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Updated: July 1, 2025
The number of trawlers at work all the year round, even in heavy gales that almost blew us off the cliffs, was enough to tell how vigilant a watch was being kept all the while. One morning only we woke to find a large stray steamer, that had entered the roads overnight, sunk across the harbour mouth, her decks awash at low water torpedoed, we supposed.
To insure safe transmission of this communication, England had held the Assyrian idle in port, day after day, while her augmented patrols scoured the seas, hunting down ruthlessly every submarine whose periscope dared peer above the surface, and while her trawlers innumerable swept the channels clear of mines.
Early in the afternoon Sedd-el-Bahr was attacked at close range, but not silenced till after 5 P.M. At this time British trawlers began sweeping the entrance for mines, and during the next day the mine field was cleared for a distance of four miles up the straits.
The enemy's fixed defences were silenced but the concealed mobile guns from the Peninsula and from Asia were far too busy and were having it all their own way. Close to us were steam trawlers and mine-sweepers steaming along with columns of spray spouting up close by them from falling field gun shells, with here and there a biggish fellow amongst them, probably a five or six inch field howitzer.
The speaker raised his voice to make plain his words above the rattle of the train. "There was a lot of talk in the papers about Jellicoe and Beatty and the Grand Fleet and the Battle Cruisers, but they didn't come our way and we didn't trouble them. We had a couple of score of trawlers and drifters and four hundred simple fishermen to cram the fear of the Lord into. That was our job!"
Minnie Arkell filled another glass of champagne for Clancy, and Clancy didn't give the fizz too much time to melt away either. "These men are the real things," she said, but Clancy, for fear we were getting too much credit, broke in, "Not us seiners. It's the winter fishermen trawlers and hand-liners that are the real things.
The vicar of Boveyhayne and his wife were to dine at the Manor that night, and so they were bidden to put on their company manners and their evening clothes. Ninian grumbled lustily when he heard the news, for he had made arrangements with a fisherman to "clean" a skate that evening when the trawlers came home. "I bet him thruppence I could do it as good as he could, and now I'll have to pay up.
The night was beginning to gather her clouds about her, but still they did not hurry homewards. Far out, they could see the trawlers returning to the Bay, dipping and rising and plunging and reeling before the wind as from a heavy blow, and then, when it seemed that they must fall, righting themselves and moving swiftly homewards.
The invincible High Seas Fleet upon one of its sporadic ventures into salt water during the very earliest days of the war, stumbled across a fleet of Grimsby trawlers unconcernedly pursuing their usual peaceful occupation. The whole of the fishermen were made prisoners and were dispatched to Sennelager.
Twelve trawlers have been sunk and destroyed. Out of the sixty ships at anchor on Wednesday night there were not more than ten left on Thursday afternoon. Many of these are disabled, some dismasted. A fishing-boat belonging to Brixham was upset in the outer harbour about eight o'clock, and two married fishermen of the town and a boy were drowned.
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