The Home Run 



Men did sleep on deck. They didn't know it. Their hands 

 went on gutting, sorting, gutting, but they were really completely 

 unconscious of what they were doing, unconscious too of the spray 

 flung at the back of their heads when the ship, after perching for 

 a moment as long as a man would need to breathe deeply, flung 

 herself again stem down into the squelching green water. A mug 

 of stewed tea, half of it already flopped over the side, would wake 

 them for five minutes perhaps but then the fingers would go dead 

 again, dead though active, and the head would disappear in a 

 miasma of sensations that were not quite half felt. If they had not 

 been able to get away from the consciousness of their exhaustion 

 the men would have been unable to endure it. 



There were thus two reasons why they should not regard the 

 time spent at sea as part of their real lives. For the most part they 

 were not then fully conscious and, when they were, they had none 

 of the ordinary amenities of life ashore. It was the opposite case 

 from that of the luxury liner where even a short trip provoked all 

 the comfortable solidity of a fully-fashioned county manor. Here, 

 on the trawlers, where men really were spending the better part 

 of their lives, everything was makeshift as in an overnight camping 

 tent. The lack of amenities provided another reason for cursing, 

 and it was used plentifully since a good third of the fishermen did 

 their best to get along on a vocabulary of one word. And there 

 were the owners. And the owners ought to have provided effing 

 amenities. The effing bastards effing well will too. But, when 

 they did provide them, they were often neglected and grew into 

 early disuse. Not always, of course, and certainly not in England. 

 But the Scottish fleet was different. It seemed to like discomfort. 



The longer Jan stayed on trawlers, the more certain he became 

 that men went to sea for a rest. Absurd as it at first appeared, it 

 was easier to work for twenty hours a day in a howling wind of 

 salt and ice than to go home quietly at half past five in the evening 

 and face the burgeoning of a dissatisfied wife. Beyond the comedy, 

 so obvious to a Workers' Playtime wisecracker, there was the 

 reality. Family life, ordinary everyday family life, had one quality 



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