Interview with Tom Smith

Interview with Tom Smith

Tom Smith grew up in Lancashire during the war. He recalls the German bombers going over to bomb the docks, the effect of rationing on a country community and the ban on night fishing during the war.

00:04:13 audio recording

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TS: Amongst people, my mother’s generation were the poorest in the land. They were all fed. They didn’t go to bed hungry. No. You probably knew people who were undernourished a bit.
Other: Well, yes. Odd families. Yes. Yeah.
TS: But not in my time.
Other: No.
TS: I mean there was a war on during my early school from being six years old to twelve and even, but even here you were hardly aware of it. We were, you were next door to a farm which provided your eggs, your butter.
Interviewer: So you didn’t have to worry about your ration books or anything?
TS: No. Not particularly. There was an Army camp based in this village with an ack ack battery training soldiers, resting some that had been in the action and also as I say with the anti-aircraft guns defending Heysham harbour and Barrow Docks across the way which were prime targets obviously and there was incidents of German raiders coming over the place. But we were basically remote from the Blitzes and the evacuees and so on. Although they were, they were brought to this locality of course. We were aware that there was children from London.
Other: Glasson Dock of course they used to fly over.
TS: Yes. But I think it was somebody getting rid of their payload and getting home before somebody [unclear] [laughs]
Other: Buzzing over about 11 o’clock at night and saying, ‘They’re here. They’re coming again. They’re going around to Barrow, you know.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
TS: What we do remember was things like the blackout. I mean you walk out. It can’t go dark at night now with waste light can it?
Interviewer: No.
TS: I mean you, I mean there’s the power station here glowing like a miniature city and all around the countryside, the university on the hill.
Interviewer: Yeah.
TS: And the townships. Every one has a glow.
Interviewer: Right.
TS: Well, even as a child I remember if my father opened the, he went to the war eventually but if you opened the front door you looked out on total blackness. There was nothing. Fishing was banned at night in the war for fear somebody would use it as running presumably agents ashore and any undercover activity.
Interviewer: So if anyone was out at night they would be —
TS: So there was a curfew on night fishing for a while. That would be while dad was away I believe.
Other: A curfew?
TS: Yes. There was. They stopped them fishing in the dark you know.
Other: They didn’t stop them salmon fishing.
TS: In the dark they did for a while.
Other: Did they?
TS: Oh yes. Adam was only talking about it the other day.
Other: I don’t remember that.
TS: No. Because he mentioned that the Butlers from Glasson Dock coming down to get the daylight in they could get and then being dark before they could get home would moor in the boat across the by the Crook Farm and collect the boat the morning after.
Other: Oh.
TS: Which I hadn’t known about. My father went to the war in ’42.
Other: ’42. Yeah.
TS: For three years in [unclear].
Other: [unclear] minesweepers.
TS: And of course his salmon boat had to be laid up then for the duration.
Interviewer: So today is how easy now.
TS: Well, in comparison —
Interviewer: You have all your mod cons.
TS: In comparison each and every small boat well into my fishing time supported two men. Whether they were family men or not it supported them and made a living whether it was salmon fishing, shrimp trawling or fish trawling whatever and the economics today demand that no boat would support more than one. So everywhere that there were two men to do whatever had to be done in a boat now we do it singlehanded. So the reverse. It’s totally reversed. The trend in industry or any other walk of life more or less that the workload I think is greater today.
Interviewer: Right.
TS: Than it was then because if they missed fishing it didn’t, as I’ve explained it didn’t matter. They would stand on the front in little groups and smoke pipes until they could hardly climb over the matchsticks actually. You could always see where they’d been. There was a circle of spent matches.
Interviewer: You said in your early days though this area supported ten fishermen?
TS: All this village itself and the —