Fishermen

Sunday

Teresa Mull

Maine’s lobstermen are a dying breed

It’s 5 a.m. in early May in Harpswell, Maine — “a working waterfront” community. I’m sipping coffee on the deck of Mark and Judy Sgantas’s charming home. The Sgantases are distressed about the government overreach and so-called “green energy” initiatives their neighbors have told them are apt to destroy the New England maritime economy and communities. We keep our voices soft so as not to disturb sleepy Casco Bay and the peach-and-plum masterpiece gradually unveiling itself in the sky and reflecting on the still water.

lobster maine lobstermen

Saturday

Tanya Gold

There’s nothing romantic about Cornish fishermen, whatever tales they may spin

From our UK edition

Lamorna Ash came to the fishing port of Newlyn in south-west Cornwall to write a memoir. This is not unusual. There is a tendency, as old industries die, to watch them covetously and with awe; to paint them a paradigm of all that is lost. In the 19th century, fishwives posed for the artists of the Newlyn School on the quayside. Today, journalists are found at the Star Inn, which featured in Gavin Knight’s The Swordfish and the Star, buying pints for Ben Gunn, a ‘celebrity’ fisherman, for a tale. Ash is a woman who can lose herself ‘along the simplest of paths’. She immerses herself in the real Newlyn, which is doughty, and the Newlyn of her imagination, which is mournful and filled with legends.