by Jane Dolby

The events of Monday, November 10, 2008, feel as if they were a hundred years ago, yet at the same time, as if they were yesterday.

That morning, Colin took our daughter Amelia to school and our son Liam to pre- school, before heading off to work for a day’s fishing.

That day, he was ‘weeding’ — raking the seabed for white weed, which looks like pale sea ferns. he would bag it and sell it and it would be dyed and used in aquariums. A lot of fishermen turn to weeding in the winter when the fish have migrated elsewhere.

‘It won’t be a long day,’ he said as he checked the weather his usual way; looking at the trees to see which way the wind was blowing before checking the shipping forecast. Winter was setting in. There was a real nip in the air.

As he left, I kissed him goodbye. I tidied up the breakfast things and did a bit of housework. At midday, a noise outside caught my attention. I looked out of the window: rain was lashing against the pane and the sky was dark.

The weather had gone from fairly clear to appalling. You would call it a squall — heavy rain and wind, really fierce, wind that can knock you over. A few minutes later a crash came as some tiles blew off the roof. I called Colin on his mobile. his words came in a rush: ‘The weather’s terrible! I can’t talk to you now, darlin’, I can’t talk, I’m trying to lash down everything on the boat. It’s awful out here. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, I’ll be home.’

I wasn’t worried when it got to 3pm and there was no sign of him. he had always warned me: ‘Never set your watch by a fisherman.’

I tried to reach him on the mobile but phone signals are often patchy at sea.

Then, at around four, I had a call from Colin’s sister, Wendy: ‘Colin’s boat — his boat’s not back. We’ve called the coastguard.’ That could mean only one thing: his boat had sunk.

Colin wasn’t a good swimmer but then a lot of fishermen aren’t. Maybe it is because they have spent so much time the water, they have never bothered going in it. As Colin said, even if you could swim, it would not save you if something went wrong when you were far out at sea . . .

how different the weather had been the first time Colin had taken me out in his boat, Louisa in August 1997. I was a 31-year-old single mum, divorced, with two boys, henry, seven, and Josh, 11, and working in a pub.

I had moved with the boys to Leigh, a pretty little essex town on the Thames estuary and found a fisherman’s cottage to rent. It was beautiful, 100 years old with roses growing up the brickwork; like something on a chocolate box.

I met Colin through his dad Ken, who lived next door. Colin wore scruffy clothes, a black woolly hat and smelled of fish. he wasn’t my type. My life was about the boys, my church and I had always loved music, so in the evenings would sing along to my guitar, writing songs.

however, thanks to the efforts of henry, who took it upon himself to act as Cupid, we became friends. I told Colin I was fascinated by his job as a fisherman. ‘Well, you can always come out on the boat sometime,’ was his offer. So we drove one night to the causeway, with its rows of little dinghies. he darted about, grabbing oars and kit, pushed the dinghy into the black water, then passed me a frayed rope. I stood in the moonlight, holding the rope and listening to the water gently lapping.

Aboard, he was a different person. As he moved about the boat, it was like seeing a cumbersome old seal, who shuffled around on land, suddenly flash through the water, a creature of grace and power. I saw a side to him I had not seen in everyday life.

Then, as the sun rose, he kissed me. I knew that night I had found the man I would be with, who I would marry, who was right for me.

he revelled in being a parent to my landlubber boys. We used to take them on the skiff to the Maplin Sands, a huge stretch of mudflats off essex.

After our daughter Amelia was born in November 2000, I didn’t have to take her to the clinic to be weighed as she grew. Instead, Colin used to take her down to the fish market and put her in the fish scales. he’d come back delighted, saying: ‘She’s as big as that massive great cod I got!’

Our son, Liam, was born four years later, a replica of Colin in so many ways, down to his beautiful brown eyes. The six of us had lovely times and I treasure those memories.

The morning Colin went weeding was seven days before Amelia’s eighth birthday. Liam was three.

