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Private Notes
This programme was part of Sea Fever – The Story Of Britain And The Sea, a major season on BBC Four that looked at the ways in which the sea helped to shape modern Britain. Sea Fever focused on maritime history, culture, economics and science and coincided with an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. The story of Britain's maritime past has a hidden history of shanties and sea songs, and choirmaster Gareth Malone has been travelling Britain's coast to explore this unique heritage. From dedicated traditionalists to groundbreaking recording artists, Gareth meets a variety of sea-singers from across the country. His journey begins in Portsmouth where he meets a devoted shanty singer, before continuing on to Tyneside and the Yorkshire coast, where the Filey Fisherman's Choir, with an average age of 70, are determined to keep the tradition alive. Gareth gets a fascinating insight into the songs of the Herring Girls when he visits Gardenstown in Scotland. In Whitby, he meets Kimber's Men, a local group who have dedicated themselves to writing and singing songs celebrating heroes of the sea, such as a rescue of 1881 when the sea was so rough the people of Whitby had to carry their 2-tonne lifeboat some six miles overland on a wooden trailer and in heavy snow to the bay where a ship had hit the rocks. Despite the exhaustion, they still managed to rescue the shipwrecked crew and passengers. Gareth's journey ends in Port Isaac in Cornwall, where a group of local fishermen sing shanties and sea songs alongside their day job. Calling themselves the Fishermen's Friends, they have been so successful that they have landed a lucrative record deal.
Series which focuses on Britain's maritime history, culture, economics and science continues with a look at the different ways people have enjoyed the sea in the 20th century. For some, the 'Joy of the Sea' is about being on it in a boat or dinghy, for others it is crashing through the waves on a surfboard, and for millions it is about just wanting to be close to it. To enjoy the sea in the early years of the 20th century, you had be either living close to it or rich enough to get to it - sailing especially was the preserve of the rich. But as the century unfolded that changed and a revolution took place that saw more and more people being able to get to the sea and enjoy it in all sorts of ways. Many of them filmed their experiences and the programme uses their unique and unseen films, and their recollections, to tell the story of that revolution. The film archives of three sailors stretching from the 1930s to the 1980s reveal the way technology and economics transformed and democratised the delights of sailing in the century. Malcolm McKeag, Chief Sailing Officer of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, helps explain the forces at work. The 1930s home movies of Gerald Potter bring to life the world of the upper middle class Cowes sailor. He had the wealth to commission and film the building of his very own boat. Post-war sailing amongst the Cowes elite, and ocean racing in particular, was captured in the movies of Max Aitken, heir to the Beaverbrook newspaper empire. The first post-war stirrings of what was to become a cult in Cornwall were filmed by Gynnedd Haslock's father, who filmed his young daughter surfing the Cornish waves in the late 1950s. By the 1970s, technology was revolutionising surfing and John Adams, a surfing dance hall owner from Penzance, captured the pastime as it grew into a global pursuit. The movies of Don Sykes, a Southport amateur filmmaker, capture the joy of the sea and how it was experienced by millions of holiday maker
Film about home movie makers who captured the exploits of the maritime rescue services. Over the centuries people have been drawn to the sea for different reasons - for pleasure, for fishing and for trade. The unpredictable power of the sea has a nasty habit of catching them out, necessitating the resources of the rescue services and lifeboat volunteers. Occasionally, home movie makers managed to capture some of the exploits of these rescue services. Their recollections tell the story of how they used increasingly elaborate technology and risked their lives to save the lives of others, and why, in spite of all this, the sea continued to claim so many lives. Lighthouses were there at the beginning, but automation saw the end of the people who kept them going. One keeper who filmed them before they disappeared at the end of the 20th century was Peter Halil. Peter realised that no one was recording the passing of a way of life, so set about doing it himself. He enlisted the help of fellow keeper Gerry Douglas Sherwood and the programme features the eloquent video he shot, together with recollections of both of them. Peter's films captured the end of a way of life, while others filmed the inherent dangers to life itself. Amazing film of the work of the volunteer coastguard in St Ives and the crisis to the naval minesweeper HMS Wave in 1951, the RNLI lifeboat in Dover coping with the Texaco Caribbean disaster in 1971, and the work of the combined rescue services called out in August 1979 to the aid of yachts in trouble in the Fastnet race shape the tone of the programme. Maritime historian Richard Woodman provides a historical and technological context for the eyewitnesses and home movie enthusiasts who tell the stories behind the images in each of these rescues. Perhaps the most compelling is that of Eric Smith, an RAF winchman. Dramatic home movie images filmed from the Cornish coast reveal the daring and ultimately successful operation to rescue two m
Series which focuses on Britain's maritime history, culture, economics and science concludes with the remarkable story of Britain's fishermen, using home movie archive. At the beginning of the 20th century thousands made a good living working in conditions of unimaginable danger. But technology and avarice in some areas created problems of over-fishing and the century ended with the port of Hull laid to waste. Hull skipper Ken Knox and filmmaker/engineer Alan Hopper watch Alan's astonishing films and tell how the sophisticated technologies companies used to send crews to distant Atlantic waters in the 50s and 60s in the hunt for white fish. Hull's men had already fished out local waters using a technique called box fleet fishing, a dangerous method remembered by one who did it in the 1930s, Robert Rowntree. Smaller ports survived and small scale family fishing was part of the secret of their success. In Peterhead, Donald Anderson filmed the exploits of his crew, including his young son, as the fleets hunted herring shoals. In St Ives, the Stevens fishing family were filmed by a local film-maker on their boat the Sweet Promise back in the 1950s. Watching this film today is David Stevens, the son of the skipper and 15 at the time, and crew member Donald Perkin, the last of six brothers who worked as fishermen in St Ives from the 30s to the 80s. Historian from the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Tony Pawlyn, helps explain how these men fished and why they survived while the Hull men went under. These men are our last link with a tradition of hunter-gathering. The programme goes to Skye in Scotland and asks if the new way of fishing - farming - is the ultimate threat to livelihoods of these hunter-gatherer fishermen.
