Martin Pontin
Martin belongs to: Merchants and Traders
Martin grew up in Tynemouth. After the war his father established William Wight Ltd as a family business. The shop provided the fishing fleet with stores and provisions. Martin now manages the shop.
Martin was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 15 February 2006. The interview took place at North Shields Fishermen's Mission and lasted 22 minutes and 30 seconds.
The business
"We sold foodstuffs. My father was never one for the alcohol side of it, and the cigarette side"
We sold foodstuffs. My father was never one for the alcohol side of it, and the cigarette side- he didn’t approve of that sort of thing. Unfortunately it is part of the service you have to give, which is cigarettes and alcohol but at the same time it was mainly foodstuffs.
Your normal stuff when somebody goes out to sea for 10 days with eight men onboard they’ve got to have bread, milk, bacon, eggs, meat and everything like that so we supplied the whole lot. But we physically put these orders up and then we used to go down put them onboard of the boat, whatever state of the tide, low tide sometimes, and I used to go down.
In those days I had no kind of fingerprints, anything hardly, whatsoever because they used to be actually burnt off with the rope. What it was, you had to pull all the groceries into baskets and if it was a low tide you had to loop the rope through the baskets and the you flicked it off the end of the quay, flicked the basket underneath the quay, slip the rope out of your hand, dropped it down and then flipped it again and of course you had to keep catching it in your hands and it used to just burn your hands. The skin- you used to have terrible calluses on your hands. My hands were very, very, very rough all the time through using this rope day after day after day.
Martin has 12 memories in the memorynet:
Martin's memories with a Change theme:
Changes at Wight’s- Community on the Fish Quay
- The future for the Fish Quay
The Highlander Hotel- North Shields Fish Quay
Martin's other memories:
This memory has these themes:
Roles and Routines | The North East | Work
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