Fishermen on Brighton beach standing by a capstan, early 1860s. Royal Pavilion & Museums.

8. Brighton Fishing Museum

 

‘My first grown-up way of fishing was when I was helping on the boats down at the fish market, which was situated on the Lower Esplanade. I used to go down there go out on the ferry boats and the big trawlers used to land their fish on the ferry boats and we used to bring the fish on the beach. We used to carry the big boxes of fish up by hand – and in those days a box used to take ten or twelve stone of fish!, It used to take two of us lads from the school to help get them up the beach.

Then we used to grade the fish on the fish market. This was early in the morning at six or seven o’clock in the morning. For helping them get the fish to the fish market, we used to receive five or six little fish each. Just enough for one of us to eat! Then as we gradually got older and we got more sensible, we were able to mate up with the fishing trawlers, and we used to go out ourselves and help catch them.’

‘One of our local boats come in because it was blowing hard. One of them, the ‘Our Boys’, belonged to old Buck Ennis, who was a local fisherman. His son was on there, Fred. And they come in the night. Fred stayed aboard, he wasn’t going to go home, and he got worried in the night that Sammy Andrews hadn’t arrived back in harbour. So they sent the lifeboat out after him. Poor old Sam was out there broke down, so they towed him in. I’ll never forget this. I was one of the launchers of the lifeboat, and as the lifeboat towed the old boat up the harbour, there was old Sammy steering his old boat, and as he come up the harbour there he was drinking a cup of tea as though nothing had happened!’.

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