Ray Morse
Ray belongs to: The Fishermen's Mission
Ray was born in Sunderland into a fishing family. He has fished since the age of 3. He worked from North Shields and Grimsby. Ray is now retired and continues to fish in his leisure time.
Ray was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 8 November 2005. The interview took place at North Shields Fishermen's Mission and lasted 54 minutes and 21 seconds.
Traditional navigation and fishing skills
"I don’t know, it’s just things my dad passed on to me"
I don’t know, it’s just things my dad passed on to me. I mean, I’ve seen my dad do things and I don’t know to this day what they meant, but he knew. Like, I mean, when I went, when I went skipper and I had my own boat and everything in front of us, decker and navigator, and I would pick a place out on a chart and get the decker readings off the chart, and say, “right, there it is, we’re there, it’s here, and we’ll go from there to there.”
Now, my dad used to do that without any decker. He’d have a log line telling him what speed he was doing and he’d have a compass to tell him what course he would go, and he’d knew to get to a certain place, let’s say, seven hours steam at six knots, so as soon as he left the pier, he would chuck the log line out and set the boat so that he was doing six knots, or whatever, and then set the course and when he got, we’ll say it was seven hours, when they had done the seven hours, he would get the lead line out, which was a big four, five pound lump of lead with a little hollow in it which would be filled with tallow, grease or something like that, lower it to the seabed, pull it back up and he would look at the colour of the sand. “Ah, we’re in the wrong place, we’ll have to shift 10 minutes in whichever direction.” Shift the 10 minutes, put it over, pull it back up, different coloured bottom - “right, we’re in the right place.”
Now, I could never do that- how he knew what the bottom was like- just something he had learnt himself because my dad was the first one in the family to go fishing.
Ray has 17 memories in the memorynet:
Ray's memories with a Work theme:
Growing up in the fishing community- The fishing community
- Traditional navigation and fishing skills
- Being caught in a hurricane on the Dogger Bank
- A regular fishing trip
- An unforgetable trip
- Adjusting to life ashore
Hauling prawns- The Conduan
- In the wheelhouse of the Conduan
- Taking a break
- The Conduan being launched
Ray's other memories:
This memory has these themes:
Skills | Traditions | Work
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