Bart Taylor
Bart belongs to: Cullercoats Community Centre
Bart was born in Cullercoats. He served part of an apprenticeship at Swan Hunters shipyard as a Shipwright. He broke his indentures to join the Royal Navy in 1941. He was demobbed in 1946 and joined the merchant navy. He came ashore and worked until he retired in 1982.
Bart was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 1 March 2006. The interview took place at Cullercoats Community Centre and lasted 30 minutes and 24 seconds.
Family involvement in fishing
"My mother was mainly a housewife, she was a fishwife for part of the time but she didn’t like it"
My mother was mainly a housewife, she was a fishwife for part of the time but she didn’t like it. She was happier when she was looking after her family, and my father was a bricklayer by trade but he was, he fished as a full time fisherman and worked on the buildings in the winter.
We had our own coble, which was a family boat. It had belonged to my grandfather and when he finished it was handed over to my father and it was the Hannah Taylor. She was a big coble built at Hartlepool where a lot of the cobles were built at Cambridge’s, was the name of the company.
And we had her until the war started and then the Navy commandeered it and took her away round about the time of Dunkirk and they took quite a lot of cobles from Cullercoats and there were none of them came back. And we were compensated after the war, but not very, very well compensated, like.
So we got a smaller one, second hand, from Newbiggin, the Primrose. And we fished with her until my father was a bit too old for fishing and the boat was sold and that was it.
So I built one of my own, about 18 foot long, the Margaret, and she’s at Seaton Sluice, still, and that was built in 1952, and it was built on Garden Square, in a back yard. And we used her for fishing for trout, fishing for lobsters and crab, codlings and that, you know, but I was never a professional fisherman- it was just basically pleasure but with money coming back out of it as well, you know. So my brother and I used her for quite a long time.
Bart has 12 memories in the memorynet:
Bart's memories with a Work theme:
Granny Hannah and Granny Sally- Career at sea
- Going to sea with the merchant navy
Photograph of Bart- The City of Port Elizabeth
- Table Mountain
- The Embrace
Bart's other memories:
- Family involvement in fishing
- Building boats on the City of Port Elizabeth
- Cullercoats RNLI
- Marconi Point - The Howling
- Smell of seaweed
This memory has these themes:
Childhood | Lifestyles | Relationships | Wartime
Use this form to add your comment to the memorynet: