Climbing out of despair and into Port Brokeferry

(Have been in the 'Slough of Despond'... a second computer disaster... on my rescued computer with new clean hard drive... nothing on the screen... and again I had neglected to back up... 42,ooo words of new children's novel in there... thought I'd lost it all again... Transpires to be a problem with my screen... the computer is getting old and beyond its natural life and everything is breaking down... but at least all my stuff is there. 

So here's a Port Brokeferry piece. The introductory thing to the second section, the second day, Tuesday. It's a bit of Port Brokeferry history, to convince the reader that it exists as a place. The next piece will follow real soon.)

PORT BROKEFERRY June 17^th, 1882

THERE ARE GIANTS AMONGST US

They say giants roamed the earth in days past. Imagine the land buckled by earthquakes under their dancing feet. See stones tossed into the air, as though giants were at play, and the stones crashing against the sides of houses, the sides of hills. The sea was as rough as this and as hard. It was as though not just giants but gods sported there, careless of the smallness of man. On such a night boats do well to stay close to their berths, anchored in safest water. Fishermen do best to huddle over their home-fires spinning stories of heroes and big fish never caught. June 17^th, 1882 was not a night for casting nets or sailing forth into the history books.

Yet three men from Port Brokeferry are to be honoured by Queen Victoria for the part they played in a daring sea rescue on this night. Putting to sea when others shook their heads and rolled their frighted eyes, Finlay Hart, Hugh Preston, and Gavin Gladwell, with no thought to their own safety and in answer to a distress call, embarked upon an astonishing adventure.

A ship had run aground on The Snag, a jagged series of rocks some three miles out to sea from Port Brokeferry. That should have been the end of the story. The world should have woken to wreckage washed up on the shore and bodies bloated and pale fished from the water. But that was not how this story was to be written.

Thirty men from HMS Fellowship owe their lives to the small crew of The Best Foot Forward. Risking their own lives and their own boat, the three fishermen put forth from Port Brokeferry a little after midnight. It is not enough to say that they knew these waters – even for them in such weather what was familiar was made a stranger to them. It was, they said afterwards, the hand of God that led them to The Snag that night. It was the hand of God that pulled the crew of HMS Fellowship from the boiling sea with the loss of but one and brought them all safely back to Port Brokeferry.

Stories should hereafter be told round the fires of the less brave, and songs sung, for here are giants among men. Finlay Hart, Hugh Preston and Gavin Gladwell will receive the highest peacetime honour and a pension for life for the service they gave to their Queen and their country on that night.

(Extract from ‘The Times’ - 23^rd June, 1882)