What do you think?
Rate this book
Rough Seas
A trawlerman’s life was hard, often up against bad weather, rough seas, and black frosts. Although on calm days it could also be a pleasure. In this eventful memoir, deep-sea trawlerman James Greene relates his life at sea, from his childhood when his father would take him out in some of the worst gales and hurricanes imaginable and his early career as a deckhand learner at Fleetwood to obtaining his skipper’s ticket in Grimsby and the many experiences—both disastrous and otherwise—to occur throughout his time at sea are included in this book. During his career, he was involved in ship collisions and fires, arrested for poaching, fired upon by Icelandic gunboats, in countless storms, and even swept overboard in icy conditions off the Russian coast. The British trawling industry is now a by-gone age and people are beginning to forget the adventures and hardships that characterised this profession. This book seeks to keep the memories of a once-great industry alive.
192 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2011
3 people are currently reading
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 17, 2012
This is my review of Rough Seas that appeared in fishing industry trade magazine Fishing News
Fishing the hard way: Rough Seas tells it like it was
I’ve read plenty of seafaring tales, probably more than my fair share over the years. There are a good few books of fishermen’s memoirs to be found, some good, some terrible, and every shade between. I’d heard about Jim Greene’s book Rough Seas some time ago from Ernie Suddaby, who had been skipper of the Hull trawler Gaul and on a trip ashore when that ship vanished in 1974 in mysterious circumstances – and who wrote his own fascinating book of memoirs, Fishing Explorer, some years ago.
Let’s make it plain that this isn’t what you might call an entirely impartial review. I sailed with Jim Greene a long time ago in the Liliane J, an old-fashioned beam trawler with no deck machinery and a hotchpotch crew made up of bolshy youngsters and old sweats who had learned their trade the hard way on distant water sidewinders. Jim was in the wheelhouse as mate or skipper and while he didn’t say a lot, the man’s skill and experience were unmistakeable.
But his book is a revelation. I had no idea that his experience went back to sailing with his father, a respected skipper himself, at the tender age of eight on Fleetwood trawlers fishing the hake grounds off the west coast. It was obvious from an early age that Jim was going to be a seaman and while still in his teens was already an experienced fisherman who had seen plenty of bad weather, big bags of fish, a good few crises on the deck and knew as well as anyone how to run a sidewinder’s deck.
Shifting to Grimsby and following his father for the opportunities to work on bigger ships sailing to fish around Iceland and the Faroes, Jim progressed through several companies that were household names in their time and a variety of trawlers from the most modern side trawlers of the day to a few rustbuckets that should probably have never gone further than the nearest breaker’s yard.
Rough Seas covers Jim Greene’s years on side trawlers, from that first trip as a boy on the coal-fired Comitatus in 1946 up to the final landing in 1985 by BUT’s Ross Jackal, the last side trawler to fish from Grimsby. As Jim points out, when he came to the port in 1954, there had been 311 fishing vessels there – although this was even then an ageing fleet, much of which had been built in the early years of the 20th century. The indicators of what was to come were already there in the 1960s as the fleet was already getting smaller and crews were starting to become scarce, but the 200-mile limits imposed by Norway, Iceland the Faroes in the 1970s sounded the final death knell for the British distant water fleet.
I spoke to Jim while the book was being prepared for publication to catch up on where he had been since the last time I saw him in the Liliane J’s wheelhouse at the quayside in Stellendam. He had stayed with the Liliane J’s owners and skippered one of their larger beamers, the North Sea (now the Dutch-owned beamer/twin rigger Miranda P-224), before moving on to oil industry standby vessels. Heart problems finally brought his seagoing career to an end.
The Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby and the preserved side trawler Ross Tiger provided an activity during his recovery and he spent a good deal of time as a guide taking people around the ship.
“I lost count of the people who said I ought to write a book about everything I’d seen at sea,” he said in the same matter-of-fact tone that the book is written in. “So I did.”
In fact, Rough Seas is well written, remarkably well written, with dramatic events that would have most writers reaching for superlatives related in a refreshingly straightforward manner that actually makes them more dramatic. There are even some personal moments that are also related with direct honesty.
