I started to talk last time about how the fishing industry in Wick operated, and now I’d like to share with you a little more on that. I just find it all so fascinating.
When we think about the fishing, we tend to picture it as it was in its later days, when fishermen and -lassies followed the herring round the coast, from the Western Isles, past Orkney, round Caithness, down the Moray Firth and the Scottish coast, down past Northumberland and Yorkshire and on to East Anglia. But this didn’t properly start until, what, the 1870s?
Sign at the Forum Arts Centre, Groningen, The Netherlands
Before then in Wick the merchants, the fish curers, owned the boats and hired the crews and gutters.The population of the town doubled for those few short weeks to 12,000, many of them Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. In Wick the boats remained idle on the quays from September to July. At the start of the season, a curer would contract with a skipper to crew the boat and land fish for him at a fixed price of so much per “cran” (a cran was a standard measure, holding about twelve hundred herring, give or take). For every cran of herring the boat landed, the curer would give the skipper a “cran token”. At the end of the season the boats would be hauled back onto the quays and the skippers would redeem the tokens for cash. They would then use the money to pay their crews, and settle their debts in the town.
For this is the truly remarkable thing: for three months the whole town ran on credit, with a great reckoning in September. Any money left over would be taken home, usually to help survive a bleak winter on the family croft. And sometimes if the fishing was poor there was nothing left over, and all those poor people had to go away empty-handed, with nothing to show for all that effort.
Riverside view, Wick
As the years passed, and families and friends began to club together to buy their own boats, the economy shifted. The fishermen became professionals, following the herring as they migrated, and auctioning their catches to the highest bidders at the nearest port. In the 1880s the trawlers came and they, like the dwarves in The Lord of the Rings, delved too greedily and too deep, and now the vast shoals of herring are no more. But for a while, for maybe 50-60 years up to the 1860s and 70s, the ecosystem was just about in balance, and an economy flourished that’s quite unique in my experience.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
I promised I’d explain all my behind-the-scenes workings out on this gansey, and so today we’re going to look at the question of when you start the yoke pattern. (The answer is, of course, it depends on the number of rows you need.) As this is a replica based on an old photograph, I’m going to try to get as close to the original pattern as I can. And yes, some maths is involved (sorry).
So, George Bremner’s gansey has alternating bands of diamond lattices and chevrons, divided by the usual 5-row bands of 3 purl rows alternating with 2 plain knit rows. The diamonds are 25 rows deep, and the chevrons are 17 rows. I plan to have three bands of each, making six in total, more or less following the original.
Restaurant kitchen window, with reflections, Groningen
This gives me (25 x 3 = 75) + (17 x 3 = 51) + (5 x 6 = 30), or a total of 156 rows for the yoke. Although it varies depending on the yarn I’m using, I tend to average 12 or so rows per inch: so, 156 rows \ 12 = 13 inches for the pattern.
As the gansey is going to be 24 inches from the top of the welt to the top of the shoulder, and as I usually make the shoulder 1 inch (or 12 rows), that means that the yoke pattern plus the shoulder strap = 13 + 1 = 14 inches.
Therefore, 24 – 14 = 10 inches: so I start my yoke pattern after knitting the plain body for 10 inches. (Which I have indeed just done.)
I dare say there are easier ways of calculating this, but this works for me. It seems very precise, but different yarns throw out my row gauge. It’s more of a guideline. So we’ll see how well this works. I can always run the pattern into the shoulder strap if I need to, or do a few extra pattern rows at the top of the yoke (as the original has), so for now we’ll hope for the best and finagle it when we get there…
So, here’s a question for you: what’s the connection between the introduction of decks into fishing boats, and the invention of that natty item of apparel, the blazer? Granted, they both happened during Victorian times, but that’s not the answer; I mean to say, so did rickets.
The story begins in tragedy, with the great storm that devastated the Moray Firth on the night of 18/19 August 1848. In Wick this became known as “Black Saturday”. The weather on the afternoon of 18 August was fine, so all down the coast some 800 boats put out to sea. It was the custom in the herring fishing to go out in the afternoon, find a promising spot usually about ten miles offshore, cast (or “shot”) your nets, sleep overnight on the boat and haul the nets in next morning hopefully bulging with herring. In the 1840s most of the boats would have been owned by the local merchants (or “fish curers”, which still makes me think of piscine faith healers) and the crews would be hired by one or other of these merchants. There were no auctions of herring at this time, and the boats would deliver the catch to the curing station rented by their merchant to be gutted and packed by the fisher lassies and coopers also in the merchant’s employ.
