SHOP FIRE
Just before midnight on Sunday the fifth of May, young Sidney Woodhead of number ninety-six Guildford Street decided to walk to the commercial dock, where he understood the butter boat to Denmark was taking on hands.
It was bad luck for him – though, as it turned out, fortunate for others – that the information he had been given was incorrect, and he made his way back home, worrying about where he was going to find work.
In the wee small hours of Monday he turned into Guildford Street, and was immediately aware that something was wrong. In the distance he could swear his mother was in the middle of the street, shouting and wringing her hands. Being a fit lad, he broke into a sprint that brought him to her side in less than a minute.
“Mum! What’s up?” he gasped.
But he only needed to look where she was pointing for the answer. Nevertheless she couldn’t help sobbing and saying, “Matilda’s shop’s on fire, Sid! The shop’s on fire!”
Seeing that flames had already taken over the whole of the lower floor of the mid-terrace building, he said, “There’s nothing we can do, Mum. We must raise the alarm.”
Then he ran into their own house, emerging seconds later bearing a tin penny whistle, which he blew loudly and repeatedly.
Matilda, who had been sleeping in the main bedroom above the shop, was the first person to hear the screech of the whistle from the street below her, barely seconds after being woken by what she thought was the tinkling of breaking glass. She realised the reason for the alarm when she noticed wisps of smoke creeping under her bedroom door.
Charley had recently sailed, and expected to be away from home for at least three weeks. The Karlsberg brothers were also at sea, leaving Big John with young John and Emil in the long bedroom at the back, Alfred and Harold in the walk-through room that led to it, and Lily and Gertie in the side room off the landing. No sounds came from any of their rooms, suggesting that none of them was awake.
She quickly pulled on her dressing gown and slippers and rushed out onto the landing, where she banged repeatedly on the adjacent bedroom doors, her eye on the well of smoke that told her there was no going down the staircase.
“Lily! Gertie! Alfred! Harold!” she screamed, still banging as hard as she could. “Put something on and get to the back!” Screams immediately emanated from the girls’ room, and their door flew open. They rushed out, sobbing, straight into their mother’s arms.
Not worrying whether the younger boys were dressed or not, she dashed across the landing and shoved their door wide open, throwing the girls into the room and instinctively pulling the door shut behind her.
At about this time two police constables arrived at the scene of the fire, almost instantaneously, though from opposite directions, having heard young Sid’s tin whistle alarm. Though they each attempted to locate telephones to alert the fire brigade, neither of them was able to get through. However a man by the name of Charles Hall, of Stanley Street, had seen the glow of the fire above the rooftops and cycled to the Town Hall, from where the fire brigade was mustered.
Inside the burning house there was pandemonium. Fortunately young John was able to keep his head and smashed through the rear bedroom window, via which each of the occupants was able to crawl out onto an outhouse roof, and from there be helped down to the ground by neighbours who had gathered in the back garden.
Once alerted, the fire brigade arrived within minutes, but could only concentrate their efforts on preventing the spread of the fire to the neighbouring dwellings. They were unable to save anything of the family’s property, except from amongst the rubble on the following morning, when a tin box containing some of the children’s undamaged clothing was found. Another small tin containing about five pounds – the previous week’s takings – was also recovered.
To Matilda, the events of the night were like an awful dream – with the one exception that, on waking, she discovered that their predicament was all too real. She and the girls shed many tears that night, but were kindly taken in, with the rest of the household, by their neighbour Mrs Clarke, who lived at number one-o-one.
A bizarre twist occurred the following morning when one of the local newspaper’s photographers, clearly more used to studio work, arranged them as a nonchalant group, appearing more like a family on a day trip to Skegness than destitute victims of a terrible disaster. Thus was the family depicted – with Big John Krutzberg seated next to Matilda in place of the head of household – in the weekend pictorial edition of the paper.
MORE PUBLIC RECORDS
Military records & news reports revealed the following:
Emil Robert Evardson (b c1897; d 21st March 1917)
Third Hand, Steam Trawler Queensborough (Grimsby)
Drowned as a result of attack by enemy submarine
Age 20, son of Mrs Evardson, 56 Grafton Street, Grimsby, born at Grimsby
Charles Evardson (b c1863; d 18th August 1917)
Donkeyman, SS Ardens (London)
Drowned as a result of attack by enemy submarine
Age 54, born in Russia
If you’re about to query Charley’s age in 1917, I can only assume he knocked a few years off when registering, for fear of being refused employment. The news report said:
'Whilst proceeding south to London with a cargo of coal at 6.15 p.m. a torpedo from a German submarine struck the ARDENS amidships, the explosion tearing out her port side and causing the mainmast to fall. The wake from the torpedo had been sighted, but with insufficient time to take any avoiding action. The only crew man killed was an engine room donkey man, the engines were blown to pieces, so that the ship lost her weigh almost immediately.
