Missio

My new book, ‘Missio’ is published today in the US (the rest of the world will follow in a couple of months’ time).

Here is the back cover spiel and the first couple of chapters.

If you live in the US, you can order ‘Missio’ directly from the publishers – here. Unfortunately, as they use UPS, they cannot deliver to a P.O. Box address.

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From the back cover:

Stevie Francis lost his dad when the Hull trawler, The Gaul, disappeared without trace somewhere on or around 8 February 1974 while fishing in the Barents Sea. Its owners, British United Trawlers, had nicknamed it ‘the unsinkable’.

Speculation at the time was that The Gaul had been captured or sunk by the Soviet navy because there was a British government spy on board, or that its fishing net had become entangled with a passing Soviet submarine, or that it had simply become overwhelmed by heavy seas. The wreck of The Gaul was located in 1997 and the remains of four of its crew were retrieved in 2004. A more recent suggestion is that The Gaul suffered from significant design faults.

Walking the rundown streets of his dockland neighbourhood searching for his cat, Stevie meets The Great Macaroni, a children’s magician who spends his time trying to persuade his young audiences that his real magic is mere trickery.

He teaches Stevie that nothing in this world is as it appears, that teaspoons can fly, and that the future is never set even if it has already happened.

What he cannot tell him about are the two years of his life that Stevie will spend in absolute darkness.

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Chapter 1

Stephen Francis:

I have become a bit obsessive about how many Hull trawlers went down over the years. They say that it was more dangerous to be a trawlerman than a miner.

I have compiled a list of all the trawlers that sailed out of Hull and then sank during peacetime:

• 1889 – the Adventure sank in the North Sea
• 1903 – the Adeline was wrecked in Oscar Bay, Iceland
• 1903 – the Valetta sank in the North Sea
• 1904 – the Adriatic sank after a collision in the North Sea
• 1904 – the Crane was blown out of the water by the Russian Baltic Fleet which thought that it was a Japanese naval vessel (you can see the memorial on the intersection between the Hessle Road and the Boulevard)
• 1908 – the Lord Roseberry sank after colliding with the Gaul
• 1908 – the Paragon sank with all hands off Iceland
• 1910 – the Botanic sank during a snow storm, killing five
• 1910 – the Gothic was sunk during a tornado – one crewman died
• 1912 – the Almapoora collided with the Hull trawler the Mataban. The whole crew survived
• 1913 – the Drax was lost without trace
• 1913 – the Socrates was wrecked off Castle Bay, Ireland, without loss of life as the crew climbed the cliffs to safety
• 1913 – the Desdemona sunk off the Dogger Bank killing the entire crew some of whose bodies were recovered floating in the sea
• 1920 – the Barbados exploded in the North Sea (presumed mined), killing the whole crew
• 1921 – the St. Elmo sunk off Iceland with no loss of life
• 1923 – the Erne sank after a collision in the North Sea
• 1925 – the Axinite disappeared without trace nobody knows where
• 1925 – the Field Marshall Robertson disappeared without trace with a partly Icelandic crew
• 1925 – the Wolborough wrecked off Iceland
• 1927 – the Ebor sank off the Firth of Forth. Two third hands and a deck hand had already died on this ship since 1898
• 1927 – the Austri sank off Iceland
• 1929 – the Kingston Jasper wrecked off Medaland, Iceland. All twelve crew were saved
• 1930 – the Eske wrecked off Iceland. The entire crew was rescued
• 1930 – the Lord Fisher wrecked off Iceland without loss of life
• 1930 – the Cruden wrecked off Montrose
• 1930 – the St. Louis went down in West Fjord, Norway with all hands
• 1933 – the Cape Delgado disappeared without trace during a hurricane
• 1933 – the Endon lost without trace
• 1934 – the Loch Ard disappeared without trace
• 1934 – the Sculcoates sank near Murmansk
• 1934 – the Sabik sank following a collision in Dyrafjord, Iceland
• 1935 – the Skegness wrecked off Speeton Cliffs, Yorkshire
• 1935 – the Cassandra sank off Aberdeen with no loss of life
• 1935 – the Sydnelsie sank off Ireland
• 1936 – the Admiral Collingwood lost without trace off Ona Island, Norway
• 1936 – the Winooka collided with the Ethel Taylor off Scotland
• 1936 – the Trocadero sank off Iceland
• 1937 – the Stella Argus disappeared while heading for Thorshaven
• 1937 – the Lord Runciman sank without loss after colliding with the Cape Matapan
• 1937 – the Kingston Cameo sank after a collision with the Faxfleet off Spurn Point
• 1938 – the Lady Lavinia sank without trace off Norway
• 1938 – the Worsley sank off Hoy in heavy fog with no loss of life
• 1938 – the Angus sank off Fitful Head while being towed to safety. There were no casualties
• 1938 – the Horatio sank in St. George’s Channel
• 1947 – the St. Amandus wrecked off Norway
• 1949 – the Pintail stranded off County Antrim, Ireland
• 1949 – the St. Clair grounded in the Pentland Firth
• 1951 – the Arctic Explorer sank in the Elbe Estuary
• 1951 – the St. Leander sank in the Humber without loss of life after colliding with the Davy
• 1952 – the Norman wrecked off Greenland
• 1955 – the Pokucie capsized at Gdynia
• 1955 – the Lorella lost without trace off Iceland
• 1955 – the Roderigo lost off Iceland
• 1955 – the Remindo’s anchor broke off Faroe Island and it crashed onto the rocks. Four died
• 1955 – the Daniel Quare ran aground off Iceland
• 1956 – the St. Crispin ran aground off Iceland with no loss of life
• 1957 – the Andradite wrecked in the Outer Hebrides. The whole crew survived
• 1959 – the Staxton Wyke collided with the Dalhanna in the North Sea – five of the crew died
• 1959 – the Red Falcon lost off Scotland killing nineteen crew
• 1960 – the St. Hubert exploded after netting a mine
• 1961 – the Arctic Viking sank off Flamborough Head
• 1963 – the Lord Stanhope wrecked off Iceland
• 1964 – the boiler of the Arctic Adventurer exploded, killing three of the crew
• 1968 – the St. Romanus, the Kingston Peridot and the Ross Cleveland all disappeared during January 1968 in what was known as the “Triple Trawler Disaster”
• 1971 – the Caesar went aground off Iceland
• 1973 – the St. Chad was grounded in Isafjord, Iceland
• 1974 – the Gaul sank without immediate explanation except that it was rumoured that she was carrying a British government spy. The rumour was true, but carrying spies was common practice for both British and Russian trawlers, and it is more likely that the Gaul sank as a result of a design defect
• 1974 – the Ian Fleming sank off Norway killing three crew
• 1975 – the D B Finn grounded off Iceland in a hurricane with no loss of life

Quite a list, eh? Many thousands of trawlermen were drowned within less than one hundred years. It left a lot of widows and orphans. I was one of the fatherless children and my mum was one of those widows. The community did gather round us and help us out, but it sure wasn’t an easy life and the clubbing together to help didn’t last that long. Charity may get waylaid momentarily but it soon returns to where the hearth is.

My dad’s death sent my mum a bit bonkers for a while. She started to think that she was the distinguished widow of a true martyr.

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Chapter 2

I was brought up – ‘dragged up’ as we used to call it sardonically back then – under an unlucky star across the road from St. Andrew’s fish dock.

My dad was a trawlerman, but only briefly – only briefly a trawlerman and only briefly my dad. He went down with The Gaul in 1974 when I was five. His dad drowned with the Lorella in 1955, and his dad disappeared without trace on the Axinite in 1925. It was as well that the fishing industry in Hull collapsed before it got to me too. I was too young to drown by the time it all came to an end, although I have explored what it must have been like to drown many times, even repeatedly, and in great detail and I still do to this day. I see all water as cold and dank and I expect it to creep up and wash all over me. It’s a sort of vertigo, a phobia I cannot resist waggling my arse at. If I see it, I think it is chasing me. I dare it to and I dare myself not to run away. Whatever colour it really is, it is grey and steely to me. However shallow it may appear, it is unfathomably deep to me. However calmly and lazily it presents itself, my antennae are quick to warn me that it is just waiting to leap up and grab me should I get too close. Whenever I get into a shower or a bath I cough anxiously several times, although the truth is that more people drown in hospital than ever they do at sea – “for those in peril in the Kingston Royal Infirmary.” You can say that again.