Forss Water at Crosskirk
Well, the boats were out on the night of Friday the 18th, when a storm arose out of nowhere around 3.00am. The crews frantically raced for the many little harbours all along the coast, but plenty didn’t make it. 124 boats were lost, and over a hundred fishermen lost their lives. Heartbreakingly, at Wick the sea had fallen enough to prevent laden boats from passing over the bar into the harbour, and there are accounts of families helplessly watching their loved ones perish in the storm (the passage was deepened after). The scale of the disaster was such that the government commissioned Captain John Washington of the Royal Navy to write a report and make recommendations. One innovation was to display barometers in harbours to warn fishermen of any sudden drops in pressure; and another was to fit decks to fishing boats to make them more stable. (Interestingly the fishermen resisted the decks, on the grounds that it could increase the chances of their being swept overboard and reduced the space available for the catch.)
Speaking of fishermen, it’s always good to be reminded of the dangerous conditions these men were exposed to as they smile blandly out at us from the old photographs and we admire the patterns on their jumpers. My replica gansey worn by George Bremner is coming on apace (I know I promised to include technical details, but at this stage it’s just a question of rinse and repeat, same as last week, making the most of all the plain knitting before the pattern comes along and complicates things). If Fate is kind I might even start the pattern next week.
Helmsdale River looking out to sea
Now, what about the blazer, I hear you ask? The origin is disputed, as so many historical facts tend to be, but this explanation seems plausible. The story goes that back in 1837 our Captain Washington hosted a visit to his ship by the newly-incoronatified Queen Victoria, and decided to fit out his crew in a spanking new uniform for the occasion. This was a double-breasted, navy blue jacket with shining brass buttons. The name of his ship? I kid you not, it was HMS Blazer…
The funfair’s back in town, on the meadows down by the river near where they used to dry the fishing nets back before car parks were invented. If it wasn’t for a merciful row of trees lining our street we could see it from our bedroom, but if we can’t see it, we can certainly hear it. Imagine the type of music you like the least—let’s say jazz, since nobody really likes jazz—played over loudspeakers at very high volume, and you’ll get the idea, not so much a funfair as a sort of psychological warfare with moving parts. There’s usually an amplified voice shouting over the beat, too; it’s probably inviting us to roll up, roll up, but I can’t make out the words and it sounds disconcertingly like a drunken Dalek singing along to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.
Fog rolls into Sarclet harbour
But then, I’ve never liked funfairs, amusement arcades, or any form of entertainment involving candy floss and motion sickness. Not that I have anything against candy floss qua candy floss; it’s just that once you grow a beard any chance eating it with dignity disappears (see also: cream cakes). This puts me at odds with my fellow men, as I know the return of the funfair is eagerly awaited each year, so I just have to lump it for a few weeks every summer. Many years ago I shared a flat with a vegan friend who had studied philosophy at university, majoring in logic. Although he was healthily emotional in many respects, when it came to reason he was as cold and logical as Mr Spock. One night the flat across the hall was having a party, and by 3.00 a.m. it was still impossible to sleep over the noise. My friend offered to go and tell them to turn it down. Ten minutes later he returned, with the music, I noticed, continuing as loud as ever. “What happened?” I asked. “Oh,” he said, “it’s a question of the greatest good to the greatest number: since there are more of them than there are of us, they convinced me they should leave the music playing…”
Lochans in the peat bog at Forsinard
[Editor’s note: Margaret’s off on her travels just now, so all photographs are courtesy of me and my iPhone. Can you tell? Normal service will be resumed in a couple of weeks.]
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TECHNICAL STUFF
Alert readers will have noticed that the designated pattern has changed from last week. This is because, having previously agreed I’d knit another pattern from the Johnston Collection held by Wick Museum for my charity project, I promptly forgot all about it and defaulted to a Filey pattern, only for Deb G to remind me. D’oh! Not that it will make any difference to the project, as I hadn’t started the pattern yet; and in fact I do this quite often, starting projects and changing my mind before I get to the pattern, or indeed starting a project and leaving the choice of pattern open until I get to the yoke, to see what mood I’m in when I get there. It’s only having to show my hand in the blog that forces me to declare the pattern upfront. (Now I think of it, this is a perfect illustration of quantum indeterminacy, where anything is possible until I make a choice and the waveform collapses into a single project. There you go: I’ve invented a new discipline, quantum knitting. Now, where’s my research grant?)
