The price of fish & chips

[Nick Clark]

It seems that historians often tend to miss an important aspect of the ‘Home Front’ and that is many fishermen had to carry on with their hard work with the added danger of enemy attack.

Receiving £10.0s.0d per month ‘war risk money’, the crews of the trawlers and drifters knew only too well the importance of their duty to bring home the catch. Merchants and housewives eagerly awaited every box of fish, as it became a real possibilty that our Island could be starved into submission.

The risks were high too - 116 fishing boats were lost and 58 were damaged from attacks by submarines, E-boats, aircraft and the dreaded mine.

Nick Clark
http://www.rnpatrolservice.org.uk
(http://www.harry-tates.org.uk)

[Rob Hoole]

This article from 70 years ago was reprinted in yesterday's Daily Telegraph:

[Nick Clark]

December 1939 and no 'phoney war' for the British trawlers at sea...

[Adam Dennehy]

My Grandad's Uncle William.. William Bunce was a skipper on the trawler "William Brady" when he was attacked by enemy planes early in WWII. It is reported in the local paper (Hull) that he took pot shots at the plane with his rifle.

Tuesday, March 5, 1940

Skipper Walter Bunce, 44 years old Great War veteran, of Monmouth-street, Hull, father of four minesweeping sons, minesweeper in the last war, is back home after his trawler, the William Brady, of Hull was attacked by... Nazi planes.
Bunce is one more skipper to have a "go" at a bomber with a rifle. But it was dark, in the early morning of saturday, and though his efforts, along with that of his big gun crew, drove off the raiders, they could not see whether there was a direct hit.

" ... "One of the German planes put on it's white light," Mrs Bunce told the Mail. My Husband on the bridge of the William Brady, thinking it was one of our planes, answered. Immediately it started to attack, dropping seven bombs. One big explosion took an end of the ship out of the water. Others fell dangerously close. So resolute was the fire from the William Brady that the bomber sheered off, while it's companian went.... "