'The rest of the crew abandoned ship at once, getting clear and rowing for land. At 6.25 p.m. she was seen to turn over on one side and break in two, going down at 6.30 p.m. After rowing for about five minutes, the periscope of a submarine was seen following them, but this disappeared as a number of patrol boats approached. The survivors, which included two injured crew, were picked up by the Filey lifeboat and other craft and landed at Filey.'
A spot of Googling reveals that a donkeyman was the name given to the person in charge of all things mechanical on board the old steam fishing smacks and trawlers. (I understand the term survived into the modern Merchant Navy as describing anyone who worked in the engine room.)
OTHER DOCUMENTS
In 1888 my grandfather returned briefly to Latvia – reason, unknown. This is supported by a Russian Imperial visa document, passed to me by my father, covering the period 29th December 1888 to 10th January 1889. This was just before he was married, and it suggests he was already resident and presumably working in the UK as a single man.
This is a fascinating document, which contains much useful information.
It includes a handwritten note stating that ‘4 years & 2 months ago Karol Evardson set sail in a steamer (name illegible) in the capacity of a welder …’
This document provided a focal point on which I could base much of the plot of the first volume of my novel. I had it that Carl intended to use the 12 days to return to Riga to try & clear his name, having been accused of murdering a policeman in October 1884.
I’m now going to quote the scene where the killing takes place. As young men Carl & his friend Rudolf had been in the habit of attending political rallies, which were often disguised as cultural meetings. Latvian nationalism & socialism were usually the main subject matter of these meetings, but the two young men always played it safe & avoided direct involvement in revolutionary politics.
MURDER IN RIGA (FICTITIOUS)
The two friends were by now old hands at picking out the plain clothed policemen who attended these meetings. In fact, it had become a sort of game for them. But there were a few uniformed officers in attendance too, standing close to the doors and clearly on the lookout for any trouble that might break out at such a large gathering.
Soon the audience was assembled. Everyone stood, as bringing in so many chairs would have been out of the question. Though most would not have heard them before, when the performers took to their makeshift stage the crowd allowed them the benefit of the doubt by applauding politely.
The young poet’s name was Janis Plieksan, though he liked to call himself Rainis. He and his little troop turned out to be very entertaining.
They began with some sets of traditional tunes, played skilfully on a multi-strung kokle, as well as a reed whistle or stabule, and an ornate but musically annoying rattle known as a trejdeksnis. Fortunately the fellow who played the latter used it sparingly. In between each set of tunes the long-haired Rainis would recite a piece of poetry, either from Latvia’s literary tradition, such as it was, or one of his own compositions.
But none of these could be said to be more than innocently patriotic in a wholesome, pastoral sort of way.
Rainis and his friends next sang several Latvian folk songs, accompanied by the same instruments. These were performed very competently, and were received by the large audience with much enthusiasm.
The songs themselves were innocuous enough, concerning mildly flirtatious meetings between milkmaids and woodsmen, some containing clear sexual symbolism which might have offended a female or juvenile ear, but skirting around the taboo subjects of Latvian nationality and foreign oppression.
As the evening progressed however, the subject matter of the poems and songs became less subtle and more stirringly patriotic, so that openly anti-Russian and anti-German phrases, together with blatant lampooning and chastising of both the occupying races, brought the evening’s entertainment to a close with a crescendo of frenzied applause.
Kahrl could easily imagine that many of the ethnic Latvians in attendance would take home memories of the gentle folk songs and beautiful music, together with the culminating message that Latvia deserved to exist as an independent state, free to seek her own destiny. They would thereafter connect those two strands, ever more to associate the idealistic concept of a rural idyll (which, in truth, had probably never existed) with the blurred vision of their country as a sovereign nation.
As the crowd moved out through the large warehouse doors, and the performers packed away their books and instruments, there came the sudden cry of “Stop! Thief!”
