A book
describing the industry that was once a mainstay of Thanet’s community and
economy is published this month. Writer
and historian Michael Hunt, whose previous work A History of Ramsgate Harbour was re-published last year, has
produced a detailed but highly readable description of a commercial sea fishery
the legacy of which still informs Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs life. From the local industry’s earliest traces,
through its 19th century hey-day, to the still important, ‘though
contracted, fishery of today A History of
the Ramsgate Fishing Industry encompasses a thousand years of Thanet men
and women’s engagement with the sea.
The author
evokes not only the image, familiar to our great-grandparents, of harbours
packed side-to-side with herring boats and sailing trawlers, but the area’s
largely forgotten involvement with the Icelandic cod fishery, the migration of
fishing families and their craft around the coast of Britain, their involvement
in the political and economic squabbles of mediaeval monarchs, and all against
a backdrop of the tragedy and heroism endemic to this most dangerous of trades.
From the intricacies of boiling-up livers
for oil (a ‘detailed and fairly
disgusting description’) to the lad who could crack marbles with his teeth (‘he was always a quiet boy, was Percy’) this
is a story long-overdue for the telling.
The development
of fishing boats and activities of their crews in peace and war; the rivalries
that existed (and still exist) between local and Continental fishermen are
examined – sometimes to comic effect (‘the
darned Mounseers danced and gesticulated and threatened worse than ever’) -
but frequently tragically, as in the recounting of losses through shipwreck, storm
or enemy action.
With dozens of
black & white illustrations and copious source notes for readers wishing to
explore the subject further this book makes a valuable addition to the history
lover’s bookshelf.
Also available online, post free to UK addresses, at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/a_history_of_the_ramsgate_fishing_industry.htm
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.