Book review
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A sailor’s best friend good knife is a mariner’s best friend I reckon. Over the decades my knives have got me out of quite a few sticky situations and the one time I went to sea without one my leg was nearly torn apart. More about those gory details later.
My knife collection has grown over the decades – not counting the ones lying at the bottom of various seas and oceans – and nowadays numbers about a half a dozen or so.
Grandad gave me my first knife, a folding wooden-handled model handed down to him from his father, my great-grandad. Greatgrandad was a North Sea herring fisherman, chasing the summertime shoals of the ‘silver darlings’ and hand-lining for winter cod. But the wild weather eventually killed him with pneumonia in his early 40s so his five sons and two daughters were left to scratch a living on our moorland croft.
Living on a croft near the coast, they worked both the land and the sea to survive. As a crofter-fisherman, Grandad used a folding knife suitable for both jobs – cutting binder twine ashore and tying lobster claws offshore. When Grandad gave me the knife, it mostly
AMy selection of knives includes a trusty Lockspike bosun’s knife and a fancy Swiss Army cyber knife that’s handy for marine electronics work.
Grandad (far right) used his knife while serving on the big battleships in WWII.
Photo: Jeck Green.
While not being the sharpest
knife in the box,
I nevertheless have a point.