Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon Page A

that takes tension off the main winch, so you can disconnect the single sweep. Simple! Alan and Jerry and Sean—there they go, down the port stairway—they’ll be doing that any minute now. The net and the rest of the bridle system—the double-sweeps section—they’ll attach that by the short messenger chains to the net drum. Then the rest of the sweeps—now you call them bridles-are wound on to the net drum. First the two wing-ends appear—they go on to the drum—then the headline with the floats and the footrope with the rock-hoppers. And most of that lot stays on the deck…”
    Fortified by a brainful of bewilderment, I released my grip on the bolts of the winch and took a step towards the hopper. Luke grabbed me. “Careful!” he said, guiding me gently but firmly by the arm, as if I was blind. “We had a real lump just now. Awesome! Forty feet, fifty, maybe even sixty. I don’t know. Everyone just stopped and stared up at it. You know, like I was telling you, a real monkey-bollock frightener of a lump! But she rode it OK—up and up. She’s a great boat! We all took a tumble. Even Bryan fell. We all did. I fetched up against the gunwhale!”
    “You did? Hey Luke. That explains it… something
really odd
happened to me down there. Down in the cabin …”
    “Look! Redmond! The net!”
    And there it was, streaming astern, snaking in the swell, one long green translucent line of mesh, seemingly far too smalland narrow and fragile for all this effort, for the work of this whole ship.
    “That’s the bellies, nearest us, then the extension—the tunnel—and there’s the cod-end!” (A big green mesh bag, bloated with fish, bobbing on the swell, white and silver, way astern.)
    We lurched against the frame of the hopper and I held on, with both hands.
    Jason, in blue overalls and yellow sea-boots, a grapnel in his right hand, bounded past us.
    The kittiwakes and the gannets rose into the wind, banking round towards the cod-end. The kittiwakes alighted alongside the line of net (and they seemed so light, so delicate, so out of place in all this unremitting violence); they rode the small waves on the big swell with ease; they flicked up their wings as they pecked at the mesh. The gannets, 60 or 70 feet above the surface-hills of the sea, would flip over to one side, half close their 6-foot expanse of wing and, elbows out, streak down towards the cod-end in one long low oblique-angled dive, folding their wings tight against their bodies, a second before impact, to become a white underwater trace of bird and bubbles.
    Bryan, back at his levers at the base of the crane, swung the big semicircular power block astern, amidships, and down. “He’s got to manoeuvre that under the net,” said Luke, adjusting his blue woolly hat under his oilskin hood, pulling it further down over his forehead and ears. “Sometimes there’s a rope they call a joker attached to the net—the boys use it to bunch the net and hoist it on to the block—it’s easier that way. The winch hauls the bellies and extension and the boys flake them inboard—until the cod-end comes alongside. And as you can see
… Hang on, Redmond, try and roll with the boat… stand with your legs across the roll, for Chrissake, that’s better, at 90 degrees to the roll…
we’re beam-on to all this weather, and that’s because the prop’s stopped. Too bad—you can’t risk fouling the net. If that happens you’re powerless, you’re in real trouble, big time …”
    The power-block swung back round towards us, towards the hopper. “That’s right. He must keep the block high. To drop thefish in the extension down to the cod-end. Ach well, Redmond, I’m sure you’ve got it now. Got it sorted. My minilog—it’s still on the headline. Hang on. I’ll be back.” And Luke, as the
Norlantean
wallowed beam-on to the swell, stepped calmly away over the net-troughs, from rim to rim.

A LLAN, SEAN AND JERRY , appearing from the port stairwell, joined