Did you see any accidents? Harry Day 3

Did you see any accidents?

I’ve seen two people get killed. I was on a ship that lost one. No, he committed suicide, I think. Cook, he folded his apron up and dived over the side for some reason. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. Yeah, accidents was quite regular. I saw one bloke get his toes cut off. We had a bit of an aeroplane on the deck. What we’d trawled up and he was climbing over it. His feet were just bare. And he was climbing over it and he slipped, and it took his toes off. Yeah, there was quite a lot of accidents. Hell of a lot, anyway. Normally, you’d have a long way to go to… They didn’t send helicopters to pick you up then. You had to make your own way. And if it was bad weather it took twice as long, didn’t it?

 

How did the boats freeze up?

Well, it depends what speed the ship was doing. Because the spray would freeze if you were doing full speed. But a lot of the time if we was in a blizzard, the snow stuck as well and that would freeze solid and make the ice a lot thicker as well. So we had to keep on top of that. That was just one of the things you had to do. You had to chop it off with axes and of course, as well, you had to make sure it didn’t fall off on your head as well. Because the cables going up to the masthead used to get maybe that thick, so if it fell on your head... Of course, they didn’t dish hard hats out then. You had to keep the hose pipes running on the deck to stop it freezing up. But anywhere there was no running water, the decks used to freeze as well. When? Used to come out they used to go as hard, and that restricted your movements as well, because they used to freeze. But nobody ever said to me “Don’t do that, it’s dangerous”.