A Sea Upcast Chapter 1

 

 

When we East Anglians be set to do a thing, we be set firm. We come at what we want by slow thinking, but when we know what we want we hold fast by it—being born stubborn, and also being born staunch. It is the same with our hating and with our loving: we fire slowly, but when at last the fire is kindled¹ it burns so strongly in the very hearts of us—with a white glow, hotter than any flame—that there is no putting it out again short of putting out our lives.

 

Men and women alike, we are born that way; and we fishermen of the Suffolk and Norfolk coast likewise are bred that way: seeing that from the time we go afloat as youngsters until the time that we are drowned, or are grown so old and rusty² that there is no more strength[172] for sea-fighting left in us, our lives for the most part are spent in fighting the North Sea. That is a fight that needs stubbornness to carry it through to a finish. Also, it needs knowledge of the ocean's tricks and turns—because the North Sea can do what we East Anglians can't do: it can smile at you and lie. A man must have a deal of training before he can tell by the feel of it in his own insides that close over beyond a still sea and a sun-bright sky a storm is cooking up that will kill him if it can. And even when he feels the coming of it—if he be well to seaward, or if he be tempted³ by the fish being plenty and by the bareness of his own pockets to hold on in the face of it—he must have more in his head than any coast pilot has if he is to win home to Yarmouth Harbour or to Lowestoft Roads.

 

For God in his cruelty has set more traps to kill seafarers off this easterly outjut of England, I do believe, than He has set anywhere else in all the world: there being from Covehithe Ness northward⁴ to the Winterton Overfalls nothing but a maze⁵ of deadly shoals—all cut up by channels in which there is no sea-room—that fairly makes you queazy to think about when you are coming shoreward in a[173] northeast gale⁶. And as if that were not enough to make sure of man-food for the fishes, the currents that swirl⁷ and play among these shoals are up to some fresh wickedness with every hour of the tide-run and with every half shift of wind. Whether you make in for Yarmouth by Hemesby Hole to the north, or by the Hewett Channel to the south, or split the difference by running through Caister Road, it is all one: twisting about the Overfalls and the Middle Cross Sand and the South Scroby, there the currents are. What they will be doing with you, or how they will be doing it, you can't even make a good guess at; all that you can know for certain being that they will be doing their worst by you at the half tide.

 

At least, though, the Lowestoft men and the Yarmouth men have a good harbour when once they fetch it; and by that much are better off than we Southwold men, who have no harbour at all. With anything of a sea running there is no making a landing under Southwold Cliff—though it is safe enough when once your boat is beached and hauled up there; and so, if the storm gets ahead of us, there is nothing left but to run for Lowestoft: and a nice time we often have of it, with an on-shore gale blowing, work[174]ing up into the Covehithe Channel under the tail of the Barnard Bank! As for beating up to seaward of the Barnard and running in through Pakefield Gat, anybody can try for it who has a mind to—and who has a boat that can eat the very heart out of the wind. Sometimes you do fetch it. But what happens to you most times is best known to the Newcome Shoal. When you have cleared the Barnard—if so be you do clear it—the Newcome lies close under your lee for all the rest of the run. What it has done for us fishermen you can see when the spring tides bare it and show black scraps⁸ of old boats wrecked¹⁰ there, and sometimes a gleam of sand-whitened bones.

 

For a good many years we had another chance, though a poor one, and that was to make a longish leg off shore and then run in before the wind and cross the Barnard into Covehithe Channel through what we called the Wreck⁹ Gat—a cut in the bank that the currents made striking against a wrecked ship buried there. The Wreck Gat is gone now—closed by the same storm that nearly closed my life for me—and you will not find it marked nowadays on the charts. Its going was a good riddance. At the best it was a desperate[175] bad place to get through; and at its worst it was about the same as a sea pitfall¹¹: and that nobody knows better than I do, seeing that I was the last man to get through it alive. But when you happened to be to windward of it, if it served at all, it served better than running down a half mile farther and trying to round the tail of the bank.

 

Very many craft beside our own fisher-boats find their death-harbour on our East Anglian sands. Our coast, as it has a right to be, is the dread¹² of every sailor man who sails the narrow seas. Great ships, storm-swept on our sands, are sucked down into the depths of them, or are hammered to pieces on the top of them, as light-heartedly as though they were no more than cock-boats. And the supply of ships to be wrecked there is unending—since the half of the trade of the world, they say, sails past our shores. From every land they come: and many and many a one of them comes but never goes. Down on them bangs the northeast wind with a roar and a rattle—and presently our sands have hold of them with a grip that is to keep them fast there till the last day! Sometimes the dead men who were living sailors aboard those ships come ashore¹³ to us, though they are[176] more like to find graves in the sands that murdered them or to be swept out to sea; sometimes, by a twist of chance that you may call a miracle, the sea has a fancy for casting one or two of them ashore alive. Dazed and half mad creatures those live ones are, usually: their wits all jangled and shaken by the great horror that has been upon them while they tossed among the waves.

 

And so, as you may see, we men of the Suffolk and Norfolk coast need the stiff backbone¹⁴ that we have as our birthright for the sea-fighting that is our life-work; and it is not to be wondered at that our life of sea-fighting makes us still more set and stubborn in our ways.

1 kindled   

（使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光

参考例句：

• We watched as the fire slowly kindled. 我们看着火慢慢地燃烧起来。
• The teacher's praise kindled a spark of hope inside her. 老师的赞扬激起了她内心的希望。

2 rusty   

adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的

参考例句：

• The lock on the door is rusty and won't open.门上的锁锈住了。
• I haven't practiced my French for months and it's getting rusty.几个月不用，我的法语又荒疏了。

3 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

4 northward   

adv.向北；n.北方的地区

参考例句：

• He pointed his boat northward.他将船驶向北方。
• I would have a chance to head northward quickly.我就很快有机会去北方了。

5 maze   

n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑

参考例句：

• He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
• She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时，她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。

6 gale   

n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等）

参考例句：

• We got our roof blown off in the gale last night.昨夜的大风把我们的房顶给掀掉了。
• According to the weather forecast,there will be a gale tomorrow.据气象台预报，明天有大风。

7 swirl   

v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形

参考例句：

• The car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust.汽车在一股粉红色尘土的漩涡中颠簸着快速前进。
• You could lie up there,watching the flakes swirl past.你可以躺在那儿，看着雪花飘飘。

8 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

9 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

10 wrecked   

adj.失事的，遇难的

参考例句：

• the hulk of a wrecked ship 遇难轮船的残骸
• the salvage of the wrecked tanker 对失事油轮的打捞

11 pitfall   

n.隐患，易犯的错误；陷阱，圈套

参考例句：

• The wolf was caught in a pitfall.那只狼是利用陷阱捉到的。
• The biggest potential pitfall may not be technical but budgetary.最大的潜在陷阱可能不是技术问题，而是预算。

12 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

13 ashore   

adv.在(向)岸上，上岸

参考例句：

• The children got ashore before the tide came in.涨潮前，孩子们就上岸了。
• He laid hold of the rope and pulled the boat ashore.他抓住绳子拉船靠岸。

14 backbone   

n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气

参考例句：

• The Chinese people have backbone.中国人民有骨气。
• The backbone is an articulate structure.脊椎骨是一种关节相连的结构。