The Women of Runswick Bay

​My great-granddaughter Annie gave me that postcard. She found it in a shop in that London. That’s where she lives now. Have you ever been to London? I’ve never been. Whitby is far enough for me.
 
That’s me in the picture. Annie didn’t believe me. She’s only 20. Doesn’t know anything of the world.
 
I was 17. I was married to William Porritt, and he and his dad had a coble – that’s what we called the fishing boats – at Runswick. I met Will when my father, who was the carpenter in Hinderwell, made some chairs for his father and Will came in his cart to collect them. He was so handsome, in his white shirt and red neckerchief. His hair was as black as a raven's wing, and he had strong brown arms. We got married that year, at midsummer, and my ma gave me her best dress to wear, with roses pinned at the neck. Roses for Rose, she said. She liked my Will.
 
Our first baby was born on an ice-cold windy day in January 1901. Her name was Martha, and she was the prettiest thing you ever saw, with shiny black curls just like her dad's. She died last year. Seventy she was. That broke my heart more than any other loss. Even Will.
 
When the men were late back from fishing, or when there was a storm brewing up out at sea, there were always women watching from windows, or standing on the sand, wrapped tight in woollen shawls. An old woman waiting for her grandson, a child watching for her father. A fisherwife looking out for her husband.
 
That day, I’d seen Will off at dawn, warm in the gansey I’d knitted him, with his bottle of tea and his bread and cheese wrapped tight in oilskin to keep out the salt water. The sun shone on the waves and the water was smooth as a millpond. It looked like a good day for fishing and all the men were going out, shouting their farewells to their women.
 
I was scrubbing the step when I felt the weather change. The wind shifted around, and there was a chill in the air, cold even for April. Clouds started to gather. I'd put Martha down, but the wind got louder and rattled the shutters. She woke up sobbing.
 
The sun set and the men weren't home. I grabbed Martha and tied her tight to me in my shawl. I ran to the sea, and other women joined me, all looking out into the darkness and the crashing waves to see the cobles. The wind blew cold, and rain and sea spray soaked us.
 
I heard someone shouting for the lifeboat through the wind and the waves, and I grabbed my friend Nancy's hand – the ‘Cape of Good Hope’ was in the boathouse, but all the lifeboat men, including my Will and Nancy's John, were out fishing. My heart sank.
 
And then a group of men came forward – the men who were too old or too injured to go out on the fishing boats every day. Will’s grandfather and Nancy's father were among them. They pulled open the doors of the boathouse, pulled the chocks free and winched the boat on its carriage down the slipway to the sand. We watched them try to push the boat on its huge wheels, but it just wouldn't move. A woman ran to help them. Nancy grabbed my daughter and her baby son and thrust them into her grandmother’s arms and pulled me towards the boat. Soon there were about twenty of us women gathered round the boat. The fitter men scrambled aboard, pulling the others up behind them, and we threw their cork lifejackets up to them.
 
The strongest of us pushed the launching racks from behind, and the others pulled the ropes at the front. It was icy cold and wet, and the sand and pebbles pulled at my feet. My hands were numb, and I pushed so hard I could almost feel my bones creak. It was like pushing a house and it was only the thought of Will that kept me going. Just when I thought I couldn't push any more, I felt it start to move. Inch by slow and painful inch.
 
The boat eventually rolled into the waves after what seemed like hours. Everyone who was at the front ran to the back and we shoved and shouted as the boat finally floated. Freezing cold and soaked to the waist from the sea, hair coming down and bonnets blowing away, we huddled and waited and the old women wrapped us in blankets.
 
The old men fought the waves, and then we heard them shout over the sound of the storm – the cobles were coming home.
 
The cobles crunched onto the sand one by one, and women and children ran to help the men pull the boats up on to the shore. The rest of us stood and watched and waited. And then the beach was empty of fisherwives, and I stood there alone amongst the fishermen. I'd made Nancy go back and her grandmother took Martha home with her, as the little mite was blue with cold. The lifeboat stood out at sea, fighting the waves, and I strained my eyes for any sign of Will’s boat.
 
And… there he was. The lifeboat waited until he was on the shore. He and his father pulled the boat onto the sand, and I just stood there, dazed and daft. I ran into his arms and held him tight. I felt like I would never let go, until his father gruffly told me to get home, because they had a lifeboat to put away. I trudged home up the hill, weeping for I don't know what. Behind me I could hear the exhausted men who'd rowed the lifeboat being taken home by their families, and the lifeboat crew, saved by their own boat, hauling it back into the boathouse.
 
I said I’d never been further than Whitby – well that wasn’t true. We women were taken to Manchester, which was full of smoke and noise and people, and given dinner and a photograph and a plaque. That photograph on the postcard. What a lot of fuss and nonsense. We only did what any fisherwife would.