Fishermen's Mission

The transcription is about an interview with Jackie Dirt, a representative of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. The interview discusses the Seafarers Memorial in Wick, which honors fishermen lost at sea. The mission was founded in the 1800s and provides support to fishermen and their families. Jackie explains how the mission adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely to offer assistance and check in on fishermen. The mission also provides financial help and collaborates with other charities. They offer services such as funerals and weddings, and support fishermen's children in pursuing education. The interview highlights the challenges and dangers faced by fishermen and the importance of remembering their sacrifices. Hello, this is Roger Saxon of Caithness FM and in the studio tonight we have a guest, Jackie Dirt. Hello Jackie. Hello Roger, I'm delighted to be here tonight. Good, and Jackie is with the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, based mostly in Scabster I guess, or the whole of Caithness is it? Well, actually my area extends from Helmsdale North and I now cover Orkney as well. Orkney, right. So what prompted the idea of the interview was the memorial that's been put up recently in Wick, the National Fishermen's Remembrance Day Memorial. Has it got a name, the sculpture? The Seafarers Memorial. The Seafarers Memorial, quite an impressive thing with a big tall concrete plinth of a human figure and an outstretched arm with seaweed on the arm or something hanging over it or something like that. So tell us about that Jackie, what happens there, how it's set up and all the rest of it. Well the memorial was actually set up by a group that Willie Watt was heading and it was unveiled last year and I had the honour to do the blessing for that particular statue. This year it seemed like the natural place, because we have long championed the idea of a national fishing memorial day, it seemed the natural place to actually hold the service when it was granted this year. So we met up there and we celebrated, if that could be the right word, the... Oh no, I'm sorry, I've lost you. It's all about remembering fishermen lost at sea basically, is it? Yes, it is. Yes, absolutely. It's something that's very close to the fishermen's mission heart, because obviously we work with fishermen and we see what tragedy can be involved in going to sea. The weather, the equipment, there's so many safety standards which are excellent and are in place to keep our fishermen safe, but there is human error, there is weather problems, it's an extremely dangerous occupation. And you were telling me how the fishermen's mission was set up way back in the 1800s. Yes, it was set up by somebody called Ebenezer Maeser. I love his name. I know, isn't it just? He is our founder. And how it came about was in 1881 it was, he was at Eyemouth and a storm had blown up and there was 189 fishermen lost that day. Now that is a horrendous number and you can imagine how it affected the communities. The wives and the children were on the shore watching. It must have been so traumatic. And Ebenezer, who was a Christian gentleman, just knew that we had to do something to support the fishermen and support the families that were in effect without a father and were widowed. And so he founded the fishermen's mission. And that was called Black Friday because there were lots of fishermen all up and down the North Sea coast that lost their lives in that storm. Yes, there was. Locally we've had our Black Saturday where we lost 37 local people, local fishermen, and 63 children were left without a father. Now that was in the days where there was no possibility of you getting other income very easily. There was no social state to pick up the kids and give them child benefit. So when we think back on those times, we really have to imagine how hard it would have been for the wives and for the children to be able to not just go through the grieving process but to pick up and move on and try to scrape a living. It wasn't easy and Ebenezer Mather realised that and that's where the fishermen's mission came in. Black Saturday was the event at Wick in 1848. There's a famous Rayburn painting in the Wick council tombs. It must have been worth a fortune of people looking out to sea, not looking at their wives and children, looking out to sea and hoping that their father or their brother or whatever was coming home. The herring industry obviously did a lot to shape Caithness and its history, its economic history. It was absolutely huge but alongside it you have to realise that there were families that were separated for months at a time. There were gutting girls that came down from Sutherland separated from their families. You would think about them having to get accommodation, keep themselves safe. Were they looked after by the mission at that time as well? No, they would have been if their husband or their father had been lost at sea. The mission has always been around not just for fishermen but for their children and for the wives and quite often the widows as well. So this national memorial day is going to be an annual event now? Yes, absolutely. That's great. So we talked about the memorial day and how the mission was founded. The mission as we know in Scapster and other places around Scotland closed its doors effectively quite a few years ago now. So you're in charge now. How do you manage without a building? Do you just work out of the house? I came into force just before Covid struck. I was all ready to hit the ground running and unfortunately Covid put the brakes on. So I found myself working from home as did most other people. I saw this as a bit of a challenge because obviously the fishermen's mission, ideally you want to be on the harbours. You want to be talking to the fishermen. As they come in sort of thing. As they came in, yes. But being a case in a class, I had a lot of contacts and the telephone was invaluable. Let me tell you, I was on the phone a lot and I actively found fishermen just to check in. Are you okay? Are you managing? Are you managing to feed the kids? This sort of thing. So you knew these guys and you'd phone them up rather than them coming to you? Yes. What happened was, because I had to do everything back to front because this was a very unusual set of circumstances. I literally got permission from people that knew fishermen. I would get them to ask the fishermen, is it alright for Jackie to give you a phone call? And then I would ring them up. Because my idea is that it's better to ring people and offer help than it is to know that there's a fisherman there and be too shy to come forward and say, look, do you need anything? And actually there was a really good reception for this approach and my numbers went so much higher. The fishermen that I got to know just by the telephone was phenomenal, considering that I hadn't had a real chance to be down on the harbours. Yes. I think, you know. It would have been more than you would have been if you'd been there. Yes, this is Caisness and I'm very proud to be Kidneysia. So many people saw what we were doing and were willing to help. And this made it a complete success. During Covid, the number of fishermen that we were able to help was really high. And I feel quite delighted that we were able to reach out to the fishermen when they needed us most. And we've kept those contacts up. And it may be that if I get in contact with a fisherman and they don't need me, we may agree that I give them a phone call once every six months, once every year, just to check in on them. Because the thing is, if I don't know the fisherman is there, I can't offer help to them. So getting to know where the fishermen were and building up that relationship, that pathway back to myself, so that if they were struggling, they were able to come back to me and say, well, actually, you know, we're not coping so well this month. And in which case I would probably do a grant application. And if we were lucky, we would be able to get some financial help in for them. So would you say your work is more like social work rather than obviously it's a Christian organisation? Would it be more of that than tend to spiritual needs or is it both together? There is always the spiritual needs that need to be attended to. But we are not evangelical. You don't force the religion down the road sort of thing? Absolutely not. Do you want to go to church? No. If you want to bring religion up with me, I am very happy to approach that with you. But I won't bring it up unless you bring it up with me. I think everybody locally knows that the Mission is a Christian organisation. But we're not here to force our opinions on other people. And we're very inclusive of other religions and lifestyles. Do you still do services? For instance, my father's funeral was conducted by the Mission man at the time. Yes. So you still do that kind of thing? Yes. I've done a number of funerals and a handful of weddings as well. I've got a wedding coming up shortly that I'm looking forward to. It's really nice to be able to do something like that for people. And the Mission does it well, I think. Their approach and everything. A wedding is such a happy occasion. I think it's nice to have a service where you can, I don't know, I suppose, just celebrate the happiness of the day. You were also saying that if people need financial help, you work with other charities. Yes, we do. That would help to find money for you or grants or whatever. Predominantly, that's what my job is about. Most of our fishermen that come to us are going through a period of difficulty. It could be that their engine's broken and it's going to be a couple of months before they're able to get the boat back in the water, in which case we will do our best to help them survive financially. We'll encourage them to maximise their benefits. We'll look at getting grants for the children if there's school clothes needed, that sort of thing. We give close to 11 grants as well. Basically, we offer support when a fisherman is really struggling. I'm not sure whether it's four or five children that we're helping to support through university at the moment. We can look at grants for fishermen's children. If finances are going to make it impossible for the child to get to university, we can certainly look at doing things. You get the feeling that Scrabstone is one of the top landing ports in Scotland for the school of fish and shellfish. You think, well, there must be a lot of money coming in there. Somebody's getting it, but is it the moose, not the fishermen? That's not quite right. Fishermen do, on the whole, manage to be independent financially. What I've discovered is that, in years gone by, fishermen didn't really think about the future. We're encouraged to think about the future now. We're encouraged to think about pensions. We've got the internet, we've got TV and we've got radio. It's all informing us of how our lives will be as we approach retirement and encouraging us to plan. In years gone by, fishermen maybe didn't get the right advice. You've got fishermen now who are in their 80s. They've got health problems. They don't know what benefits they're supposed to have. They maybe find that their roof is leaking. They're going through a period of financial difficulty because they can't afford to put oil in their oil tank. We can look at things like that and see. We never make promises, but we can see if we can help people. That's great. Was there anything else you wanted to tell us in that example? I just wanted to say that I know a lot of people talk about the mission as being the cafe down at the harbour. I can't tell you how many excellent bacon rolls I've had in that place over my lifetime. I think I've had a few myself. It was close to the public's heart. There was a lot of food in it. It was sorely missed when it closed down. The mission is more than just a cafe. We really do try our best to help our fishermen. We're quite successful at it. What I would say is that the mission is still very active within Caithness and certainly Orkney as well, if I cover Orkney. We really appreciate the support that we get locally, because that's important for us as well. We're a national organisation and a national charity, but we're a charity that works within Caithness. We do help a lot of Caithness people. We don't get Government funding. As a Christian charity, we can't actually apply to the lottery for funding. There are quite a few funds that don't exclude faith groups, isn't there? I'm looking at applications for stuff. There absolutely is. That makes the support of the local Caithnessians so important to us. Most of the wind farms around here don't have religious groups. We're always struggling to fundraise. We're very lucky. We do have some people that come forward. Some of them save up their pennies and we get a jar of coins. I had recently a coffee jar of coins. That was fantastic. That really was. I was so touched that somebody thought to do that. We're always trying to fundraise. If anybody's got any fundraising ideas out there or would be interested in helping the mission at all, I would be very glad to hear from you. The mission has been going for 143 years. Within Caithness, we have quite an upbeat profile in the sense that we are very active. A lot of what we do is down to the support that we have from your ordinary, everyday individuals who just see what we do and support us. For that, I am eternally grateful. Believe me. If people want to contact you, have you got a phone number or a website? We do. We have got a website, but my telephone number is 0777 411 6386. I have an email address, which is jackiedods.fishermansmission.org.uk. I don't know, Roger, is there any possibility that those details could go up on your website? I don't know whether that's a possibility or not. We could certainly put it on our Facebook. That would be great. Hopefully, we can get the interview on Facebook as well, so people could listen to it again. That would be grand. The thing is that we can offer help, but I can only offer help if I know where the fishermen are. If you know somebody who is struggling and has a history of fishing, please feel free to ring me up. I will hopefully make contact and see if there is anything that we can do to support them. That's great. Thanks very much for talking to us today, Jackie. That's brilliant. All the best for the future, and I hope that you can keep going as long as possible. Do you know what, Roger? I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been fantastic. To get a little bit of what we do out there into the community and to let them know that the mission is still going, I am absolutely delighted with. Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me. You're very welcome. Thanks again.