Has the Whitby fishing fleet finally sunk?
operate out of Scotland. Even Brewer and his sons Stuart, 32, and Richard, 34, have been forced to start landing fish up the coast in North Shields to keep the business viable.
In the Eighties, more than 24 such trawlers operated out of Whitby and at the turn of the millennium there was still close to 10 vessels that called it home. For now, with Copious unseaworthy and the exact cause of the breach still undiagnosed, the town that forged its reputation through fishing the North Sea has none.
Brewer – who counts six generations of fishermen in his family – says he takes no pride in having survived the longest. The reason for the decline, he believes, is summed up on a sticker on the rear window of his car. It depicts a middle finger embossed on the flag of the European Union and the simple message: “Fisherman’s Grave.” Top: Richard Brewer and his son Stuart with their boat Copious; above, the pretty town is a magnet for summer daytrippers
Among the (unofficial) flags strung up for the 2016 Whitby Regatta – which has been held for the past 147 years – are several bearing the message of Brexit. The town’s fishermen blame the collapse of the fleet on the decision to join the EEC in 1973, and the restrictions and quotas it brought about.
The demise has coincided with a tourism boom. More than 8,000 visitors pack the town for its annual Goth Weekend in November (the town was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s
while the regatta attracts more than 20,000 daytrippers. In the summer, tourists throng the harbour and narrow streets, forming an orderly queue up the 199 steps to the ruins of the Benedictine abbey.
But the town’s old maritime families are determined not to let Whitby become a mere tourist honeypot. Over the past few decades the dwindling numbers of fishermen have led to several blockades of their harbour.
In 2008, Brewer helped to trap a French vessel inside the harbour in protest at EU quotas and the amount of fish being dumped. On some days, he has been forced to dump more than 70 per cent of the catch overboard because the species are outside his narrow quotas. “That is abhorrent to any fisherman,” he says. “It can’t even be on board your boat or it is illegal. It has to be dumped, dead. Hopefully Brexit will help us, but we are very fearful that if it is not handled properly we will end up in a worse situation than we are now. I’m hoping we don’t screw this up completely.”
The trawler race was once one of the main events of the regatta, so too the blessing of the boats. In a tradition dating back to the herring fleets of the Fifties, the rector of Whitby stands outside the RNLI base at the harbour mouth and says prayers for the fishing vessels gathered about him. “We still do that and years ago they would be all mingling around with their bunting up,” says Mike Russell, who has been RNLI coxswain for the past 15 years, and served on the lifeboats for 30. “But now we are the only boat he blesses.”
Of the 30 crew of the Whitby RNLI, the 60-year-old Russell says he is the last from an old Whitby fishing family. His son, Luke, 30, has recently bought a new boat to set up a lobster pot business.
It is a source of frustration for Russell that, despite the decline of Whitby’s fleet, he regularly sees foreign trawlers fishing (legally) outside the 12-mile limit around Britain’s coastline. “They come from all over the place. Sometimes you see massive Dutch boats all in one area; you know there is something there and they fish it until it’s gone.”
In the good times, the Whitby Fish Market was the epicentre of the town, and its adjoining tea shack the local parliament. The lobster and crab cobles (pronounced cobbles in Whitby parlance) can still make a viable business – and in the summer, salmon and sea trout are also sold – but otherwise the market is largely devoid of activity. Darren Butcher, the final agent there, says: “It turns into a ghost town.”
The 51-year-old butcher started working on the Scarborough fish market in 1983 and has been in Whitby since 1994. Then, he says, he would get 10-15 trawlers steaming in each morning and was one of six members of staff. “We used to have a crew do at Christmas with 200 people in the local pub,” he says. “We’ve gone from that to just me.”
As we speak a small coble arrives, hauling off a box of lobsters to be sold at £9.50 a kilo.
Does he think, post Brexit, that the harbour may be resurrected? He pauses and considers the day’s paltry takings on the computer screen. “I hope so,” he says. “But I can’t help wonder if it is already too late.”