Paul Robinson
Paul belongs to: The Coble and Keelboat Society
Paul was born in Cullercoats. His family were in fishing and merchant navy. Paul got his first boat when he was 13. He has made a living from fishing and sign painting.
Paul was interviewed by Kylea Little on 1 December 2005. The interview took place at the Interviewee's workshop and lasted 38 minutes and 30 seconds.
Making and mending equipment
"Preserving stuff? It’s on lobster and crab gear mostly"
Preserving stuff? It’s on lobster and crab gear mostly. To freshen them up, your crab, nobody bothers with it now, like, but the gear goes sour after a while, and crabs like really fresh bait, and I always used to, like, every couple of months or something like that, take the gear out and just bark it- which is just boiling the mud and bark so you get… just get an old oil barrel and get the gas underneath and it freshens them up. It’s all the, you know, half the smell of the gear which puts crabs off, lobsters aren’t so bothered, like. But it just freshens them up, like and the boiling actually kills the worms in the wood, in the wooden bottom. So they last a bit longer because the griddle worms just eat all the wood away.
Not so much the gear itself- it’s the materials which have changed. With inshore fishing, anyway, the basic principles of what you use are pretty much the same but the materials have changed a lot, using synthetics. In lobster fishing, there’s a lot of steel gear being made now but the actual, everybody used to make their own gear- couldn’t afford to buy gear but the stuff’s made on such a huge scale now, and boats are actually doing it, big boats working offshore they can afford to buy gear that they wouldn’t physically have time to make it, like. Well, you did, you make it ashore or repairing- absolutely endless job. There was always something to do or repair, you know. When you get wiped out in a storm, all your gear's just smashed to pieces. So you’ve got all to repair, all to repair if you get out back what you get back and just keep making new gear.
Paul has 16 memories in the memorynet:
Paul's memories with a Work theme:
Learning traditional fishing skills- Fishing routines
- The crew in the cobles and decline of the fishing industry
- Superstitions
- Leaving the sea and sign painting
- Sign Painting
- Sign painting techniques and methods
- Making and mending equipment
- Losing traditional skills
- Going out in his coble
Paul in his workshop- A hand painted sign
- Examples of Paul's sign painting
Paul's other memories:
This memory has these themes:
Equipment | Skills | Traditions | Work
Use this form to add your comment to the memorynet: