The North Sea strand reeks of fishing-boats and longships, storm-tossed kelp and bladderwrack. It is littered with the dead and the abandoned. And it defines you as a child, gives you a mythology from which to start a long journey into fantasy literature, horror and anything basically weird. It’s a repository of the strange, from the Danes driving their ships into Yorkshire rivermouths to the far-off threat of finfolk from the Orkneys and Shetlands.<\/p>\n My great-grandfather was master of a Hull packet, taking passenger and mail ships up the Humber or out to the Belgian and Dutch ports. I still have his captain’s chair. His wife smuggled tobacco in pouches sewn inside her crinoline dress. They say that the custom-officers would smile and help her off the ship before they checked elsewhere for contraband.<\/p>\n My father was a lighthouse keeper, mostly at Flamborough or Longstone Rock. The two lighthouses couldn’t be more different. The first is on the headland, easily accessible by road. He could do a shift and drive home – when you could see the road.<\/p>\n The second is in the North Sea on one of the Outer Farne Islands. At Longstone the waves could overwhelm the living quarters and drive the keepers into the upper tower, hoping their supplies would hold out. The regime there was a month on, a month off \u2013 thirty days stuck on Longstone Rock with one other man for company. As he loved the sea, it didn’t bother my father at all.<\/p>\n It was a good start to life for me. That coast is famous for its fishing cobles, clinker-built like longships from oak and larch, high-bowed to deal with the rough seas and flat-bottomed so they can be dragged up the landings in the coves. Small ships going a-viking with every high tide.<\/p>\n The coble-men traditionally wore ganseys (probably a corruption of the word guernsey), garments made with tightly-spun wool and closely knitted to turn water. Weatherproof, though not waterproof. It used to be said that each village had its own pattern so that if there were an accident at sea, the bodies could be sent back to the correct village. Thus there was a Staithes pattern, a Flamborough pattern and a Filey one. If the face was gone, no longer recognisable, then the gansey was witness as to who exactly had passed.<\/p>\n There was always that question when my father went away to the Farnes or the fishermen went out. Would they come back? The sound of the rescue helicopter was part of my childhood soundtrack, and because I was an impressionable pup, my favourite piece of verse was from Rudyard Kipling<\/strong>:<\/p>\n The Harp Song of the Dane Women<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n What is a woman that you forsake her,<\/em> She has no house to lay a guest in —<\/em> She has no strong white arms to fold you,<\/em> The old grey Widow-maker<\/strong>. The North Sea. Also called the Whale-road<\/strong>, where leviathans as slatey-dark as the sea surged up to blow and peer at the thin sunlight.<\/p>\n![\"seagulltales\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/seagulltales.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
\nAnd the hearth-fire and the home-acre,<\/em>
\nTo go with the old grey Widow-maker?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nBut one chill bed for all to rest in,<\/em>
\nThat the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nBut the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you —<\/em>
\nOut on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.<\/em><\/p>\n