No Grave But the Sea

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 614, 16 March 1929, Page 19

No Grave But the Sea

Majestic Memorial in London

Rccently a memorial wax unveiled at Tower ttill in honour of the Alerctiant Navy and Fishing Fleets, and ths 12,000 officers and men who lost their lires in the war and have no grave trut the sea. BROM the majestic Memorial ou Tower Hill which bears the names of 12,000 merchantmen and fishermen who lost their lives at sea in the war, and whose grave is the deep, you can get a glimpse of the coming and going of the “cutters” which, through Billingsgate, link London with the two fleets that ceaselessly trawl the North Sea banks, writes Walter Wood in a London newspaper. And from the “cutters,” as these fish-carriers the hardest-driven vessels in the world —are still called, you can see the Memorial, which is to London River what the Dover Memorial is to the Channel. When Barking Was a Port There is a peculiar significance in the site of the Memorial, for Barking, not far distant, was, until only 50 years ago, reckoned as a fishing port, and it claims with Brixham the renown of originating deep-sea trawling. At the beginning of the 19th century smacks were being built at Barking, Greenwich and Gravesend for North Sea fishing, and in 1852 Barking had ISO trawlers and smacks, and Barking smacks went fleeting for two months at a time, the “cutters” bringing the ® e £t's fish to Billingsgate. Twenty-five years later Barking ceased to count as a fishing port, but he Thames remains the great waterway for sea-borne fish, and the cutters’ “ crews are deep-sea fishermen. So Barking was a great home of the lleeters and single-boaters, whose immediate successors swept the near and uistant seas of mines, fought submarmes, patrolled and did numberless odd jobs that could not be undertaken by heir brethren of the Royal Navy and “e mercantile marine. The Trawler Reserve Marking, Brixham and East Coast macks and men were the nucleus of - e 20.000 fishing vessels and 65,000

men who now go from ports in Great Britain to reap the harvest of the sea, from Iceland to Morocco; and the “names of Barking and other London river men are on the Memorial which overlooks their former haunt. The trawler reserve came into being only in 1911. with 30 skippers and 90 ratings, enrolled at Aberdeen, and this small band grew to the vast auxiliary without which the British Navy could not have existed. The time soon came when iu the war there were 2,500 skippers and some hundred thousand fishermen serving with the navy. No one knew their xvorth better than Earl Jellicoe, who lately said of them; “There are few men I admire more than the fishermen who earn their living in the North Sea. These men are real sailors in every sense of the word.” Out of 3,000 steam fishing vessels employed during the war more than a third were lost. The only two Victoria Crosses awarded to fishermen were gix-en to Skipper Joseph Watt—he is still a fisherman —and posthumously to Skipper Thomas Crisp. Skipper Watt, in the drifter Gowan Lea, was attacked by Austrian cruisers in the Straits of Otranto. He defied the order to .surrender, and called for three cheers and a fight to a finish, and that call was heroically answered. An Heroic Skipper Skipper Crisp was fishing in the North Sea in the smack Nelson, to help the nation’s food supply. He was attacked by a submarine, and fought to the death against hopeless odds. Lying mortally wounded on the deck of his sinking smack he ordered "Abandon ship. Throw the books overboard.” His son, a member of the crew, asked if they could not lift the skipper into the boat, but the answer was a firm, unselfish “No.” Then the skipper said, “Tom, I’m done. Throw me overboard.” Many fishermen, all courageous and self-sacrificing, who found their rest in many waters, are remembered on the Hill; but none can have greater honour than that peaceful skipper who having fought to a finish m his own defence, went down with his helpless smack.