Saturday — Paull and the Dock
By six on Saturday the padlock at Paull was catching what little light there was, a square of dull brass on the timber door with the Wilberforce crest worn near smooth. No card on a nail, no chalked time of next check, no keeper’s bike leaning. A man walking his dog said he’d seen the same at Skeffling “about breakfast time.”
At St Andrew’s Dock railings half an hour later, three men stood with a VHF set on the harbour channel for the Spurn lightship’s on‑the‑hour call. Static, a burst of something from further north, then nothing. One of them, who said he still shipped out to the sands in a small trawler, rolled a cigarette and said there was no point calling Hull, “no bugger answers before eight on a weekend.”
Paull, six a.m.: a brass padlock on the hut door and no keeper’s bike.
The Trust’s secretary, Arthur Lazenby, had told us by Friday tea‑time there was no “closure,” only a “temporary consolidation.” It is a neat pair of words. They do not square with a padlock where a rain‑gauge ought to tick and a morning call that does not come.
Down by the RNLI slip at Spurn, when anybody would talk, the talk was of a rota thin as gruel and a phone line that rang out. Trinity House’s people, polite as ever, said lightship manning was as arranged and that observations were a local matter. A volunteer nodded at the weather and said it would blow later, so whatever calls were going to be made, should be made.
Monday — Withernsea queue
Withernsea Post Office opened at nine on the dot. The queue was already to the tobacconist’s door. People were asking for blue cards by colour and by the old name locals use here, “Wilberforce warnings,” pointing to the notice board behind counter three where last winter’s were pinned after a high tide. The counter bell went and went. Nobody had any cards to issue or stamp or put in a sleeve. Nobody was sure if there ever would be again.
They’re advisory notices, as I say, they’re not ‘panic cards’. And we stamped in black, as I say—black—never blue. We’ve had that wrong all morning. As I say, they stopped coming Saturday. I’ve the brunt of it and no instruction at all.
Kemp, trying to keep the line moving, corrected names and times as if precision might cool tempers. A trawlerman from Easington slapped the counter when told there was nothing to be had and said he’d lost two tide windows since Friday. A woman collecting a pension muttered that the cards had come after the siren in ’53 and should do so now. Kemp leaned into the grille and repeated it: advisories, black ink, not blue.
Withernsea, nine o’clock: the blue warning cards had stopped since Saturday and the counter had no instruction.
Later, on Queen Street, a BBC frequency chart in a radio shop window had the Shipping Forecast times ringed in biro. Nobody says the national service is nothing. On this river, though, there has always been an extra word at the right time for the bend by Paull and the tide under Blacktoft. What happens when the extra word is gone? On Monday morning, it was a 15p tea and three guesses.
Fields and pits
Skeffling sluice at noon: a tractor idling, a man in a flat cap swearing at a locked hut and a pinboard that used to carry river heights. He blamed County Hall for the keys and the Trust for not paying the last lad who kept notes. Humberside’s offices, when rung, offered a line about insurance and volunteers and the need to be in line with established practice. On the pinboard the last river height was Thursday; a brown line of reed trash sat a foot up the sluice wall.
At Skidby, Thomas Oxley had the mill turning and the sacks stacked. He said the wind had looked kind, then fell off, then put a wet on the grain between lunch and closing Friday. He keeps pigeons. Oxley is the sort of man who rings the little desk in Hull when old folk peer at the sky and can’t read it any more. He wants the desk to exist.
You can smell a damp coming off the Humber when you’ve time, but some days you haven’t. It went wet after two on Friday; we lost a batch because I waited on a word that never came. The lads at the Trust, they’d give you a nudge in ten words that saved you a day.
Over at Melton Chalk Pit, they were loading fine when a lorryman said the afternoon barge had missed its slot and would pay for it. The foreman had his own grievance ready and it was not the weather. The British Transport Docks Board weighbridge at King George, he said, had shut early and sent half a dozen wagons around to Henderson’s. By the time the last of them swung onto the quay, the slack water had passed and the tugman was on his overtime.
We’d have made it if they hadn’t shut that weighbridge when they did. They tell you to queue round, then you’re stuck on Hessle Road and the tide goes while you look at your mirrors. That’s an hour and a half you can count in pounds.
Markham did not much care what the Trust chose to call its retreat, only that his driver had missed, his men had stayed, and the overtime and demurrage would be theirs to carry. He is wrong about a few particulars and right in the main: when the little pieces fail, the big ones charge you for it.
If anybody thinks these are just sentimental fixtures, they should stand at Melton at eleven and tell a chalk man his windsock is romance while his barge sits on mud. The pilots will say there should be one clear voice. They do not have to pay demurrage on a missed whistle, nor explain it to a farmer with wet feet at Skeffling.
Tuesday — Pilots and County Hall
In the pilots’ room at Albert Dock on Tuesday, the kettle took forever and a noticeboard thumbtack had left a small round rust on the paint where something used to hang. A man with a captain’s cap hung on a chair‑back said the river did not need two voices at once and that clarity saved most lives that ever got saved.
We’ve the Shipping Forecast, and Trinity, and proper signals. Duplication muddles a skipper when it’s hard running. If the Trust’s kit is shutting, better it be shut clean than half on, half off.
Yorke is not a fool; he is right about muddle. He is also the sort of man who has a direct line and a launch. The rest of the district lives further down the list. In the corner a younger pilot said quietly that the Paull numbers saved him a grounding last March. He stared into his tea.
At County Hall a spokesman spoke of consolidation, review and coordination, but would not give a date for when the Paull keys would be back on the hook. At the Trust office, Lazenby repeated the formula he likes: no closure, only a temporary consolidation, services “continuing where essential.” When asked which, he named nothing you could write on the back of a bus ticket.
On the RNLI side of the spit, one of the crew said they’d take whatever comes over the radio and trust their coxswain for the rest. On the BTDB side of things, a clerk with a clip of forms said they preferred to refer men to the Met Office and to Trinity House notices to avoid liability. He used the word “liability”, closed his folder and declined to answer further questions.
We like our pilots in this city; on a fog morning last November the bell at Albert Dock carried when nothing else did. It is also true that in this part of England a lot of safety has come out of huts with leaky roofs and men who called you by your Christian name.
In March, as a younger pilot put it, the Paull numbers kept him off the mud by Blacktoft; on Friday there was no number on the board and no call to the desk.
Back at Paull, the weeds at the hut door were pressed in one neat footprint from somebody who had looked and gone away. The padlock had left a bright chafe on the staple you could see from the lane. At Melton, at eleven sharp, the windsock on the gantry hung straight down, and the barge crew watched the clock.