196 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



illegal trawling means in winter has been described by 

 Commander Currey. 



"' Manoeuvres' are over, and back again at fishery 

 protection is the torpedo-gunboat. Week by week she 

 glides out of Harwich Harbour, and each succeeding 

 week finds the weather worse than the one which 

 went before. Pessimism prevails in the ward-room, 

 and the Sub - Lieutenant has become a professed 

 cynic, and receives the gibes of his messmates with a 

 dark and gloomy scorn. Forward, the mess-deck under 

 the top-gallant forecastle leaks like a sieve ; twice in a 

 month has the sea gone clean through the cook's galley, 

 putting out the fire and ruining, once the men's dinner, 

 a second time filling their allotted breakfast cocoa with 

 North Sea brine. Waterproof sou'-westers and blas- 

 phemy fill the lower deck. They ride out a gale in 

 Gorton Roads, another in the Wash, and escape a third 

 by the skin of their teeth by darting back into Harwich 

 Harbour, and still fishery protection has to be attended 

 to and the North Sea patrolled. . ... 



'"'Ands unmoor ship.' ' W'y, w'ere the 'ell can we 

 be agoin' to now ? ' 



" * It's like this/ said the Captain to his Navigator, as 

 they cleared the mouth of the H umber, ' there's been 

 illegal trawling taking place at Stornoway, and I'm 

 ordered to inquire into it.' 



" The Sub opened his mouth to answer, but she had 

 shipped a sea, green, over the forecastle, and about half 

 a pint of the H umber estuary flew straight down his 

 throat and rendered him incapable of speech for at least 

 five minutes. Slowly they fought their way northwards ; 



