The Sunday Ishmael: 25/08/2024

 

I guess everyone knows that the eponymous creator of our blog named himself after the opening line of Moby Dick. I started  Terry Eagleton's How to Read Literature the other day, and was much struck by Eagleton's musings on the opening line of Moby Dick. Why should the narrator invite the reader to "Call me Ishmael"? 

"Because of the name's symbolic connotations? The biblical Ishmael, the (bastard) son of Abraham, was an exile, outlaw and wanderer." .....the narrator has adopted a pseudonym to "signify his status as a wandering outcast"

I guess that sounds about right for our mr.ishmael - who was also enthralled by the sea and its dangers - he ran away to sea when he was 15, his mother having died the previous year, and served as a cook's boy on a merchant ship before they had heard of health and safety or employment rights. On the outward leg to Canada, he suffered extensive scalding when the ship lurched and he was drenched in boiling water. He was laid up in his bunk for three days and his pay was docked for those days. Here's an extract from his post on we who go down to the sea in ships: 

In 1966, a troubled kid, I ran away to sea in this old tub, the SS Ramore Head, from Belfast; it was old then, well, twenty years old, nineteen-forties construction, and at the cheap end of that unsophisticated style of construction;  it was no pinnacle of the shipwrights' art.

        

 But she did batter her way through the North Atlantic's midwinter gales and I remember standing on her plunging and soaring stern a thousand miles from anywhere, thinking, terrified and awestruck as I was -  Fuck me, this is good. Or words to that effect. I was unknowingly hymning my people's love affair with the mighty ocean.  Now that I am a man I have never put away this childish thing.  I live on  a quiet shore but I love it when it gets noisy and I take ship sometimes a dozen times a year

Y'know, once upon a time, the land was too much afforested, it was untravellable;  we made our way around our coastal  settlements - pilgrimages, trade, curiosity - by boat;  the Severn, the Irish Sea, the Channel and the North Sea being our motorways.  We really are ancient mariners.

Coming back, in '66 from the States, up the southwest of Ireland, I saw tiny, flimsy little fishing boats, tossed like corks in massive, skyscraper seas, their crews dancing around the decks, hauling and casting nets.  I have never, since,  begrudged the price of fish and chips.

Here's the entry in the National Archives:

London: SS Ramore Head (Ulster Steamship Company Ltd) travelling from Montreal to London.
Embarking at Montreal.
Official number: 99114.
List of passengers disembarking at London.
Date: 1918 Sep 4

So it looks like mr ishmael's boat was older than he thought - unless the name was just handed on to a replacement ship.

The dire conditions endured by sailors of the mercantile fleet were alleviated some time after mr ishmael disembarked in Belfast, but such refinements as better terms and conditions for the crew led to the decline of the British Merchant Navy, once  one of the largest ship registries and source of crew in the world, with 33% of global tonnage registered in 1939.  The Merchant Navy had engaged in major conflicts:

U-boat Campaign, (1914–1918)
Battle of the Atlantic, (1939–1944)
Operation Pedestal, (1942)
Falklands War, (1982)
Gulf War, (1991)

but shrank to a mere 1,054 ships on the British Ship Register in 2023,  as GreedyBastard ship owners got around H&S regulations that presented such an affront to capital by registering their shipping in countries with a more flexible approach to terms and conditions of employment - flags of convenience. Here's wiki, employing a little more moderate language: "Each merchant ship is required by international law to be registered in a registry created by a country, and a ship is subject to the laws of that country, which are used also if the ship is involved in a case under admiralty law. A ship's owners may elect to register a ship in a foreign country so as to avoid the regulations of the owners' country, which may, for example, have stricter safety standards. They may also select a jurisdiction to reduce operating costs, avoiding higher taxes in the owners' country and bypassing laws that protect the wages and working conditions of mariners. The term "flag of convenience" has been used since the 1950s. A registry which does not have a nationality or residency requirement for ship registration is often described as an open registry. Panama, for example, offers advantages such as easier registration (often online), the ability to employ cheaper foreign labour, and an exemption on income taxes."

The abuse of crew - appalling wages, long hours, sleep deprivation, cramped conditions and inadequate food, is common in the industry. But the modern slavery practised on 35 men from the Philippines, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka was uniquely savage. The men have all been recognised as victims of modern slavery by the Home Office after being referred to it between 2012 and 2020.

The workers were employed by TN Trawlers and its sister companies, owned by the Nicholson family, based in the Scottish town of Annan. The TN Group denied allegations of modern slavery and human trafficking and said its workers were well treated and well paid. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

The Group's dredgers, built in the 1970s and 80s, work by towing metal nets along the seabed. They scrape up shellfish, stones and other marine life which gets caught in the nets. Deckhands throw back the stones and pack the scallops in ice below deck. Crew worked 18 hour shifts, seven days a week when the dredgers were at sea. Documents were held by the Nicholson family. The crew were denied food, water and safety clothing, and were denied medical treatment following injuries. They were reduced to melting the ice from the packed scallops to drink. Police forces on several UK coasts knew of allegations about TN Trawlers, which had been prosecuted in 2007 for illegal catches worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Tom Nicholson and TN Trawlers were ordered to pay £473,000 under Proceeds of Crime laws. They were also ordered to pay almost £150,000 in fines and costs after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency found a string of defects and safety breaches on vessels between 2009 and 2011. A 2012 police briefing, noted that six Filipino fishermen swam ashore from TN boats and complained of mistreatment.

In Hamilton Sheriff Court in October 2022, some 10 years after the men were removed from the boats, Thomas Nicholson Snr and TN Trawlers pleaded guilty to failing to get adequate care for Joel Quince, a man who sustained a head injury and was denied medical treatment. Nicholson's not guilty plea to withholding some of the crewmen’s passports without reasonable excuse. was accepted and the charge dropped.

Ishmaelites are already aware of my strictures about not eating Scottish farmed salmon. Don't believe any of that marketing bollocks about crystal clear waters - like this hype: "In this remote place, in the untamed wildness of its cold, clean waters, everything converges. The Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Powerful currents and strange, tumultuous tides. The very forces of nature itself, continually cleansing and replenishing the nutrient-rich waters. And the nearby Gulf Stream creates the perfect conditions for raising salmon with a superbly firm texture and moist, buttery flavour." And with ineradicable sea lice that eat the poor buggers alive, and with cataracts from peering through murky water in the pens, thick with uneaten food. and there's the collateral damage of dead seals, shot by the pen workers for trying to help themselves to a bit of salmon. I did tell you about the announcement on Radio Orkney, shortly after we moved here, that on no account should people eat the salmon that had been escaped from storm-damaged pens, and flabbily washed up on the beaches, because they were not fit for human consumption.

Well, now you have to add to your banned list dredged scallops. I don't like them myself - just a lump of white tissue, with an orange bit sticking out, and, like musselsforfuck's sake, it's the sauce that people really like - garlic and wine and cream, with a quarter of lemon and a sprig of parsley. Alright, you can eat the hand-dived ones if you insist, but this firm really should be boycotted.

All the men spoke of their bitterness at working for the company – and their experience of the justice system in the UK.

Joel Quince said his eyes had been opened.

“I see now how it works,” he said.

“This is how your UK law is done... You favour the wealthy people, and you don’t care about the poor.”

I have an illustrated Encyclopaedia on my shelves, published by Collins, with an inscription thus: Love from Mother to Winnie Xmas 1919 (the hands that wrote those lines are coffin dust now.) It is a very useful and beautiful book, with numerous coloured plates and sections on General Knowledge, a Gazetteer of the British Empire, a Guide to the Civil Service, and, most importantly, Letter Writing and Etiquette. For example, it tells you how to address your envelope when writing to the Speaker: "To the Honourable James Allen, Speaker of the House of Commons" and goes on for 101 closely-printed pages, authoritatively advising on how to conduct oneself in every imaginable social situation. It enumerates four unvarying principles upon which etiquette rests, namely:

1. Avoidance of all appearance of affectation in manner, speech or dress; and the endeavour not only always to be perfectly natural oneself, but also to help others who are perhaps shy and nervous to be easy and natural in their behaviour.
2. Remembrance of the courtesy, chivalry and reverence which should be extended to women and all old people as their just and lawful due.
3. Avoidance of taking liberties and dislike of allowing them to be taken.
4. Acknowledgement of the fact that there are of necessity very many different ranks of society, and, keeping this fact in view, the avoidance of all attempts either to push into ranks above one's own, or to condescend to or patronise members of those ranks below it.

Hmm - well, thank goodness we now have Tik Tok to guide us through the intricacies of the modern world. Of particular usefulness is the advice given by Influencer, Jools Lebron: ""You see how I do my make-up for work? Very demure, very mindful,” she told her millions of followers. "A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure". When dressing for the office, her shirt "only has a little chi-chi out, not my cho-cho", adding: "You should never "come to work with a green cut crease".

Yes, that's right, it's a fat ugly bloke in a wig.

What's on Telly?

Steven Pemberton, that's what, reading an abridged version of  Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, with utterly delicious settings in a vintage car and  the servants' quarters of a stately home. It is only an hour and I highly recommend it. It is part of Series 2, which seems to be a series of abridged novels in dramatised readings  by important actors. Here’s the link:   https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z96c/the-read-series-2-the-remains-of-the-day-the-read-with-steve-pemberton

Remains of the Day has two central themes: Lord Darlington, the protagonist’s employer, was a Nazi sympathizer who was politically active, as so many of the aristocracy were, in attempting to move England into allying with Germany  during the inter-war period,  and was disgraced after World War Two; and the unexpressed love of the protagonist, Stevens, for Miss Kenton, the housekeeper. Constrained by his position and his need to keep up appearances he never declares his love and she marries someone else. He narrates the events of his life and his regrets, as he takes a motor trip in 1956 to visit the former Miss Kenton, in the erroneous belief that her marriage is unhappy and that they might renew their emotionally constipated friendship. This comes to nothing and the novel ends with him having unlocked his emotional core too late and reconciling himself to making the most of the remains of his day. 

Apparently, at the time, some thought that Kishiguro was foisting upon his readership a study of Japanese-ness under cover of a very English setting; but the orthodox reading is that it is a study of Englishness, its conventions, constraints and limited emotional range. I think it depicts the straight jacket that institutions force us into – it could be a top-notch butler’s role in a magnificent country house belonging  to a traitor, or a senior manager’s job in a local authority: work and duty overwhelm love and autonomous authenticity. The same dilemma that Shakespeare explored in Antony and Cleopatra – love or duty.

I don’t think it would be a misreading to see Stevens as autistic, or certainly neurologically diverse, as he performs his life in the way that he has been taught by his emotionally cold and very proper father.

It is a terrific work and a terrific reading by Steven Pemberton.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

Coloured plate of pear and pear blossom from Collins' Encyclopaedia.