Richard Bettess
29/1/1879 – 23/7/63

Richard (Dick) Bettess was the third child and second son of Frederick Bettess, (10/10/1846-24/10/1916), who was born in Padstow, Cornwall. Frederick was a fisherman and seaman who married Margaret Anne Bond, (1855-31/3/1919), of Fleetwood and settled there. It is probably true to say that any one in Fleetwood with the surname Bettess is a descendant of Frederick and his wife.

Dick went to sea at the age of 11 as cook in the smack “William & John”, under the skipper Burgoyne Cowell. He sailed in a variety of smacks and prawners, and when he was 16 years old he was sent with ‘Pepper’ Wright to Southport to pick up the prawner “The Two Sisters” and bring her back to Fleetwood. ‘Pepper’ was about the same age as Dick, but Dick was in charge and he skippered the prawner for some time.For the next few years he alternated between smacks and steam trawlers until from 1901 he sailed exclusively in steam trawlers. On the 19th June 1902 he got his steam trawler skippers ticket and his first ship as skipper was the Marrs owned by J.Marrs & Co. This was followed by the Lucerne for the same company. On 16th October 1903 he took command of the Hellenic, belonging to ‘The Grimsby Steam Fishing Company’, better known to an earlier generation as ‘Kelly’s’ (W.M.Kelly).

On 29th December 1903 Dick married Kate Leadbetter whose forebears came from the Banks, near Southport, in the early immigration from that area to Fleetwood, so he was well connected throughout the old fishing community of the port.

In May 1904 he began sailing for “The Wyre Steam Trawling Co”, better known as Ward’s, and he worked for them, in one capacity or another, until about 1936, with a short break in the Navy. Wards made him their Commodore Skipper in 1911 and he continued fishing for most of the 1914-18 War. For some of the time in that war the fishing was organised on a convoy system, small groups of trawlers keeping together. One of the ships had a gun at the bow, in case they ran into an enemy vessel, and one had a gun at the stern to lag behind the others and engage the enemy if they were being chased.

At the beginning of the war Wards had 18 trawlers, but they were requisitioned gradually until in 1918 the last one, the Stormcock, which Dick skippered, was taken. Having no ship he was called up for the Navy and eventually was sent as an ordinary rating to a minesweeper, which was a steam trawler. Ironically he was the cook, and the commanding officer had been a bank manager in peace time. It is interesting to speculate whether the C.O. knew that his cook was a more competent seaman than he was and had far more experience in handling wire ropes and gear above and below water!
Dick served in the Navy from 19th July 1918 to 12th February 1919, when he returned to Wards, taking the Arley to sea on 20th March 1919.

On the 31st January 1920, while still in the Arley, he rescued four fishing boats and their crews, totalling 28 men, in the Sound of Innistrahull, off the north coast of Ireland during a gale. In a continuation of the same incident he went to sea again to Rathlin Island to pick up another six men whose boat had been driven ashore there. For this rescue the Royal National Lifeboat Institution presented him with a pair of silver mounted binoculars and gave the sum of £20 for division amongst the crew. Dick gave up his share to increase the amount for the others. There is a brief account in the magazine “The Lifeboat” of August 1920 on page 88. In this report it is stated “Although no actual risk of life was incurred by the crew of the trawler, it was due to their persevering endeavours, extending over twelve hours, that the men were saved”.

Dick was appointed Shore Skipper for Wards on 19th January 1921. His duties, as outlined in his letter of appointment, were concerned with the employment of skippers and mates, keeping an oversight of all the fishing gear on each ship, gathering information from their own skippers about where they had been fishing and with what results and doing the same generally about other ships, using this information to advise their own skippers on where to fish. In addition he would be sent to look into the merits of any new fishing gear, sometimes going to sea on trial trips, taking new ships for a few months to see how they behaved, particularly if they embodied new features. For example Wards had two new ships built about 1929, the “Lune” and the “Fane”. They both had cruiser sterns and balanced rudders, Dick took the “Fane” for about four or five months to give these new features a good trial. If one of their ships went ashore he would go with the insurance representative to have a look at her and to assess the chance of salvaging her.

About 1936 he was, in modern terms, “made redundant”, but in the language of those days “sacked”. It was caused partly by “the depression”, and partly by “politics” in the firm. Dick went back to full time fishing, sailing for Mellings perhaps properly known as “The Sun Steam Trawling Co”, but after a short time he was persuaded by Archie Watson, the manager for Mellings, to buy his own ship and sail her as skipper. The choice fell on the “Cameo” which was on the small side by the standards of that time but as compared with his early days she was a sizeable vessel. She was bought on the east coast and I do not know her original registration but Dick had the registration changed to Fleetwood and she became FD38. I think that this was because of loyalty to his home port. After sailing her a few years he, in the well known phrase “swallowed the anchor” and gave up seafaring. Round about this time he bought the “Oonah Hall” and ran the two ships through the “Sun” office. The “Sun’s” house colours were a black hull with a thin lighter coloured line right round and a white funnel with a black top separated from the white by a red band with an image of the sun in it. Dick followed this pattern but in place of the sun there was the letter B.

