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Local Heroes: Hull's Trawlermen
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Were you scared when your family went to sea Barry Field 2

Barry Field 2
 
Were you scared when your family went to sea?
When my uncle went fishing was I worried? Well not really because a lot of our family went fishing. I had two uncles who were skippers, and one uncle was just the deckhand. The one I went on the Arctic Corsair with. I had a cousin who was a skipper. So not really, you didn’t think anything would happen to them. They never thought anything would happen to them. It was a job. They went to sea, they were away for three weeks, three and a half weeks at a time. They’d come back, you’d see them, they’d give you some money or something, they’d bring some fish. And forty 48 hours later they were gone back to sea. And you didn’t think about it. You know, you just expected that the next trip, they’d be back again. In the case of my cousin, he was on the Gaul and I saw him the trip before it sailed away. And we never saw him again, with the ship sinking.
 
How did people react when the Triple Trawler Disaster happened?
At first, they were al l supportive of each other. And you grieved about the people that were lost, and you remembered them. And people went to the funerals. But shortly afterwards, there was a lot of anger within the fishing community about the conditions that the fishermen had to put up with. On one of the ships, I believe, I’m not sure if it wasn’t the Kingston Peridot, there wasn’t even a radio operator on there. So nobody knew, they couldn’t keep in touch. So nobody knew what had happened in any case. I think there was a lot of anger, and the Government got involved and people thought about changing the conditions that the fishermen went to sea in, and making sure that the ships were a bit more seaworthy.
 
Can you remember the 'Headscarf Campaign'?
I don’t remember... As I say, the campaign to actually get the Government to improve the conditions… Not really. That was out of my hands. I was just somebody who… I had my own life to live. I knew it was going on, and I think everybody began to support it. Particularly the idea of having a mother ship going with the fleet when they went out to sea. So that if any of them ran into trouble, there’d be a ship there to support them. And I think that was one of the main things to come out of it.