Water Man deserves a ‘Jim Hodge Day’

FRANK RHURMUND reviews The Water Man, Memoirs of Jim Hodge, which documents how St Ives has changed ‘so much’ over the years

Alocal hero as well as author, no one deserves a second and definitive edition, plus 40 more pages and colour photographs, of The Water Man more than Jim Hodge.

Compiled by his daughter Janet Mitchell, a labour of love if ever there was one, in her Message to the Readers she acknowledges the help she has received in her task, to mention but a few, from Brian Stevens for checking the draft for factual accuracy to, Janet Axten and Mike Murphy at the St Ives Archive Centre, not forgetting Tobi Carver “for his endless patience” during the book’s production.

Printed and published by the St Ives Printing & Publishing Company at £28, in the introduction to his book Jim Hodge with modesty discloses why he is writing his memoirs, “because I think that St Ives has changed so much. I want to record my memories for the generations to come. I hope people who read these memoirs enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed putting them down on paper.” A mine of information, as it were, regarding both above and below ground, past and present day St Ives, I’ve no hesitation in confessing how much I’ve enjoyed reading them, and of recommending that The Water Man should be on the book shelf of everyone in the town.

Regrettably, I never had the honour or pleasure of meeting Jim Hodge, but if I had done so I’m sure I would have liked him. We appear to have shared much the same sense of humour, recalling some of the characters he met when he was a boy way back in the 1940’s, he tells of a couple of tales told by one who was known by the nickname Man Friday. One of how when he was at sea a gale blew up and the ship’s captain “sent every man-jack aloft to furl sail but a sudden gust blew them out of their sea boots. These fell to the deck and killed the skipper.” Another, and again at sea, “when a fog in the Channel was so thick that you could lean against ‘un, which was what I did. Suddenly the fog lifted, and I fell overboard.”

Not only a good listener, but also a brave boy, when only 14 years old Jim Hodge played his part in an attempted rescue of Commandos, who were then stationed in St Ives. In trying to come into Porthmeor Beach in a small boat in dangerous sea conditions they were capsized and all five Commandos were thrown into the sea. Young Jim came close to saving the only one of them who drowned that day, but the rough sea denied him victory. Movingly. as he was to say, “I was very upset. I found it difficult to walk out of the water. All I could do, was lie down on the sand.” Several years later he would more than make up for his regret on that day, by becoming a hero on two occasions. In 1964, accompanied by Edward Waters, safety foreman at Geevor mine, who was to tell Jim that he had never worked in such a dangerous place before, they went underground to repair the deep adit main of Trenwith Mine which was threatening the town’s water supply.

Their nail-biting, death-defying efforts were victorious, gained them a letter of thanks from the then Minister of Housing, Sir Keith Joseph, and saved the West Cornwall Water Board thousands of pounds. As a reward for all that they had achieved, the Water Board gave each of them £25. Even allowing for what that would buy in the 1960’s, it was measly to say the least.

Jim’s second “act of gallantry” came six years later, when “in the early hours of the morning on 24th July 1970, the Harbour Cafe caught on fire, with flames up to a hundred feet high.” It was a very large fire and spreading, with the firemen hampered by a lack of pressure in the water main, plus the fact that the tide was at its lowest and preventing them from pumping water from the sea. A desperate situation, which meant that Jim Hodge had to open seven valves to increase the water supply. Something he managed to do covering two and a half miles, partly on foot, in 32 minutes. That was only the start of his actions, he had to get the highest water pressure possible into the downlong area. Although unable to prevent much of Downlong from being destroyed, “By 3.15 am 10 hydrants gushed 1500 gallons a minute to allow the fire brigades to save the town.” He would later say, “I was told by my Manager that what I had done on the night of the fire could not have been improved. and he praised me highly to the Press.” Although he was to inspire two trophies in his memory, as far as I am aware, that is the extent of civic acknowledgement of his heroism in St Ives, but anyone who saved the town from extinction not once but twice surely deserves some sort of tribute.

St Ives already celebrates the town’s former customs collector John Knill (1733-1811) with a ceremony every five years on St James the Apostles Day, at Knill’s Monument, the granite obelisk high on Worvas Hill, some thought now should surely be given to such a hero as Jim Hodge, perhaps an annual Jim Hodge Day? After all, when he began working for the West Cornwall Water Board in1961, 80% of the water for St Ives was stored in old mines, at that time they held 200 million gallons of water, and going underground to maintain them was highly dangerous. Health and safety measures at the time were rudimentary to say the least, that he survived so many years, above and below the surface, without serious injury is something of a miracle. His chart of the shafts and adits in St Ives reveals that underground it is a honeycomb of tunnels and pits. Little wonder that he once had to come to the rescue of a lady whose kitchen floor had collapsed down into a shaft. “I found the old kitchen floor resting on a water main at the bottom of the shaft when on a subsequent main repair job. I sealed off the shaft and protected the main using tram rails.” He again had the help of Edward Waters, the miner from Geevor, on this job.

Helped by memories from his wife Pat, in the second part of his memoirs, Jim Hodge recalls what it was like growing up in St Ives from the late 1930’s and the Second World War to the 1960’s and the cleaning up of oil from the wreck of the SS Torrey Canyon. With skill and several smiles along the way, from his days at the Island Road School, which closed in 1940, to the 1980’s when he was chairman of the local branch of the Royal British Legion, he bridges the huge gap between then and now, showing how much St Ives has changed during the past 80 years or so. At this point I must admit to an interest, Jim’s uncle was William Barber, a renowned fishing net maker, whose Island Net Works was the last large net making firm in St Ives, and his aunt Keigwin who lived with him was a Newlyn girl. As a Bucca I’m delighted to learn this, but this is not the only thing I’ve learned from these memoirs. I now know everything from what a carbona is (see the memories Jim shared with the miner John Curnow) to the history of the fishing lugger Ripple, SS19, which was built in St Ives in 1896 for the Barber family, and bought by John Lambourn in 2003, who began restoring it at Newlyn to make it once again a fully functioning sailing fishing lugger.

Sadly, William Barber, the only fisherman to have the right to dry his fishing nets on Porthmeor Side (the West side) of the Island, was to lose his life when the St Ives lifeboat John and Eliza Stych was wrecked and all but one of its crew were lost. Jim’s wife Patricia was to write a touching and award winning poem in memory of the disaster, The Ballad of the St Ives Lifeboat... ‘Twas 1939 on a wild winter’s night, When the maroons went off and began the fight’. The first of the eight appendices in this book, together with such of Jim’s memories such as the presence of GIs in St Ives during the Second World War, to his hurling of the silver ball on Feast Day in St Ives, plus his singing with everyone from the Cock Robin Choir to the Dobles Wall Choir and, of course, his love of fishing, they help to ensure that this book lives up to his wish to let people know just now much St Ives has changed during the past 80 years, and to realise how he played, what he describes as “a small part in helping the local community throughout his working life.”

Local historian Brian Stevens, of the St Ives Museum, sums up his opinion of Jim Hodge’s efforts in one word, “Riveting”. Each of the rivets that make up The Water Man has been made, in a manner of speaking, from 24 carat Cornish gold.

Diverting and delightful, generously illustrated with any number of fascinating and informative archival photographs, published and printed by the St Ives Printing & Publishing Company at £28, this second edition of The Water Man is excellent value.

All proceeds from its sale are being given to the Alzheimer’s Research UK charity and it can be obtained directly from Janet Mitchell by emailing janetmitchell54321@gmail.com