Tag Archives: Jim Cooper

Joan Cokes: Harbour, rowing 1920s, 1930s

Yacht and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden

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

Coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll

Jim Cooper coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll

It was a basic dinghy shape.  They called it a ‘lanch’ the old boys, so that differentiated it from a rowing boat.  It was bigger and it had a net board in the back.  In the transom, six inches below, there was a net board about two foot wide which we used to lay the net on when we were shooting nets out the back of the transom.  It was a very wide boat and the oars he used were about ten foot long, huge big ash oars, they weighed a ton, I couldn’t lift them.

In those days he made a little bit of a living on pout which these days is much maligned.  ‘Sweet little pout’; my mum still says now, ‘Why can’t you get me a sweet little pout?’
It’s like a mini cod, the same flesh, same family.  He used to catch those.

When we used to go out we used to row down to Fort Vic., go out in the tide. You remember those old iron wheelbarrow wheels with a spike in the middle? He used to have one of those, that was his anchor and a big bit of grass rope and he used to chuck that over and he used to have the oars ready. They’d get to where they wanted to go and drift back, and let a bit more rope out;  so they stopped and then they fished, and all they used was line, about three or four hooks on the bottom and garden worms.  They’d catch a few pout and then they’d run out, or they hadn’t caught one, then they’d trip the killock [small anchor]. Pull the anchor up a little bit, let it go, give it a shear with the oar now and again, and drift in the right direction to another bit of ground.  And they’d do that all the way to Bouldnor. There was about three or four places where they stopped.  And of course by the time you got to Bouldnor inshore, the ebb was down again, so you had the tide back the other way.  Alec Cokes b 1945

Harbour: Jim Cooper 1920s -1960s

Coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll

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

Brian Pomroy, Alec Cokes: Shops, Mills, 1940s

Mills yard where slaughterhouse and bakehouse were located

Mills yard where slaughterhouse and bakehouse were located Photo. M. Scott

Sid Kelleway had his slaughterhouse up the back of Mills.   I went once to watch him cut the pigs’ throats but it was a bit too much. He kept chickens in his garden there too. One day one of his chickens had flown over the wall. He was chasing it up the High Street and when he caught it, he said ‘That bloody thing wont go nowhere’, and got it and wrung its neck. 
Brian Pomroy b 1937

Sid was a real old rascal.  My granddad and him were old contemporaries. Grandad used to be out with his poaching a bit, so he used to take stuff in and of course Sid used to filter them into the main stream.  Sid used to say, there you are Jim.
When he was preparing pigeons for people he used to take one breast out.  Of course selling them to the visitors, I don’t suppose they knew anyway. They had one breast and wrapped it up that way round.  Alec Cokes b 1945