When you fall from a trawler into Arctic waters, or when you are trapped inside a trawler as it goes down, you die almost instantly  – you black out with the shock of the cold. You are dead in less than a minute. I met a guy from California the other day and he told me that even there, on some parts of the Pacific coast, you cannot last more than an hour.

So a trawlerman’s death from drowning was desperate, quick and almost painless. The tough part was over, that of having been a trawlerman in the first place, stuck in a stinking cabin for a week while you chugged out to the fishing grounds off Iceland, Norway, Russia or even Nova Scotia (that took longer), sharing daft jokes with men who had nothing left to share, and then spending a week without sleep under freezing conditions in a heaving tub up to your neck in fish heads and fish guts, your hands numbed and aching, the spotlights glowering at you, turning all your mates into ghouls. It must have been a vision of hell, maybe a training for it. It probably made boiling hot oil for eternity appear quite attractive, like a long warm leisurely soak in the bath. And then you had the long trip home – same people, same jokes, same stories, more stink. If you had had a good trip with a record catch, you could have the pleasure of counting all your dosh when you got home, imagining what you would do with it. If you had had a poor catch, it was possible that you owed the company money for the cost of the trip.

Nobody said that being a trawlerman was an easy life. One of the problems with those boats was that their superstructure froze and got covered in ice. When that happened, there was a high risk of the whole thing ‘turning-turtle’ and disappearing beneath the waves. So some poor sod had to clamber on top of the bridge in the freezing cold and pitching seas and smash the ice off the bridge, the radar and the rigging.

There is the famous story of Harry Eddom, the only survivor of the 1968 ‘Triple Trawler Disaster’. He was the mate of the Ross Cleveland and had been clearing the ice from its radar as his trawler keeled over and so he was lucky enough to find himself fully clothed in weatherproof gear when it sank (although he probably did not feel that lucky at the time). He ended up in a lifeboat with two other members of the crew, one of whom was wearing warm clothes which were not weatherproof, while the other was wearing just a t-shirt and pants. The other two duly died of hypothermia. After twelve hours the lifeboat hit land and Harry struggled ashore to find a farmhouse only to discover that it was boarded up. He survived the night sheltering from the snow and the gales in an outhouse before he was discovered freezing to death by a fourteen year old boy who was tending his sheep. When he finally returned home, nobody would talk to him.

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At one time, our street was rather posh. Accountants used to live there and business people and shopkeepers, certainly not trawlermen or bobbers – they lived in the next streets down. However, by the time I turned up, our street was ‘run down’ at best. You should see it now. It looks like some war zone – Beirut after an Israeli bombardment, Darfur, Srebenica. They don’t have windows in their houses, half of them, nowadays. They have collandered steel sheeting. And all the mains electricity boxes outside of the houses are smashed – every single one of them, not a door in sight. And there is more furniture in the street than there is inside the houses, in the same condition both sides of the door. It’s a rough old place I can tell you. Not dangerous. You could walk down there from one end of the street to the other wearing a diamond tiara and a gold fob watch and nothing would happen to you. However, as you fumbled with your car keys to unlock the boot for your shopping, they would probably get snatched. You wouldn’t get hurt and your car would even retain its full complement of wheels. It’s not like Toxteth where they get the tyres off you at 30 mph, but it is pretty seedy, I can tell you. And it still has that shifting feel it had when I was a lad, that nothing is quite as it seems.

