Retired Lockeport fisherman shares sea stories
Tragedies on the Unforgiving Seas written by Bill Williams
A book chronicling the perils of the sea that have befallen a number of fishermen from the Lockeport area has been authored by retired Lockeport fisherman Bill Williams with assistance from Melda Roache Clark.
Tragedies on the Unforgiving Seas was officially launched at the Lillian Benham Library in Lockeport on Dec. 16. Williams, who was a fisherman for 48 years, said the book is an “assortment of my own stories,” that he had been working on for a while.
“A lot of it has been done for five, six, seven years,” he said.
It wasn’t until last year that Williams dug out his work and showed it to Clark.
“She read it and thought it was good and said, ‘I could put it together for you,’ so I finished it up. If it hadn’t been for her it never would have been done.”
Clark said when she read what Williams had written, she knew it had to be preserved.
“Bill had pages of information and tons of pictures. I thought it would be a wonderful idea to put it together in a book, so I offered to put it together organize it in some fashion. Some of the information nobody has ever heard before and Bill knew most all of these people that he wrote about and I thought the information was too important to lose. So that’s how it started, and it grew from a little project of a few pages into a real book” with approximately 100 pages.
“I just wanted there to be a record of the information and he has some really good pictures and interesting details of different events.”
Even before the launch, the “response to the book has been amazing,” said Clark, with copies mailed out as far away as British Columbia, Texas and Indiana. Tragedies on the Unforgiving Seas is available by contacting Clark at 1-705-928-2992 or info@ meldaroacheclark.com
Plans are to have the book also available at the Locke, Stock and Barrell and the Lockeport Pharmacy.