Finding himself in the melee and not far from the place where the call had originated, Kahrl noticed a constable in pursuit of a large man carrying a box – presumably containing fruit. He told himself to mind his own business, but his instinct was to follow in case he might be of some assistance. From the eager panting behind him, it was obvious that the bitch was of a like mind.
The thief and the policeman disappeared around a corner, and when Kahrl and his dog followed they almost bumped into the two men, struggling for ownership of the box.
Almost straight away the heavy article fell to the ground, so that the contest was now between the thief and the policeman, the first of whom, to Kahrl’s consternation, produced a long-bladed knife.
Kahrl stood back, for he knew nothing would be achieved from putting himself in danger. But the bitch, her nature being such, threw herself at the pair and then with a loud yelp! immediately fell away, apparently injured. Kahrl noticed a splash of blood on her fur, but she was too close to the grappling men for him to help her, until the policeman too fell to the ground, clutching his side.
Now the assailant made off, only glancing back once, before disappearing into the blackness of the night.
Kahrl had to a make a heartbreaking choice now. He stepped past the dog and went first to the policeman to check his injury, only to find the knife still protruding from the poor fellow’s side. He grabbed the handle, wondering whether or not the blade should be removed, when he heard an angry voice behind him.
It was then that the awful shock hit him like a steam hammer. The anger was being directed at him! He glanced in the direction of his accusers, as more angry people gathered behind them.
“Hey, you there! Stop! Hold that man!”
“He’s just stabbed that policeman!”
* * *
Appalled at the accusation levelled against him, his first reaction was to try and explain the situation. Surely they would understand. They must see he wasn’t the type to carry out such a heinous assault. They only had to look at the way he was dressed to realise he was a gentleman!
Then it occurred to him that most of these people were poor working men, as he had been several years before, to whom the cut of someone’s clothing was no guarantee of their honesty, nor of their ability to commit an act of violence.
In an instant his perspective shifted to view the scene from where they stood, seeing what they saw – a man holding the handle of a knife, whose blade had penetrated several inches into the side of an officer of the law.
There could be only one conclusion, and so just one course of action he could take.
He let go of the dagger, lowered the body gently to the ground, took to his heels and ran.
He ran as fast as he had ever run in his life, past the fine houses just beyond the market and far out towards the shanties, before circling back into the city, where he slowed his pace, partly to avoid unwanted attention, but mostly because he was exhausted. He kept to the dark, back streets, avoiding the occasional lamplight and melting into the shadows, until at last his escape route brought him to the back door of the Black Pig.
The sweat from his exertion, having cooled and condensed, now ran down his back in icy rivulets, making him shiver, even as he sneaked through the still warm kitchen, where he tried to ignore the stares of the scullery maids.
From here he took the back stairs to the upper floor and made for his apartments. He glanced to either side of him as he unlocked his door, entered his room, and locked himself in again before collapsing onto his bed.
He lay stunned, his mind racing in all the wrong directions, for a full fifteen minutes, before voicing the inevitable conclusion to his mental turmoil.
“I can’t stay here.”
There were, apart from his good friend Rudolf, several other devotees of the lectures who would recognise him if described as a wanted felon. Some would be only too eager to name him, as he had by now earned a reputation as argumentative, on the few occasions when he could be bothered to air an opinion.
It would be just a matter of time before there came a knock on his door, and he’d be taken into custody. With witnesses to assert his guilt, there could be only one possible outcome.
So he gathered a few belongings into his old knapsack, together with his secret store of ready cash.
Without further ado he left his lodgings of six years, wondering if he would ever see them again. He retraced his steps and exited the building via the kitchen, once again taking the back streets towards a temporary hiding place he hoped would never occur to the authorities.
FINAL NOTE
There’s so much more I could have referred to, including the function of graving docks, the gale of May 1895 that sounded the death knell for sailing smacks & opened the door to steam, how many of the early steam trawlers were converted tugs, origins of the otter trawl and the infamous 1901 lockout. Plus many more items I needed to verify (usually via the Internet).
As I said at the start, this wasn’t meant to be a ‘how to do’ session – just an example of the sort of research that can underpin the historical novel.
It must by now be obvious that I relied extensively on the Internet. After all, if someone’s already done the work, why re-invent the wheel? High-level reference sources such as Google and Wikipedia can often provide instant results, or at least useful links that can save hours of painstaking research. Not always the case, but often a good place to start.
