Fishermen’s Mission offers support to survivors of a gruelling industry

We are in the fish market by Fraserburgh harbour. Breath clouds the faces of the dozens of fishermen and buyers standing around crate upon crate of haddock and hake, saithe and skate. Cod lie torpedo-like in icy bays. Lumpers, market strongmen in overalls and yellow wellies, use metal hooks to lug the heavy boxes. Selling agents auction the fish in voices so fast and heavily accented that an outsider struggles to catch even a single word; occasionally a recognisable phrase – “twa hunner poond the bundle” – floats to the surface like flotsam released by the tide.

Murray Campbell, a no-nonsense, energetic 64-year-old, comes here daily, in his white peaked cap and long black coat, in his role as senior superintendent of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, Fraserburgh branch. That, anyway, is his Sunday title. He is, less formally, “the Mission mannie fae the Broch”. The Fishermen’s Mission, as it is commonly known, is a Christian organisation which, since 1881, has been dedicated to caring for fishermen and their families, providing everything from a warm bed in a cold port to financial and emotional support for the widows of men lost at sea.

Campbell, thus, attends the market each morning in order to sniff out whether anyone might be in need of his help. “Fit like, ma loon?” is his typical opening gambit. He also comes because he is a former fishermen himself and loves to immerse himself in the culture. That briney reek is his equivalent of a breakfast cigarette. He has been with the Mission for 24 years and plans to retire in August. “I’m moving,” he says, “to the promised land – Lossiemouth.”

The Mission building overlooks the harbour. Herring gulls strut the roof with a profound sense of ownership. Inside, it’s much more cosy, especially the wood-panelled canteen with its framed photographs of local boats and cheery smell of chips. Though the Mission is busy during the day, no-one stays here now. The huge reduction in the size of the Scottish fleet, which has halved over the past decade, has meant far fewer men looking for a bed for the night; the Mission building in Aberdeen closed in recent years and there are plans to sell the premises in Mallaig.

Yet the organisation, which is funded entirely by donations and legacies, is busier than ever. As the industry has withered, poverty and despair have been on the increase, giving the Mission much to do. In addition, fishing remains the UK’s most dangerous civilian profession, with fishermen 115 times more likely to suffer a fatal accident than the rest of the UK workforce. In Campbell’s four years working in Fraserburgh, he has dealt with 15 “tragedies” as he puts it, meaning both individual deaths and the loss of entire boats. He has conducted more funerals than he cares to remember. “But after the funeral, when everybody’s gone, we’re still there, and we’ll make sure that a cheque goes through that door every month for the wife and the children until they reach the end of their academic life.”

The Mission canteen is the social hub of the harbour. It is a place for fishermen to meet and gossip, exchanging old stories and new information about the most fruitful fishing grounds. Every morning, over tea and rowies, a group of worthies, known as the Parliament, put the world to rights. Most are retired, former shipmates with weather-beaten faces, fading blue tattoos and salt water in their veins. The former skipper of the Accord, Bill McKay, 80, has Ina – his wife’s name – inked on his right hand, in the fleshy part between forefinger and thumb. He used to cow troublesome members of his crew on the Accord by telling them it said IRA.

These men grew up at a time when to be born male in Fraserburgh meant, generally, that you were destined for a life at sea. “I kent from when I was a very young,” says Ted Nibloe, 67. “I was that little that this lad here” – he points across the table to his elder brother, James – “said to me, ‘When the herring tips its tail it’ll haul you over the side.’ But I was always drawn to the sea. The Bible says, ‘They that go to sea in ships do see the wonder of the Lord.’ And that’s quite right.”

The Parliament is joined, at this point, by one of its most esteemed members, Ernie Watt, his arrival greeted by mock jeers. “Here comes Dr Death,” someone says. “He reads the Press and Journal in the morning and then comes down and tells us fa’s deid.”

Ernie is 75, all quiff and sinew, Gene Vincent meets Bluto. He was well-kent for his capacity, in the days before motorised pulleys, for hauling in the nets. One night, off the coast of Shetland, he dived overboard and swam 100 yards through the freezing water having taken a fancy to find out how much herring was in the net. He’s been retired for a decade yet still feels the call of the sea. He feels fit enough to fish even now, and looking at him, I don’t doubt he’s capable. I’ve seen lighthouses look more frail.

Over on the other side of the canteen is a group of young fishermen from Peterhead. Chaz Bruce, 27, is the skipper of the Challenger. He has a tattoo of a sailing ship and “No Surrender” on his left forearm. The same words are painted on the back of his boat. Chaz is, he readily admits, a Rangers fan, but the defiant phrase also works, he suggests, as a motto for a fishing industry which struggles but endures.

Few local men, he says, now leave school and go into the fishing. The oil industry is seen as a safer and more lucrative bet. His dad, grandad and great-grandad were all fishermen, but Chaz would not encourage his own children – if one day he has them – to go to sea. “Fishing is awful up and down,” he says. “Sometimes it’s the best job in the world; the next day it’s horrible and you’re not catching anything. It’s very emotional. Just now seems to be harder than ever.”

He feels frustrated by bureaucratic restrictions on where in the North Sea he is allowed to work. “Personally, I don’t think we’re doing any damage to the fish stocks. There’s more cod than we’ve ever seen but we’re not being allowed to catch it. It’s a shame when there’s young guys on our boat wanting to go out there and earn a living rather than staying at home on benefits.”

Out on the harbour, repairing nets in the sun, are some of the foreign workers who are increasingly being used to crew boats in Fraserburgh and elsewhere in the north-east. The majority are from the Philippines. It is thought that there are 120 Filipino fishermen living between Fraserburgh and Macduff, drawn across the world to this cold corner of Scotland by the promise of wages higher than they could ever earn at home. Predominantly Catholic, they are heavy users of the Fishermen’s Mission, especially the Saturday night karaoke. Jones Mangdang, 39, tells me that his party piece is Unchained Melody. “Lonely rivers flow,” he sings in broken English, “to the sea, to the sea.”

Upstairs in the Mission is the memorial room. It’s a small hushed space dedicated to the memory of lost fishermen who came from the towns and villages between St Combs and Banff. Five large boards covered in brass plaques record the names of the dead and the boats on which they worked, going back to 1950. The average age is 36. The youngest, Colin Kay, was 15 when his trawler, the Blue Crusader, went down in a storm off North Ronaldsay in January 1965. His mother, Georgina, now in her nineties, is a regular visitor here. Often, with these drownings, no body was recovered, so the memorial room is a place to come and mourn in the absence of a grave.

Standing in the room, leaning on a stick, and looking intently at the plaques is Billy Stephen. He tells his story quietly, almost whispering. On the 1 May last year, Billy, who is 61, was in Norwegian waters as part of the crew of the Renown. It was early on a Sunday evening. The net was being put over the side when one of his feet became caught and he was dragged overboard. The crew threw him a rope but the weight of the net round his ankle kept pulling him below the surface.

“I kept going down underneath the water. Before I passed out, I thought, ‘God, please help me.’ The last thing I remember is bubbles coming out my mouth and I felt myself filling up with water. Then everything went black.”

He regained consciousness on board the Renown. His crewmates had somehow got him out of the freezing water and, though he was blue and limp and broken, performed mouth-to-mouth long after many people would have given up. Later, he learned that his wife, Mary, on hearing he had gone overboard, prayed at the Fishermen’s Mission for his safety.

Billy looks around the memorial room, at the names of the lost, with sad eyes. He knew many of these men. “And I’ve been to sea with a good lot of them,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the crew, and the answered prayer, I would have been just another plaque on that wall.” «