But Rough Seas is more than just a candid and fascinating memoir – it’s refreshingly free of rose-tinted nostalgia. It’s a snapshot of a time when life as well as the seas were rough. There was widespread corruption as fish was squirrelled away and never reached the auction, for which the crews received no money. Anyone, even a successful skipper with a record of solid landings, could be sacked on a whim for an imagined offence and left to tread the quay for a few months before there would be another chance. Rough Seas a thoroughly straightforward and unpretentious account of how hairy-arsed fishing really was before hot showers and 24-hour internet in your cabin, when watches below were still a luxury and fishing ran on long hours, pots of tea and the occasional dram of rum.
Fishing the hard way: Rough Seas tells it like it was
I’ve read plenty of seafaring tales, probably more than my fair share over the years. There are a good few books of fishermen’s memoirs to be found, some good, some terrible, and every shade between. I’d heard about Jim Greene’s book Rough Seas some time ago from Ernie Suddaby, who had been skipper of the Hull trawler Gaul and on a trip ashore when that ship vanished in 1974 in mysterious circumstances – and who wrote his own fascinating book of memoirs, Fishing Explorer, some years ago.
Let’s make it plain that this isn’t what you might call an entirely impartial review. I sailed with Jim Greene a long time ago in the Liliane J, an old-fashioned beam trawler with no deck machinery and a hotchpotch crew made up of bolshy youngsters and old sweats who had learned their trade the hard way on distant water sidewinders. Jim was in the wheelhouse as mate or skipper and while he didn’t say a lot, the man’s skill and experience were unmistakeable.
But his book is a revelation. I had no idea that his experience went back to sailing with his father, a respected skipper himself, at the tender age of eight on Fleetwood trawlers fishing the hake grounds off the west coast. It was obvious from an early age that Jim was going to be a seaman and while still in his teens was already an experienced fisherman who had seen plenty of bad weather, big bags of fish, a good few crises on the deck and knew as well as anyone how to run a sidewinder’s deck.
Shifting to Grimsby and following his father for the opportunities to work on bigger ships sailing to fish around Iceland and the Faroes, Jim progressed through several companies that were household names in their time and a variety of trawlers from the most modern side trawlers of the day to a few rustbuckets that should probably have never gone further than the nearest breaker’s yard.
Rough Seas covers Jim Greene’s years on side trawlers, from that first trip as a boy on the coal-fired Comitatus in 1946 up to the final landing in 1985 by BUT’s Ross Jackal, the last side trawler to fish from Grimsby. As Jim points out, when he came to the port in 1954, there had been 311 fishing vessels there – although this was even then an ageing fleet, much of which had been built in the early years of the 20th century. The indicators of what was to come were already there in the 1960s as the fleet was already getting smaller and crews were starting to become scarce, but the 200-mile limits imposed by Norway, Iceland the Faroes in the 1970s sounded the final death knell for the British distant water fleet.
I spoke to Jim while the book was being prepared for publication to catch up on where he had been since the last time I saw him in the Liliane J’s wheelhouse at the quayside in Stellendam. He had stayed with the Liliane J’s owners and skippered one of their larger beamers, the North Sea (now the Dutch-owned beamer/twin rigger Miranda P-224), before moving on to oil industry standby vessels. Heart problems finally brought his seagoing career to an end.
The Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby and the preserved side trawler Ross Tiger provided an activity during his recovery and he spent a good deal of time as a guide taking people around the ship.
“I lost count of the people who said I ought to write a book about everything I’d seen at sea,” he said in the same matter-of-fact tone that the book is written in. “So I did.”
In fact, Rough Seas is well written, remarkably well written, with dramatic events that would have most writers reaching for superlatives related in a refreshingly straightforward manner that actually makes them more dramatic. There are even some personal moments that are also related with direct honesty.
But Rough Seas is more than just a candid and fascinating memoir – it’s refreshingly free of rose-tinted nostalgia. It’s a snapshot of a time when life as well as the seas were rough. There was widespread corruption as fish was squirrelled away and never reached the auction, for which the crews received no money. Anyone, even a successful skipper with a record of solid landings, could be sacked on a whim for an imagined offence and left to tread the quay for a few months before there would be another chance. Rough Seas a thoroughly straightforward and unpretentious account of how hairy-arsed fishing really was before hot showers and 24-hour internet in your cabin, when watches below were still a luxury and fishing ran on long hours, pots of tea and the occasional dram of rum.
November 4, 2013
I really enjoyed this book as I knew a few of the people mentioned. In all a gripping tale of a life spent in Englands now defunct fishing fleet. A book that should be read by all with any interest with the sea. Well done Skipper Greene!
February 1, 2016
Loved this book
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews