Painted Brightly 



enough money to buy themselves trawlers and they did not want 

 to work for any employer, no matter how much money he offered 

 them nor how many ships he might own. Yet it was impossible 

 to live on lining. Gradually the men began to concentrate on the 

 herring and the drift net. It was their only answer. They were 

 being driven out of the white fish industry. A few were forced 

 into trawling. Usually they became skippers, for the south had 

 nothing to match their resilient understanding of the changing 

 moods and grounds of the sea. It began to look as though, with the 

 men away on the tracks of the herring or commanding a trawler in 

 Aberdeen, the steadfast communities of so many centuries would 

 be broken up by the almighty steam engine. Then came the seine 

 net. It allowed them to begin a new white fish industry, operating 

 it from small ships within their power to buy. They could 

 base these vessels on their home ports. They could crew them 

 with their sons. They could live once more the settled life of 

 their ancestors instead of being; forced into traipsing around the 

 British Isles after the glimmer of herring scales. It was no wonder 

 to Jan that they cared little for the economic plight of the inshore 

 trawlers which had stolen their livelihood. As a peasant Jan knew 

 the value of a stable existence. He did not grudge the seine-net- 

 ters their victory, for it was a victory of the stable community 

 over anonymous industrial intersets. Communities do not depend 

 on money as industries depend on it. The unit of the community 

 is not the cheque book but the family. And Jan found himself 

 smiling when he thought how the diesel engine had turned the 

 tables on the industrialists. Their beloved science had betrayed 

 them. It had given the seine-net boat the thing it needed most, a 

 small cheap engine. The poor industrialists, it had taken them a 

 long time to follow suit. 



He went down with Tadeusz to the harbour and there, in spite 

 of the wet wind, he saw colour such as he had not seen since the 

 blaze of orpine and modrak in his own country. Yes, these were 

 family boats. They were too well-taken care of, too neat, too 

 gay, to belong to anybody but the man who worked on them. It 



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