Thomas Summers & Co. E-Book

Mike Smylie

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 137

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

After the end of hostilities in 1945, the fishing industry was quick to establish some semblance of recovery and a surge of new builds and restoration of Admiralty motor fishing vessels soon followed. In Fraserburgh, on Scotland's east coast, several established yards satiated this desire amongst the fishing-boat owners for new craft. Thus it wasn't surprising that a new yard sprung up at the end of the 1940s when three local apprentices from one of the yards decided to set up their own boatbuilding yard on the breakwater, in what was a very exposed position. And so the yard of Thomas Summers & Co. was born, a yard that became synonymous with fine seaworthy fishing boats suited to various methods of fishing. In the space of just thirteen years they produced eighty-eight fishing vessels and their output was more prolific than most of the other Scottish boatyards. Many of these boats survive to this day, some still working as fishing vessels, and others converted to pleasure, a testament to their superb design and solid construction. Here, Mike Smylie recounts the story of Thomas Summers & Co. through historic records and personal memories of both fishermen and family members, with many striking photographs of the boats they built.

Leseprobe

Front cover: Amethyst steaming in Loch Aline, Sound of Mull, 2019.(Photo courtesy of Ian MacLean)

Back cover: Summer's shipyard on the Breakwater c. 1955.

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Mike Smylie, 2020

The right of Mike Smylie to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9450 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by Imak

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1   A Little Bit of History

2   Tommy Summers & Co.

3   Building Wooden Boats

4   Some Boats and their Soggy Endings

5   After the Yard

6   A Few Twenty-First-Century Survivors

7   List of Big Boats Built between 1949 and 1962

8   List of Forty-Footers Built between 1949 and 1962

9   List of Yawls Built between 1949 and 1962

Appendices:

A: PLN name changes for Summers Vessels

B: Tender for 40ft Fishing Boat

C: Sea Fishing Boats (Scotland) Act 1886 – Discharge of Mortgage for Janet, FR166

D: Model Form of Building Contract (Inshore Vessels)

E: Plans of a Yawl by Malcolm Burge (MB Drafting)

F: Advert for Thomas Summers & Co.

G: Drawing of a Fraserburgh Ripper Line

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I SAID FROM THE VERY beginning of initial discussions about this book in late 2018 that I was only the messenger and that others were responsible for its foundation. Now, although I’ve written some twenty-five books over the years, I’ve never literally worked through the medium of social media. However, as a first, this one has evolved from a Facebook page first set up by Shetland mussel fisherman Lindsay Laurenson in 2016 called ‘The Wooden Boats of Tommy Summers’ with the intention of collecting information about the boats built at this, one of three main yards in Fraserburgh’s harbour in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, work in this field fell into the hands (fingers?) of two men, both fishermen, Alexander West and Malcolm Burge, who then drove the project forward with gusto and therefore it’s wholly due to them that this book has survived the planning process, from cyberspace on to the physical, tangible paper form that books are. I thank them for giving me the chance to learn, as I write, about what is an incredible feat: to produce so many fine craft in such a short period of time.

Yet I feel I must add some words from my co-founder of the 40+ Fishing Boat Association, Mike Craine, who reminded me that it was the Association which started the hunt for Summers boats back in 1999 when, in Fishing Boats no. 15, we drew up a list of eighty-five boats from the yard. In time information and photographs of those boats have continued to surface on the Facebook page almost right up to publication. Mike has also added several photographs, as well as background information on some boats.

Others I must thank who have helped along the way, especially in my travels around the coasts of Scotland and sourcing photographs, are: the family of Tommy Summers – Jim Summers, Thomas (Duncan) Summers, Elizabeth and Kenny MacLemman; and then, in no particular order, Charlie Duncan, William Whyte, Johny Wilson, Sander West, Rob Walker, Jim Mckerracher, Mark Stockl, Stewart Buchan, Grace and Ian Strachan, John Scott, Peter Campbell, Stephen Worthington, Luke Powell and Kenneth Ritchie.

Most of the photographs here have come from the Facebook page where it has been widely publicised that they will be used in this book. I apologise unreservedly if any have been used where the originator was known and not credited. In the event of any omission please contact me care of the publishers so we can rectify for future editions of this book. I am eternally grateful for the contributions from many people of these photos and the ensuing information about the boats in them, as well as, in some cases, helping identify the places in the photos.