Anyway, we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks to see it, but this is a very nice pattern of alternating horizontal bands of chevrons and open diamonds in a lattice. Meanwhile, I can relax with lots of nice, gentle, plain knitting, none of which, thank heaven, requires me to remember anything…
It’s Sunday lunchtime as I write this, and the servers on which this website is hosted have been down for four long days now. I imagine that for a website this must be the equivalent of a general anaesthetic: one minute you’re awake and alert, and the doctor is asking you to count down from ten, then there’s a cold sensation running up your arm and suddenly you’re in a state of non-being. The hosts promised that things would be back to normal in three days, and yet, as the saying goes, here we are. Or rather, here we aren’t. Even now someone is probably reaching for a defibrillator, while a voice asks helpfully, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Raindrops on Grass
Because of this, the blog this week is in the nature of a message in a bottle: I have no idea how long till anyone will be able to read it. So I’ll keep it short. Our thoughts and prayers are with all our readers caught up in the current heatwave sweeping up from North Africa, set to push temperatures in England and Wales up to an unprecedented 40ºC. It’s not forecast to make it this far north (we might get as high as a balmy 18-20º, something to remember in January when the sleet is piling in horizontally on bitter, 70-mph gales).
To keep your spirits up, I recommend following the election of a new leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and de facto Prime Minister, a process so drawn out it makes the ending of the last Lord of the Rings movie seem abrupt. The first televised debate had the contestants playing tug of war over an abyss, with the losers plunging to their deaths—no, wait, sorry that’s Squid Game. Though now I think of it, it would certainly liven up political debate considerably…
Thistle trying to hide
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This gansey is being knit for charity. The idea came from Deb Gillanders of Propagansey fame, and I’ll be giving Deb a guest spot to say more about this is future weeks. First, though, I have to knit it.
It’s in Frangipani navy yarn, and the pattern is taken from the Johnston Collection of old glass plate held by Wick Heritage Society. It’s the gansey of one George Bremner and I’ll say more about the pattern when I reach the yoke. There are lots of these caithness patterns still to try, so I’m grateful to Deb for the opportunity to knit it up. (In my affably muddle-headed way, I agreed to knit a Caithness pattern and then promptly forgot and started a completely different pattern, from Filey. So if you see that the title of this project has changed since you saw it last, don’t worry!)
The Funfair is in town
I’ve been contacted by a few people in recent months interested in knitting a gansey for the first time. So I thought I’d use this gansey as an opportunity to talk through the process in some detail, from start to finish (assuming we have a functioning website to share this on). For now I’ll just say that it’s for a finished gansey chest size of about 22.5 inches across when blocked, so I’ve started by casting on 328 stitches for the welt. At the body this is increased by 34 to 362 stitches (so, if you deduct 2 stitches for the fake seams, this gives 180 stitches per side.)
Summer has come to Britain, with most of us sweltering in temperatures into the low 30s centigrade. (I am, of course, using “most of us” here in the same sense that weather forecasters do, i.e., meaning everyone but those of us—sorry, “you”—in the far north of Scotland.) But don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t have it any other way. Caithness is currently basking in a cool 15-19ºC, with a cool sea breeze, and it’s delightful. After all, you can always add an extra layer if you’re cold; but there are limits to how far you can go if you’re too hot. And while I do possess a pair of shorts, I’m so unused to seeing my legs in the flesh, as it were, that I keep mistaking them for a pair of pink hairy caterpillars that have mutated after a nuclear disaster, and the shock is too much for my weak heart. I still remember the time I opened the door to the postman in my shorts and he shied like a startled mustang, flinging his letters to at least three of the four winds.
I don’t wear bathing trunks for much the same reason, the overall effect resembling a rubber band stretched round the middle of an over-inflated pink balloon. This is where I always feel the Victorians got the tone just right, refusing to enter any assemblage of water more copious than a bathtub in anything less than a full suit of evening dress, preferably with a top hat and monocle. No, all in all I’ve found my spiritual home in Caithness, where summer means transitioning from a heavy sweater to a light one (though keep the heavy one handy).
Flowers by the path
Speaking of sweaters… here’s the finished picture of the Mrs Hunter’s gansey. As ever, washing and blocking has done its magic and opened it out so you can see the gansey in its true proportions. I don’t have any superlatives left to say how wonderful this pattern knits up, except to say the textures really catch the light: it’s a stunner. And it’s a deceptively simple pattern that pays you back tenfold for the effort you put in. You do have to like cables, though.
Valeriana pyrenaica
And one thing about the sunshine, at least we’ve had nice weather for the fall of the government. Britain famously doesn’t have a written constitution, but instead relies on what is called the “good chaps” theory of government, the notion that decent people will govern us decently. (And I can’t help wondering, as I think back on just about every government since Lord North lost the American colonies back in 1783: oh yes? What good chaps exactly would these be?) Still, two quotes occur to me as we witness the long goodbye of our current prime minister. Firstly, the quote ascribed to Oscar Wilde on the tragic death of Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop (but which only appears some 30 years after Wilde died, so is, alas, probably not true): “One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh”. And secondly, the one about football managers leaving as they arrived, “fired with enthusiasm…”
I started to talk last time about how the fishing industry in Wick operated, and now I’d like to share with you a little more on that. I just find it all so fascinating.
