We managed and that was it. I think we had always been a pretty careful family. Of course Dad always had the garden going; he never wasted any bits of garden. He used to grow everything. His favourite was growing onions. He still had his little boat and eventually you could use it up the river, but first of all you couldn’t. The RASC had one of these boats anchored – just for living in – he used to go up round there and got in with them, and take them up onions and if he had any other veg. He got well in with them and eventually I think they let him go just out off the pier fishing. Phil Kelsey b 1920
Tag Archives: fishing
Joan Cokes: Harbour, rowing 1920s, 1930s
Yacht and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden
My father was employed as a gardener in the Pier Hotel (now the George Hotel). He bought a boat in Lymington and rowed it back to Yarmouth on a slack tide.
I can remember rowing my father’s boat for him. He would ask me to take it alongside the harbour at high tide, from the hard by the boatyard – otherwise it would have been high and dry at low tide. I also used to row my father and a customer to go fishing off Black Rock – but he wouldn’t tell me or show me the fishing ‘marks’. Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918
Harbour: Jim Cooper 1920s -1960s
Jim Cooper coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll
I used to spend a lot of time with my grandad, Jim Cooper, and he used to have these old rowing boats he used to row about fishing and things. He’d always done that. You’ve got to remember he was born in 1883. This was in the sixties and he was nearly ninety when he died. He used to go out, never very far, only to Bouldnor or down to Fort Vic. and somewhere in between. He went up the river a bit. Sid Kelleway was always up the river and they used to have their little territories. Grandad had two boats, one about eighteen foot long he used to stand up and row, and a small one he would stand up and row as well, pushing forward rather than pulling back on the oars, one foot slightly forward of the other one. If you stand with your feet parallel you go forward then you’ve had it, so he always had one foot slightly ahead of the other. You don’t see anyone do it now, but you could do, if you had the right boat and the right oars. Alec Cokes b 1945