An Old man and the Sea Above: The largest trawler in the world – at the time. Photo courtesy of Grimsby Evening Telegraph
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life
Tony Wardle takes stock of humankind’s relationship with the sea – how it was, how it is and how it has to change unny old place Grimsby. Comedians love the name and when you tell someone you come from there you can almost see a little flicker of sympathy flit across their eyes, despite them never having been there. Sacha Baron Cohen certainly had great fun with it in his movie Grimsby, even if it was filmed in Essex. You can’t go to Grimsby on the road to somewhere else like you can call in at Nottingham on your way to Sheffield as it’s stuck out on its own on the bulge of North Lincolnshire, on the estuarial bank of the River Humber. It’s the end of the line – in more ways than one, some would say. Fish, that’s what it‘s famous for – fish and Grimsby go together like… well, certainly not peaches and cream but it’s where I grew up in the 40s and 50s (yes, I am that
F
old). I was part of a community that was held together by the gravitational pull of fish and fishing. It was the principal employer, the inescapable, all-pervasive influence whose connective threads bound everyone captive in a tapestry of mutual interest and understanding. In our alley, my next-door neighbour Carl Jorgensen skippered a Seine netter, named after his baby daughter Marcia, and his sons – my friends Johnnie and Tommy – would also eventually go to sea, Johnnie joining his dad on the Marcia. Mister Over on the other side worked on the docks. On warm days, Mrs Rowbottom would sit out in her back yard braiding nets. And across the road lived the blonde, willowy and beautiful Greta Sorensen, who I worshipped from afar, and whose father was also a Seine net skipper.