A word on photograph quality. In the majority of cases we have had to rely upon photographs that were taken up to seventy years ago by fishermen who are long gone, and these photos have been passed down through many hands and have been often scanned on old scanners, thus the quality has not been the best. I apologise for this as it has been almost impossible to obtain and copy the originals, but I believe it is better to use a poorer-quality photo rather than have no photographic record of a particular vessel when there is no choice amongst the photos available for that vessel.

All of this would have been impossible without the substantial input from Linda Fitzpatrick and the staff at the Scottish Fisheries Museum at Anstruther past and present for the initial work in formulating the various build lists of the four Fraserburgh and Sandhaven boatbuilding yards. We are so lucky to have the SFM and, a year after his passing, I would also like to mention my friend and mentor Dr Robert Prescott whose input to the museum was colossal.

Last but nowhere least, there’s my family back home whilst I’m away touring Scotland or simply at home with my head in the clouds as I write. Thanks to them!

Usually I dedicate my books to my children. This time, though, this one is for Tommy, George and Bill, in their memories. Also for Mike Craine who tragically died during the production of this book.

INTRODUCTION

THE FISHING INDUSTRY AT THE end of the Second World War was quick on the recovery after six years of restricted fishing. Although the building of Admiralty motor fishing vessels (MFVs) had progressed during the war, giving work to the Scottish east-coast boatbuilders, as well as serving naval requirements during the hostilities, it was proposed that the design would be deemed suitable for the fishing industry afterwards. To this end, those that survived the war were sold off once they were no longer needed by the Admiralty, and at the same time the demand for new boats increased. Boatyards thrived because, not only did these MFVs need refitting for fishing but various government acts allowed grants and loans to be made to skippers so that the older stock of steam drifters and those left from the sailing era could be replaced with the new breed of dual-purpose motor boats.

In Fraserburgh the three yards of James Noble, J. & G. Forbes of Sandhaven and William Noble had all been producing these standard MFVs during the war, and afterwards were busy, so it wasn’t surprising locally when a new yard, opened by three local men, appeared. Tommy Summers & Co., as it was named, was incredible for the very shortness of its life. In the space of thirteen years, between 1949 and 1962, the yard produced eighty-nine fishing vessels, which is no mean feat. Compared with the output of other similar yards, this was far in excess of their yearly average.

This, then, is the story of those relatively few years, told through records and personal memories. Mostly it’s a litany of the series of excellent and hardy fishing boats, which have been grouped into three separate categories. Many of these craft survive today, especially the smaller ones, which in itself serves as a testament to their superb design and solid construction.

If I were asked to describe the work of Tommy Summers in a word, the nearest I can think of is ‘innovational’, or possibly even ‘revolutionary’, for his work in the design of fishing boats was just that. Moreover he was hard-working, inspirational and dedicated, although later on in life it appears he regarded himself as a failure. Nothing can be further from the truth and, in my mind, I’ve learnt through the process of writing that the sense of his achievement is simply overwhelming. But this book is about the boatbuilding yard and all those others that worked in it, and it must be remembered that he was one part – if a major one indeed – of that team. Unfortunately it has been pretty impossible to learn much about his partners George McLeman and Bill Duthie, although a couple of informants were able to pass on character assessments which glowed as bright as the Northern Lights! Three partners then, of somewhat equal integrity, together formed a firm that, because it was so short-lived, can be regarded as a sort of time capsule of boatbuilding in the mid-twentieth century.

Fraserburgh harbour from an old postcard with yawls in the foreground and the boatbuilding shed of James Noble and the harbour slipway used by Thomas Summers to launch yawls.

1

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

FRASERBURGH – ORIGINALLY AN AMALGAMATION of the harbour of Faithlie, first built about 1547, on the eastern side of the north-west tip of Aberdeenshire and the fishing village of Broadsea (originally Seatown) to the north-west around the bay – was laid out as a new town in the sixteenth century by the local landowning Fraser family of Philorth (hence Fraser’s burgh or ‘Frazersburgh’ as one mapmaker put it in 1747) a time after it had become a Royal Burgh in 1601. Built to compete with Peterhead and Aberdeen, it was initially the herring fishing, and subsequently the white fishery, that created the harbour (and town) as it is now. But it was Broadsea that was originally the home of the fishermen and, in 1789, it had forty-two fishermen working off the beach with small open boats, twenty-nine of whom had the surname Noble. There were seven boats each crewed by six men and it has been said that they sailed as far as Barra Head, on the west coast, in their search for fish.

Broadsea beach prior to a harbour being built for beach-based fishing craft.

