In October 1996, Weymouth Bay was home to a fleet of ramshackle Russian factory ships, and Weymouth harbour was crowded with fishing boats, a large proportion of which came from the Scottish east coast. The fishing boats offloaded their catch onto the factory ships. The Scottish trawlermen introduced Irn Bru to various Weymouth bars, not least of which being The Moorings, where we ferry people used to hang out too. The Russians would occasionally pootle over to the quay in their rackety old lifeboats, belching black smoke, and rummage their way through the town's charity shops. Some people would complain about the noise, the smell, the occasional slick of dead mackerel being washed up on the beach, and their complaints would make their way into the Dorset Echo. It was all quite lively and fun.
I was babysitting MV Havelet, also parked up on Weymouth quay, and drew the scene above on Thursday 17th October. Evidently the man with the money had turned up, and all the Russian lifeboats spent the day shuttling to and fro with cargoes of cabbages, potatoes and lumps of frozen meat.
I think that was the last year the Klondikers came to Weymouth. So I'm glad I saw them.
Havelet was sold to the Montenegro Shipping Company and sailed off to Bar. Here's a couple of maps of the voyage there, which was interesting. And hot and thirsty.
Weymouth quay
Klondiker at Tolverne, Cornwall. This ship featured in Granta 61, a piece called Waiting For St Petersburg
Good story, typically intriguing pictures :-)
ReplyDeleteIt reminded me of the friendly Russian invasion in 'Local Hero'. Then yesterday I noticed adverts on the tube, in Russian, for 'Snob' magazine. I picked up a copy in WH Smith at Marylebone but alas, it was encased in a protective card sleeve and not browsable for free. The Russians are here!
Another little piece of history. I discovered that Klondikers sounded quite a nasty place to be:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.shetland.gov.uk/environmentalhealth/Klondikers.asp
Rob sat and ate his sandwiches one lunchtime with a Russian sailor, very lonely and homesick and pleased to be able to talk to someone - in English.
Ports are rich places. It's a pity that they get cleaned up for tourism - as mentioned in the comments of your last post.
The lady who used to teach me art managed to get a week drawing and painting in a ship's graveyard somewhere in Brittany before it was cleared away. I remember the colours of rust and that blue/green rope that they use.
A three year old drowned last week at les Minimes (the posh port). His father let him ride his bike on the walkways and he fell in. Not easy to find the body of a little boy amongst all the boats and ropes and stuff.
From your picture, that piece of quay is very close to where I moored for a week this summer, but in a somewhat smaller vessel. The leisure moorings are encroaching more and more on Custom House Quay.
ReplyDeleteAs a child I remember being moored on the South side of the harbour, in the 'Cove' - in those days British Rail - remember them? - still ran a train service down the quay to the ferries, which I imagine were Sealink and owned by BR.
Thank you, Suzzy.
ReplyDeleteOne of the good things about being a sailor, Anji, is the way you can get to see ports where things happen; they can be great places to wander round, though I nearly got into some bad trouble in Djibouti for doing that... I looked up the story of that drowned boy on Sud Ouest. How awful. It reminded me of a sailor I worked with in St Malo; at the end of the season I went to work for P&O, and he shipped to Senegal on a thonier. He just disappeared one day. He was the sort of chap who could make enemies; we'll never know what happened, though.
They revived that rail service, Jess, when BCIF started running out of Weymouth (87? or thereabouts). So I was able to step off the ship at the end of my two weeks, and straight onto the train. There's a photo on the wall in The Moorings of Sealink ferries on the quay; about five of them in a row. Apparently the Channel Islands were the Agia Napa or Benidorm of the sixties...
How things have changed then - now the fast cat goes in and out of Weymouth every other day in the season, and seems to go to Poole on the other day - I can't work out why, but realised in the grand scheme of things I didn't need to know. It fair wakes up the harbour though when it manoeuvres in the small hours - when your head is roughly at waterline, the sound echoes are misleading - the first time I honestly thought the ferry had come up to the bridge to turnaround.
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