220 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



selfsame flesh and blood only for the smacksmen there 

 is seldom any more reward than the knowledge that they 

 have done their duty. " It is nothing," says the trawler, 

 when the dangerous work is ended ; and he patiently pur- 

 sues his toilsome way. 



One of the most appalling gales that ever swept across 

 the Dogger raged on 6th March 1883, and caused the 

 loss of more than 360 men and boys from east coast 

 ports. That awful visitation destroyed families bodily ; 

 fathers and sons went down together, and widowed 

 mothers were left penniless in ruined homes. Smacks 

 were overwhelmed bodily and lost with all hands, and 

 the little ships that did escape only reached port after a 

 long, fierce fight and the exercise of wondrous skill and 

 courage by their crews and skippers. 



All the survivors of that memorable breeze are smacks- 

 men of the old school of sail. Some of them, who were 

 skippers, have come to their last moorings ashore, and 

 seldom get far away from that vast grey stretch of sea of 

 which their very lives and bodies seem to be part and 

 parcel. Sometimes, if you know them well, they will 

 take their memories back to the gale and tell of grim 

 things that happened on the edge of the Dogger when 

 many a son of the North Sea was gathered to his fathers. 



One of the Dogger warriors is old Ben ; it is mostly 



"old" Tom, or Jack or Peter, as the case may be, when 

 talking of North Sea men, irrespective of advanced years ; 

 but in this case Ben is really getting on in life. For one 

 brief and famous spell he left the coast and came to 

 London a five days' visit spent in some remote Eastern 

 suburb, and including an immortal bus ride, in which the 

 driver said many things and Ben said many more. The 



