Monomad ~ Fishermen of Grimsby

[ebabb]

This is my entry to the #monomad challenge.

One of my first jobs as a very young man was on Grimsby Docks. I used to work in the office of a fish merchant who had their business on the Pontoon commonly known as 'Pneumonia' because it was so cold, particularly in the winter - we have some biting cold winds here on the East coast!
The structure of the Pontoon was a bit like an old multi-storey car park, all concrete and open. My office was above the merchants' stand on Pontoon and, although I had a door to the office, it was equally as cold. I used to keep a big coat on in the winter while I worked on the sales ledger and even had a fan heater on my desk. This was in the late 1960's, early 1970's but felt like it could have been in the century before but, despite that I loved every minute of it.

I was out for a walk one day along Cleethorpes beach when I came across these gents fishing and it bought to mind my days on the docks seeing all the trawlers tied up and the fishermen either coming home from a trip or getting ready to go away and I thought that maybe these, at some point in their working life were involved in the fishing industry and the need to fish had stayed with them.

The fishing industry has all but gone now with all the familiar buildings of the docks mostly raised to the ground and it is virtually a ghost of its former glory. The majority of Fish Dock streets and nearby residential streets were named after entrepreneurs and personalities of the Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway and from 1897, the Great Central Railway. Further away from the Docks in the more 'affluent' areas of the town, some (streets) are named after the old trawlers like Revigo, Responso and Rialto Avenue possibly because of the influence of the wealthy ship owners.

So, maybe all that is left for the old fishermen of Grimsby is to pack up their rod and reel and go down to Cleethorpes beach and stand in the cold of the wind blowing off the Humber and reflect on times past that will never come back. The fishermen of Grimsby are true heroes who literally faced all extemes of weather to catch the fish for our tables and, I salute them.