Very sadly the “Oonah Hall” was run down in the first year of the war and lives were lost. This hit Dick hard because in all his own seagoing career he had never lost a man. Soon after the end of the war the “Cameo’s” career came to an end and she was sent to the breakers yard. Dick kept up some interest in fishing by purchasing an inshore boat, the “Pamella” with one or two young men working it. Eventually he gave that up, but almost to the end of his life he visited the dock area, being taken by car because he had difficulty walking.

Some of the ships he sailed in are –
Prawners
Black Prince The Two Sisters

Smacks
William & John Snowdrop Lily Oyster Girl Cygnet
Comet Carlisle Margaret Agnes

Steam Trawlers – crew
Britanic Adriatic Rattler Akranes

Steam Trawlers – Skipper
Marrs Lucerne Hellenic Ribble Wyre Stormcock
Arley Trent Greta Maun Sulby
Queen Alexandra Brock Peter Lovett Transvaal J. Baels Mauriox
Fane Harry Melling Cameo

Information courtesy of Adrian Corkill (Dictionary of Shipwrecks off the Isle of Man)

The 47 ton Fleetwood smack Wave was trawling off St. Bees Head, Cumbria, on March 10th. 1918 when she was captured by the same submarine that had, earlier in the day, captured the smacks Marguerite and Sunrise. Marguerite had been sunk by means of a bomb placed aboard her when she was some 25 miles N ¼ E of Beaumaris while Sunrise went down by the same method 18 miles to the southeast of Maughold Head, Isle of Man. The submarine had released the crews of the two former smacks without loss of life. Wave suffered the same fate as the other two, 10 miles SW of St. Bees Head

FLEETWOOD TRAWLERS (either former, current or future) INVOLVED IN OPERATION NEPTUNE – NORMANDY LANDINGS June 06 1944

ADMIRAL SIR JOHN LAWFORD (LO42)
ALIDA (FD192)
ALL HALLOWS (ex JAMAICA (LO186))
AMBITION (ex THRUSH (H703)
ARMANA (FD121)
CEVIC (FD7)
CLYTH NESS (FD131)
CONGRE French (ex MININGSBY (FD25)-BOSTON WAYFARER (FD110))
CREVETTE (PERN (A160)
CYELSE (FD67)
DOROTHY LAMBERT (FD122)
EN AVANT Dutch (ex MAUN (FD81))
FAIRWAY (FD140)
GENERAL BIRDWOOD (H121)
HEROINE (ex HERO (FD227))
HMS CEDAR (CEDAR/RED GAUNTLET (LO33))
HMS LAUREL (PATRICIA HAGUE (FD58)
HMS LILAC (ROBERT HEWETT (LO427))
HMS PEARL (WESTELLA (H349/FD318))
HMS RUBY (CARELLA (FD216/FD319))
JACINTA (FD235)
JAMES LAY (LO339/FD189)
LORD ESSENDON (FD75)
LORD MIDDLETON (FD67)
LORD STANHOPE (H199)
LUNE (FD59)
NEIL SMITH (FD107)
NIBLICK (FD77)
NORTHCOATES (H329)
NORTHERN FOAM (LO153)
NORTHERN GEM (LO109)
NORTHERN GIFT (LO166)
NORTHERN PRIDE (LO104)
NORTHERN REWARD (LO168)
NORTHERN SKY (LO162)
NORTHERN WAVE (LO121)
NORTHLYN (FD90)
SCOMBER (FD98)

David Thomson & Alastair McIntosh
Published in The Herald, Glasgow, 17-12-98, p. 14.
For more publications like this, including other work jointly with David Thomson, see www.AlastairMcIntosh.com.

Like the proverbial cod, something has rotted from the head down in Britain’s fishing industry. The bottom-line evidence is decay of Scotland’s once-thriving fishing communities. Robbed over the past three decades of significant portions of their most basic resource, they are also diminished in what Gaelic poet, Derick Thomson, called their “laugher like a sprinkling of salt” and “a sprinkling of pride on their hearts.

What has happened is that centralised government and big-business control have sacrificed social and environmental considerations at the at the alter of narrowly conceived monetary objectives. The Government’s latest scheme is a case in point. It permits white fish landings at only 19 designated ports. Arbroath is excluded from the list so its famous haddock “smokie” risks extinction. Such measures reduce once self-reliant communities to dependency cultures. These are forced to take their bearings, cap-in-hand, from London and Brussels – the metropolitan centres where, through quota proceeds and corporate taxation, the benefits of resource colonisation end up. In consequence, the sons and daughters of one of the richest tributaries of Scottish culture get scattered to the four winds. Those left at home are made to feel bad about becoming junkies, if they are lucky, only to regional aid.