Faithlie was little more than a couple of quays surrounding a sandy beach where boats could be drawn up and, prior to the nineteenth century, was the domain of the soldiers and trading boats. Presumably it was exposed to the south-east. By the early nineteenth century the North Pier had been extended and the South Harbour added. This was a time when the herring fishing was rapidly expanding after government interaction in the 1790s. Fraserburgh then became an important herring station during the early summer season and, presumably, the Broadsea men based themselves there.

By 1815 bounties for the herring fishing had been introduced for small craft and the east coast of Scotland’s herring fishing turned from being a cottage industry to a commercial fishery. That year, as John Cranna tells us in Fraserburgh, Past and Present:

The boats had no decks whatever, and measured about 20 feet of keel and 12 feet of beam. The crews depended as much upon the oars as the sails for going to and coming from the fishing grounds. The craft never went more than a few miles from the shore in quest of the herring. This accounts for the comparatively small loss of life at sea in these early years. Caught in a gale thirty or forty miles at sea, these cockle shells would have instantly foundered, with results which need not be conjured up. The crews, however, excellent judges of the weather, kept the harbour when lowering clouds appeared, and if at sea, smelt danger from afar, and promptly sought the friendly shelter of port before the fury of the tempest overtook them. Thus were they able nearly a hundred years ago to prosecute their calling in comparative safety, frail though their boats were.

This tends to contradict their sailing to the west coast, yet further developments in the nineteenth century created a much larger harbour as the herring fishing flourished and boats sailed further afield. The number of boats participating in the herring fishing in the district increased rapidly so that by 1830 there were 214 Fraserburgh boats, twenty-four from Peterhead and thirty-four from Rosehearty. This suggests that there were only local boats working out of the harbour though Cranna reports that boats from the Firth of Forth and a few from the north came. At the same time there were thirty fish-curing yards dotted around the town, as Cranna says:

… in the most out-of-the-way places. Messrs. Bruce, for instance, cured on a little bit of ground facing Broad Street and Shore Street, immediately to the south of the Crown Hotel. Curing plots were being freely let off at the entrance to the Links, about or near where the railway station now is, and several firms cured there. The trade was slowly but surely consolidating at Fraserburgh. In the year 1830 the catch of herrings in the Fraserburgh district, which included Peterhead, etc., touched the very respectable figures of 56,182 crans, while the number of curers for Fraserburgh alone was 30, being two more than in 1828.

Boat design altered after the great south-easterly storm in August 1848 when many fishing boats were lost along the east coast, with tragic fatalities amongst the fishers. Many of these were overcome by the sheer force of the waves when returning in the face of the storm to unsafe harbours, but seemingly the Fraserburgh men survived intact whereas in Peterhead there were thirty-one casualties with twenty-eight boats wrecked. But the storm forced Parliament to act and the subsequent report submitted by Captain John Washington made various recommendations with regard to harbour improvement and vessel design, as well as the phasing out of the error of plying fishermen with whisky in part payment for their labours! However, Fraserburgh did have its own storm to remember in 1850 when a north-westerly gale forced boats onto the sands. In the face of tradegy only one life was lost, with ten boats driven ashore.

In the harbour the Balaclava Pier was added over the Inch Rocks in the 1850s to create more protection and later the South Pier was built, followed by the Balaclava Harbour works. Boats also became larger due to improved building techniques in carvel construction where planks are laid side by side instead of overlapping or clinker (clench) building. Decks were added to the previously undecked craft, affording greater seaworthiness and safety at sea.

As more and more men were enticed into fishing – what else was there? – the demand for fishing boats grew, as did that for trading vessels to carry the herring off to markets. With the arrival of the railway to Fraserburgh in 1865, allowing fish to be carried away to the centres of population such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, the landings increased rapidly. Some maritime industries suffered – sailmaking and rope works in the main – as these commodities could be produced elsewhere cheaper, and consequently Fraserburgh saw no incoming industrialisation on a large scale.

Fishing became the main occupation of the second half of the nineteenth century, at first aboard the great Zulus and fifies, with their powerful lug rigs, and then with the introduction of steam drifters and trawlers. In the 1880s there were some sixty curers working in the town. On one night in July 1884, 667 boats landed 20,010 cran of herring, and the herring lassies were kept busy processing this catch into barrels. But such was the enormity of the catch, and the fact that the fish were small, that even though they worked all night, the women were unable to gut it all, and with more being landed the next day, some 4,000 cran were dumped in the harbour with plenty more being carted to farmers who laid it on their fields as fertiliser.

Small open yawls upon the bach at Inverallochy at the end of the nineteenth century.

Fraserburgh harbour simply filled with fishing boats prior to 1939.