Fisherman’s Friends

By Jon Cleave

“Over the years, our Friday nights down by the harbour, singing about ships and storms and sailors and, yes, fish, became a popular tradition in Port Isaac with locals and visitors alike.”

It was thirty years ago that Caroline and I embarked on our voyage, bound for North Cornwall, back to Port Isaac. We’d decided to take on the old lifeboat house, perched on the very edge of the harbour, and turn it into a shop filled with every hue of nauticalia. We still live in that same village, in an old Captain’s house where we had our three sons. Jacob, George and Theo would run down to the beach and spend barefoot and sandy days rockpooling and swimming in the best playground any child could ever have; the very same one that I’d had as a boy, and always with the ever-changing grandeur of the Atlantic Ocean as backdrop. As it had been with me, the sea became a part of them.