FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME 



Anne's lifeboat also capsized in the same gale, and 

 of the two crews 27 members perished. That disaster 

 occurred in a dangerous region of sandbanks and 

 channels, between the Mersey and the Ribble, a 

 region which was fished by men whose havens might 

 be looked upon as safe and peaceful. 



Apart from the heroic life-saving deeds of fisher- 

 men in lifeboats and other craft which left the shore, 

 there were numberless achievements on the deep sea 

 by trawlermen who were working steam or sailing 

 vessels. It might be a case like the German liner, 

 Elbe, whose few survivors, after a terrible collision, 

 were brought to Lowestoft by a North Sea smack, 

 or some smaller vessel which had come to grief and 

 whose crew or passengers were rescued by a fisher 

 crew ; or it might be one of the innumerable unre- 

 corded instances of fishermen saving fishermen, and 

 taking it as part of the day's work, neither expect- 

 ing nor receiving acknowledgment or reward. It 

 might be any one of these many cases of stress and 

 peril in which the fishermen distinguished them- 

 selves and maintained and developed that courage 

 and tenacity which served civilisation so nobly in 

 the time of extremity and sore need. 



The raw material was abundant and was every- 

 where available around the British coast, and that 

 material was to be taken and shaped into one of the 

 most wonderful and efficient bodies that had ever 

 been evolved. 



No work of skilled craftsman, fashioned out of 

 crude and shapeless clay, was more remarkable than 

 the vast and disciplined army of mine-sweepers, 



16 



