The Blue Lonnen

Hands up who knows a coble when they see one? This traditional wooden fishing boat is distinctive to the North East coast, and is said to be descended from the Viking longship. Until recently, Northumbrian cobles were built in Seahouses and Amble, but this is no longer the case, and old ones are rapidly vanishing, replaced by less distinctive plastic vessels.

The Blue Lonnen, a new exhibition commissioned by Alnwick Playhouse Trust through the financial support of the Northumberland Coast AONB Partnership, records and celebrates the last of the area’s coble fishermen in words and pictures. For photographer Nigel Shuttleworth and poet Katrina Porteous, the disappearance of the coble represents that of a whole way of life. It is hard to operate a coble single-handedly, and launching, beaching and maintaining them was traditionally a community effort. Even the landscape of the coast and its buildings have been shaped by the culture which the coble represents.

Both Katrina and Nigel have an abiding interest in the sea and boats. Katrina, who lives in Beadnell, has published several volumes of poetry and a book of reminiscences, The Bonny Fisher Lad. Nigel, who is Morpeth-based, has worked for many years for clients such as The Landmark Trust and the National Trust.

The exhibition can be seen at different venues throughout the AONB this summer. Please contact Alnwick Playhouse direct for more information (01665 510758).

The Blue Lonnen

The crunch of mussel shells under the boot heel;
The bramble-patch where the cottages were rooted;

The stone ring of the mussel bed, the stair
To the drying-green, the ballast heap, the beach of creeve-stones;

The tarry stain where the bark pot reeked; the wicket
In the wall; on the bridge to the limpets, the blade-worn groove;

The iron pin that marks the sea-road to the haven;
The nail driven into the door jamb – they are illegible

Without the rudder and the anchor,
Without the twine, the needle and the knitter:

For these are the paths they beat to the shore – The Nick, The Blue Lonnen –
And each is a road with a boat at the end of it.

Alnmouth

Something unassuagable about an estuary.
Black ooze, oily,

Clinging. Dragging east,
Miles of cloud rubble.

Acres of sea-purslane.
Redshank, dunlin,

Camouflaged. Dissemblance.
Chains of footprints

Snaking through mud. Loops
Of old rope. A curlew

Letting go its rinsed notes.
Abandonment.

And, slowly filling with water,
A boat

Rotten beyond rescue, its anchor-chain
Stiff; paint, lichen,

Flaking from its timbers, revealing
Strong, clear lines. What matters

Is sunk, uncovered
And sunk. On the far bank, a train,

A straight line on the heugh,
Hauling its troubles south.

And between them, the river
Slipping from green fields, Scots pines, gables –

Pink, blue, terracotta –
From the gull-squabble,

Towards something sparer:

Wormcasts.
Ripples.

On the far side of the water,

Walls, roofless.
Gleaming bent grass.

Its surface wind-hatched, stippled with light,
The river

Is letting go
At the end of its life, an old man

Catching sight of what matters –
That muffled roar,

The stern white line of the breakers.

Stinky

When you draw up here,
Down the hill to the rocket house,
The whitewashed Square

Brined in the past, that redolence
Of tarred rope, oak bark,
Rums casks,

And you lie awake
In the early dawn to catch the sun
Crawl up between

Billy, the coastguard watch-house,
And the castle;
While a robin

Scries from the pan-tiles
Of the Hemmel,
And not one coble

Carves its wake
Through the flawless blue silk
Of the Haven,

You might be forgiven
For forgetting
This: the place

Was pigs, middens, yeddle,
Rotten kelp,
Fish livers reeking in the yetlin;

That the roof above your head
Is a tree, its roots
In herring guts.

‘Stinky’ was the local name for Low Newton-by-the-Sea. The Square is now in the care of the National Trust

The Old Boat

The old boat stands on the bank-top.
Long stains of rust
Run from her scut-irons, beadings. Daylight
Gleams through her rents.

Grass grows around her. Sparrows
Forage in the dry weed.
‘A little worm has getten in ablow the scowbels’
Billy said

Last winter. So they towed her onto the bank
And left her there
Like an old woman who has lost her reason,
Staring

Blankly at the sea, while the paint peels back:
The grain appears
In swirls and eddies, as if slowly
Returning to the tree;

Though still the straight planks fan
In their lovely curve, the flow
And figure-eight she makes – the geometry of beauty
Last to go.

They were hoping for a miracle.
That, half a century
After the first-clenched nail, Matthews might fettle her.
But the years were too many.

This winter, nobody speaks of her.
No one can bear
To smash her up. To burn her. She is the sewing-nail
That holds them there.

She is the last link of the chain
That stretches away to sea, to the horizon.
She is the ruled line.
The end of the line.

Without her
There is no reason.