The root of the problem is fishing profits have become concentrated in the hands of a very few. Fleet owners have been forced to modernise, or get squeezed out by a Common Fisheries Policy that favours “survival of the fittest” rather than “survival of the most fitting”. So it is that some 3 dozen millionaires scoop-up Scotland’s entire catch of herring and mackerel. Indeed, just 45 pelagic ships with 450 crew now monopolise an erstwhile community resource which, at the end of World War II, supported over 1,000 boats, 10,000 crew and an even greater workforce on shore. Almost gone is the dignity of reverence that caused a previous generation of fishers, mindful of the 104th Psalm, to give their boats names like “Providence”.

If the 19th century saw Clearances from the land, the 20th has nailed the coffin lid to maritime communities. It has done so with three nails. Each would have been harmless, even benign, on its own. But like tides, wind and swell compounded, their cocktail has proven treacherous.

Europe, obviously, was the first nail. But it is easy to duck domestic responsibility by making Brussels the scapegoat. When Ted Heath negotiated Britain’s entry to the Common Market in 1970, he made fisheries the dowry. At that time, most community-based family-run boats had little political voice or lobbying power. Those which were well organised – the distant-water corporately-owned trawlers – were quite happy to see Britain’s resource gambled with because they had their eyes on greater horizons. As their industry had the upper hand in technology and capital, they reckoned on stealing the march when Norway compromised its fisheries’ sovereignty on entering the Common Market. However, Norway’s fishing communities voted against Europe. Meanwhile, Iceland’s claims were ratified in the International Court. And those same companies which had backed the pawning of Britain’s fisheries nosedived, dragging down with them Grimsby and Hull.

Ted Heath had actually wielded a double hammer-blow to traditional fishing communities. In presuming to treat fish as a national and European resource, centrally controlled, he also unwittingly undermined fishermen’s sense of being responsible for their own patch. This opened up that “tragedy of the commons” which results whenever traditional constraints and practices are replaced with a beggar-my-neighbour free-for-all. Law-abiding fishers thereby found themselves being criminalised as they struggled to compete with continental fleets and out-of-touch regulations. Most notorious of these is the enforced dumping of unwanted accidental by-catches of species that exceed quotas. As the skipper of MFV Amoria wrote in last week’s Fishing News, “I have just returned from yet another fishing trip where we were forced to dump 200 boxes of coley and 100 boxes of haddock – value up to £18,000 – and I am absolutely disgusted with this total waste of resources.”

The second nail in the coffin of community-based fishing was new technology. It facilitated a radical increase in range, catching efficiency and destructive side-effects. Handed-down skills, social understanding and an innate respect for how the ocean and seabed was treated ot ousted by a youthful determination to plunder as much as possible before competing foreign vessels did likewise. All this led inevitably to the third nail – capital intensification. Fishing as an intensive industry rather than an integrated way of life became a magnet for investors with more interest in quota transactions than community cohesion and holistic resource management. In these ways, the industry’s conquest by globalisation was concluded. “Harvest” became “bounty”. Is it possible, then, for Scotland’s fish and fishing cultures be restored? We believe that it is, but only if vibrant, sustainable and self-reliant coastal communities become the main policy objective. For this fisheries management should aim to optimalise economic and community linkages, multipliers and resource conservation. An economic “linkage” is when one activity integrates with another. Such links then enhance “multiplier” effects. For example, landing haddock at Arbroath links to processing “smokies”, which multiplies activity on the railways, in engineering workshops, post-offices, schools, churches and pubs. Fillet the fish out and much else is rendered spineless.

What Scottish fisheries most need is greater “subsidiarity” – control to regional bodies representing local communities. These would have a greater incentive to regulate fishing methods in accordance with sustainable community and conservation principles. An example of a country much smaller than Scotland achieving huge success is Namibia in southern Africa. This 1.5 million-person-state was under enormous pressure to continue allowing access to the EU fleet. But Namibia stood its ground, claimed control of its own 200 mile limit, and encouraged indigenous black and coloured business. It now has one of the most productive and best managed fisheries in the world, overtaking mining as its largest industrial employer. According to a recent Scottish Office discussion document, in the Scottish Parliament “inshore fisheries policy is likely to be a key element of the devolved powers”. And a 1997 report of the Scottish Secretary’s Advisory Group on Sustainable Development contains exemplary proposals for fishing. It emphasises need for a “change of culture” towards “sustainable practices” including, “enhancing a sense of ownership by giving communities special access and responsibility for their local fishing resource” and “reform of the Common Fisheries Policy for regional and local variations in the allocations of rights to fish.” Holyrood must add teeth to such vision. In so doing, it might look to new precedents in agriculture. The European Council in its November 1997 refocusing of the Common Agricultural Policy advocated environmental friendliness, sustainability, and the enhancement of the vitality of rural life.

If North Sea stocks alone could be restored to 1970 levels, fish catches could potentially get close to double the present figures. For such reasons, reform or replacement of the Common Fisheries Policy could benefit all Europe. Working with Westminster, Scotland’s new parliament should set sail on a turned tide. St Andrew’s House must cast our net upon the waters. A “miraculous catch” awaits.

Alastair McIntosh is a fellow of Edinburgh’s Centre for Human Ecology. David Thomson is a former staff member of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and has served in over 50 countries.