When I was a lad, I was scared of the street, I can tell you, and it wasn’t that I was afraid of anybody in particular. Okay, you got the bullies who were out to give you a good hiding but although I was small I was also extremely angry and aggressive (having lost my dad) and most kids didn’t mess with me. It was a sort of code. Don’t mess with the lads of folks as had drowned at sea, war heroes like.

Not that that bothered Billy Timpson. He kept after me, God alone knows what for. He merely picked me out from the crowd. Every time I saw him, whether in the yard of the school (which was around the corner) or in the street he would say “I’ll ‘ave yer.” Didn’t do a blind thing about it, but he always said it. I simply cocked my finger and blew his head off. It’s daft what people will say. It was a sort of reflex reaction to seeing me, a catchphrase, a cockeyed greeting even – “I’ll ‘ave yer.” Phsssh (that was my gun blowing his head off). I’d like to say that he was a bit touched, but he wasn’t, no more than any other bugger anyway. He just didn’t mind his language. It didn’t bother him what crap he talked and whether it was monotonous or not. His lips wobbled and he spouted the usual words “I’ll ‘ave yer.”

When he first latched onto me, the other kids were a bit nervous of me because old Billy was saying he was going to ‘ave me and therefore might choose to ‘ave them too by association if he thought they were friends of mine. But after a bit, when he hadn’t ‘ad me after all and didn’t even seem inclined to do so, they calmed down again. Eventually it got to the point when they’d all mouth “I’ll ‘ave yer” whenever Billy and I got ourselves into the same space. They even mimicked the blowing his head off bit and staggered around squealing.

Whenever I hear that phrase, and it certainly comes up from time-to-time in the places I get to, I think of Billy. I even say it to myself sometimes, especially in moments of stress. It comforts me somehow. It has become my mantra. It reminds me that all things pass and that nothing is as bad as it seems on the surface.

“Hello, Billy,” I say to myself.

“I’ll ‘ave yer,” I reply.

“But you won’t, will yer?” I reassure myself.

He never seemed to catch on that every time he voiced this tiresome phrase on sighting me that he made himself look more like a waster than the previous time. He was far gone in his own world and this pointless repetitive expression was the outward audible sign that only a really small person was left inside there. I think he wanted to become invisible, to pretend that he wasn’t there at all, to leave you with nothing you could grab except empty noise. Behind the bravado he was scared. What he said was like a skunk’s fart. His facial expressions weren’t much better. He only had one set, pivoting between merriment and menace. Those he pointed in every bugger’s direction, and I never saw the mask slip. I never saw disappointment or fear or hope. I could see anger. I always recognise anger in somebody because I have so much of it myself. He could be angry and laugh all at the same time. In truth, he did say “I’ll ‘ave yer” to other kids from time-to-time, but he only ever said it religiously to me. Perhaps he liked me and that was his way of expressing his warmth towards me. When he said it on the instant to the other kids, I noticed that his smile softened, so it was probably affectionate after all.

Anyhows, the Corporation ‘ad him. He was run over by a bloody (well it was afterwards) Hull & East Riding bus as he crossed Hessle Road trying to grab somebody’s attention. We all thought that God had sent it along ahead of schedule simply to shut him up and his screwed up manic ways. So laughing face was no more. We weren’t invited to the funeral. His folks were too cut up about it all. Besides they were well known for being private. We had to write them letters instead as a classroom exercise to say how sorry we were about what had happened. I told his folks that I would miss him and, in a strange way, I have all my life. It’s funny. I think I may have “I’ll ‘ave yer” inscribed on my gravestone although the church officials will probably put a stop to it on the grounds of taste and educational excellence, the snippy buggers. The school league tables don’t mean much around here. It’s footie and rugby league that has league tables; the schools only have plug holes to wash the human excrement down at the first possible opportunity from everybody’s point of view. The effluxion is consensual then the next generation flows back up the pipe again like tiny, tinkly, snapping crocodiles leaping from a sewer. You didn’t know crocodiles leapt, did you? They do around here.

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If you live in the US, you can order ‘Missio’ directly from the publishers – here. Unfortunately, as they use UPS, they cannot deliver to a P.O. Box address.