Living Silver 



until oil-consuming vessels were already the norm in the majority 

 of its competitor ports. 



Yet, in spite of the dismal similarity of their rust-covered bul- 

 warks and the peeling paint on their w^oodw^ork, each vessel among 

 them w^as an individual, and Jan heard many w^arnings against w^et 

 ships and an equal number eulogies in favour of dry ones. But he 

 could never find out w^hat made a ship w^et or w^hat kept it dry. 

 Of tv^o sister ships, structurally so similar that he could not tell 

 them apart, one w^ould be able to ride athw^art the full Atlantic 

 sw^ell w^hen its crew^ w^ere hauling their nets and not a single surge 

 of green w^ater w^ould come over its side v^hile the other w^ould go 

 gunwale under if only the Swatchway were choppy. Men knew a 

 wet ship from a dry by experience : there was no telling them by 

 mere inspection. The whole thing was a mystery. It certainly 

 had nothing to do with age. The newest and most efficient trawler 

 in the fleet was also one of the wettest and, since it sailed regu- 

 larly to Iceland and the Faroes, it was very unpopular among fish- 

 ermen although it could off'er them the certainty of large catches 

 and fat pay-packets. The battering they had to take from the big 

 seas of the north overcame even their love of money. 



Then, too, the fish-holds were hardly ideal refrigerators. Their 

 wooden casings, draughty, slushy with melting ice and, often, 

 none too clean, were expected to preserve large cod and ling for, 

 perhaps, ten summer days of warm mist and paraffin calm. Quite 

 often Jan would see whole catches, usually large fish that had 

 come from a good distance, marked with the label 'condemned'. 

 Very often, too, they were large catches; for it was tempting to 

 try to stow just a few more kits of fish even when there wasn't 

 enough ice for it to be dead certain that they would all be preser- 

 ved. It was difficult for a skipper to keep his head when the big 

 bags were coming up regularly ; he often forgot that he might lose 

 the lot for the sake of those few hundredweights. Or, maybe, it 

 would be nobody's fault that the catch rotted : only the ship's ; the 

 ship and the weather together making it impossible to reach a 

 port. Three whole days spent sitting it out, head on to the wind, 



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