As the weather deteriorated, the winds gusted up to Force 8. At about a quarter to one, Colin had radioed his father to say he was returning to because the weather was getting worse but he failed to show up. It was Ken who, desperately worried, called Thames Coastguard at 3pm.

We knew that if Colin had fallen into the water, he had four minutes until cold-water shock set in. And he didn’t normally wear a lifejacket (a lot of fishermen don’t).

It took two days for police divers to find the boat on the seabed, about a mile from shore. Chains were attached and it was slowly winched up but Colin wasn’t there. Police now described him as ‘lost at sea’. I had to tell the children their dad was dead, that his body hadn’t been found.

I tortured myself with what agony he might have gone through. Was he scared? had he hurt himself? Was it hypothermia that killed him, as the water was so bitterly cold? Or did he drown? What did it feel like to gasp for air, yet have water fill your lungs? Perhaps he banged his head and, please God, knew nothing about it?

BECAUSE we had no body to bury, we held a memorial service, rather than a funeral, and it was performed by the minister who had married us. Without a body, I had no death certificate and, legally, would need to wait seven years before one could be issued.

I was being hounded by creditors demanding proof of Colin’s death and now there was no money coming in.

Then a wonderful charity called the Fishermen’s Mission, which offers support to families like mine, got in touch. At one point, it kept the roof over our heads, helping me to fix the tiles blown off in the storm.

‘ One day I will repay them,’ I promised myself.

About eight months after Colin’s death, I booked a paddle steamer trip to try to rebuild the children’s confidence around water. My mobile rang and a police liaison officer told me a body had washed up and they suspected it was Colin.

It was as if I had started to recover only to be hit again. There had been something almost romantic, in the real sense of the word, in him being lost at sea, almost poetic, like something you’d read about in a fairy tale.

I wasn’t allowed to see him because there is no poetry in a body that has been under water for nearly a year — I know, because I asked. I had nightmares when I read the coroner’s report and its description of his body.

Investigators concluded that the sheer force of the waves sank his boat. It had disappeared off the radar at the same time as a powerful gust was recorded. even so I couldn’t know exactly what had happened.

One small comfort was that Colin was still wearing the gold locket I had given him on Amelia’s behalf ( inscribed ‘ To Daddy’) the first Christmas after she was born. It was cleaned and returned to me.

HOWEVER, the real significance of that day was that we were finally able to lay Colin to rest. Where once I might have sung to keep my spirits up, now I found I couldn’t sing. I would get a terrible lump in my throat and, within a few notes, I was reduced to sobbing.

It wasn’t until about Amelia’s 13th birthday that I took a step towards tackling this block. I found a singing teacher who gently encouraged me to sing my favourite songs, my voice increasing in volume along with my confidence. I was so relieved that I could do it — it was a turning point. From that moment on, I was able to sing along to the radio, to a CD, without being overcome by tears.

In spring 2012, three-and-a-half years after Colin’s death, I started thinking about the promise I had made in my darkest hour: to repay the help of the Fishermen’s Mission, which had been so supportive after Colin died. But how?

Then it came to me. Just that last Christmas, I had watched the Military Wives Choir, led by the bow- tiewearing choirmaster Gareth Malone, have a Number One hit with their song Wherever You Are.

They had been put together for the BBC programme The Choir, made up of the wives and girlfriends of men serving in Afghanistan.

My ambitions were much smaller, but I thought: why can’t we have a maritime version — the Fishwives Choir? I would ask a couple of the girls married to fishermen if they would like to record a karaoke-style CD, then we could sell a few and raise some money for the Mission.

I put a message on Facebook asking if anyone would like to join. A couple of days later when I logged in there were dozens of names, and they weren’t all from Leigh; they were from all over the country.

each had her own connection to the sea. Sue, from Cornwall, had lost her husband Brian when he was angling off rocks in Newquay. his body was found nine days later.

helen, from Scotland, had lost her husband Graeme aboard a trawler