228 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



and everything below was awash or adrift. Immense 

 bodies of water smashed on board ; but we managed to 

 dodge them. We had to hang on for life, but, when 

 there was a chance of doing it, the men jumped below 

 till the seas passed. The man at the tiller had to stick 

 there and take his chance, because, if he'd let go, the 

 smack would have been lost. 



" Time after time the breaking seas filled the deck to 

 the rail, but still the Uncle Tom staggered on and kept 

 afloat. It is the custom of North Sea smacksmen, when 

 a big sea is sweeping on, to shout, 'Water's coming,' 

 and drop below. On board many a smack that day the 

 seas crushed and killed or maimed the poor fellows who 

 had no chance of escape. Decks were swept as clean as 

 if they had been cut with an enormous knife. Dandy 

 winks were wrenched from the decks, although they 

 were secured by iron bolts, just as you might pluck some 

 little ornament away which has been glued on to a toy. 

 Masts and rigging were carried away, and in lots of 

 cases the smacks were almost smashed to bits before 

 they sank. It seemed as if no ship built by human 

 hands could stand up against the awful force of those 

 Dogger breakers, and how the Uncle Tom ever got 

 through it is a marvel even now. 



4 'The man who makes his living on the Dogger sees 

 some strange, odd things. I've known a man to be swept 

 overboard and brought up afterwards, dead, in a trawl 

 belonging to another smack. In this great gale a man 

 was swept away from the deck of his smack and carried 

 by an enormous sea straight on to the deck of another 

 smack not far off, where he was saved by the crew, who 

 clutched him before he could be hurled back. 



