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Fishing for the Soul ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

John R. Guy*
Affiliation:
Department of Community Medicine, Yeovil District Hospital

Extract

The waters of the North Sea are shallow, and the weather there can be severe. On and around the Dogger Bank sudden gales cause high and heavy seas. The smacksmen of the fishing fleets in the 80s and 90s of the last century were there throughout the year on voyages which could last eight weeks, and their 50–80 ton yawl-rigged smacks were entirely at the mercy of the weather. Their fishing grounds were too far from land for them to run for shelter. They were compelled to ride out the heaviest gales or founder. In 1881 it was estimated that the North Sea fishing population numbered upwards of 12,000, the ‘Short Blue’ fleet alone consisting of 220 smacks crewed by 1,500 men.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 Mather, E. J., ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’orDeep Sea Trials and Gospel Triumphs (London, 1888), pp. 23, 6, 7, 8.Google Scholar

2 For the foundation of the Mission, see Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’, pp. 49—66.

3 Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’.p. 325.

4 Toilers of the Deep: A Record of Mission Work amongst them [hereafter cited as TOD], 1, no. 1 (January, 1886), p. 5. The editor of this monthly magazine was G. A. Hutchison, who also edited The Boys Own Paper.

5 TOD 1, no. 1 (January, 1886), p. 5.

6 What others say of us’, TOD 10, no. 5 (May, 1895), unpaginated.

7 Mather, ‘Nor’ardoflheDogger’.p. 312.

8 TOD 1, no. 1 (January, 1886), p. 5; no. 6 (June, 1886) carried an illustration on p. 154 of a clergyman in surplice and hood celebrating holy communion in the hold of a mission ship.

9 TOD 1, no. 1, p. 5.

10 Ibid., 6 (1891), p. 275.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 10(1895), impaginateci.

13 ‘Counting Seafarers’, Mariner’s Mirror, 71 (1985), p. 310.

14 The dispute between Phillips and the Mission is detailed in The Eastern Daily Press of 12 October 1895.

15 TOD 1, no. 2 (February, 1886), pp. 41–2.

16 Mrs A. M. Wilson, ‘With the Great Northern trawlers again’, TOD 6 (1891), pp. 250–3.

17 Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen archives. Personal Index. I am grateful to Mr Bernard Clampton, Secretary of trie Mission, for permission to consult its records, and files of Toilm of the Deep.

18 TOD 6, no. 10 (October, 1891), pp. 261–2.

19 Ibid., 15 (1900), p. 20.

20 Ibid., 10 (189s), unpaginated. The Ymuiden Home closed in 190s.

21 Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’, p. 53.

22 TOD 1, no. 4 (April, 1886), p. 53.

23 Ibid.

24 Alfred Taylor Schofield, M. D. Brussels, 1884, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.R, 1883. Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’, p. 324.

25 TOD 1, no. 6 (June, 1886), p. 98.

26 Clark-Kennedy, A. E., The London. A Study in the Voluntary Hospital System,2 vols (London, 1962).Google Scholar

27 For Treves, see Trombley, S., Sir Frederick Treves: The Extra-ordinary Edwardian (London, 1989)Google Scholar. For his work at The London (especially with the celebrated ‘Elephant Man’) see Clark-Kennedy, , The London, 2, pp. 857 Google Scholar. For Grenfell’s association with Treves, pp. 87–90. Grenfell recorded his work with the Mission in his autobiography, Forty Years for Labrador (London, 1934), pp. 59–70. See also Kerr, J. Lennox, Wilfred Grenfell, His life and work (London, 1959).Google Scholar

28 TOD 6 (1891), p. 49.

29 There were 8,904 medical and surgical patients treated during 1890.

30 Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’, pp. 95–6.

31 Ibid., p. 97.

32 Ibid., p. 29.

33 Ibid., pp. 31, 37.

34 TOD 1, no. 12 (December, 1886), p. 199.

35 Mather, ‘Nor’ard of the Dogger’, pp. 220–2.

36 The copers still plied their trade in fleets where there was no mission ship. Mather discusses this, and international attempts to oudaw it, in “Nor’ard of the Dogger”, pp. 224—7.