washedawayuk

[washedawayuk]

Salt Water - Part Two

The north Atlantic was always ripe for the industry, the powers the area new it. It was also a perfect corridor for submarines. The waters between Britain and Iceland, Iceland and Greenland, were vital - western powers would see them protected at all cost. If a single state were to revoke their membership to NATO, the Soviets would have a perfect gateway to America. Cold War paranoia at its boiling point, this was something that could not happen.

Unfortunately for the residents of Grimsby town, they weren’t the only place with a vital stake in cod. For the island nation in the north Atlantic that kept the passageway so vitally, fishing was also their primary industry. It was on this necessity that Iceland delivered their ultimatum: give us a favorable deal for control over these waters, or we exit NATO.

By the end of these ‘Cod Wars’ and a decisive victory in Iceland’s favor, thousands of British fishermen were now unemployed. Many of them lived in Grimsby.

Now it’s a name associated with decay, dilapidation. The poster child for the grim north, grey, soggy, hopeless. On the high street shutters remain closed. Bricked in windows of a pub on the corner. You would here stories of women standing in the cold by at night by the docklands. Then back towards town is the East marsh, a place riddled with crime, the second worst in the country.

In 2012, 35 years after hundreds of Grimsby’s residents - skilled fishermen - had lost their jobs, they were given compensation: £1000 each, too little, too late.

[washedawayuk]

Salt Water - Part One

Heave! The longboat would stride over the oceans. Twenty-five men with chucky oars wrestling the deep, sending foam over the sides. Twisted lines of rope hoisting a square sail. The ship would come into harbor. A mill, a priest, a ferry. The chartered town named for a fisherman – Grimsby, the twelfth port of England.

Now the sun breaks between the tower blocks. Anyone could tell you the north was hit the hardest. It was a powerhouse. In the days of the industrial revolution, you would find miles of cotton and wool combed and stretched out on factory floors. Towers bellowing into the sky, dark and smoking. The chugging, churning, force of industry. Then coal: communities of miners, leaving the pit covered in soot. Washed off and settled into their homes, for a night’s rest in a northern town.

For Grimsby it was fishing, it always had been. In the early twentieth century the trawlers would return, stacked high with cod. There was a fortune to be had out there in the blue – the lifeblood of the town imbued by salt water. Then came the Cold War.

[washedawayuk]

Shipwrecked - Part Two

Now they’re covered by chipboard. The brickwork is cracking, a second floor propped up by abandoned scaffolding. Inside might be a den for the homeless, discarded needles and empty cans. The town reeks of addiction. Not just opium, but anti-depressants. It’s the Prozac capital of England. Some terraces will house only the old and sick, drawn to cheap properties by the sea.

Little money comes to the town outside of tourism. In some places other industry can be found – a site a mile from the town pumps water and chemicals deep into the earth to crack open Lancashire stone and export the fuel within. The process creates tremors felt by the locals. Like the top of the tower that sways in the wind, now the town sways with it.

Every year the town waits for summer, for an ever declining number of tourists. In the winter months the sea shivers. The beach is empty, save a dog walker. Further inland, beach huts may line parts of the prom – but the chairs are gone, they were sold to a town in Cheshire.

Blackpool used to be the seaside town. For thousands, it remains a place of fond childhood memories – holidays in the sun, seaside rock, fish and chips in little cafes on the beach. Some say there’s a great deal of enjoyment to be had on the warmer days, in sunshine and sand - people certainly still visit. But as it continues to shrink into deprivation, yet another seaside town thrown into disrepair, it finds itself like the crew of the Abana, ran aground.    

[washedawayuk]

Shipwrecked - Part 1

Lights flicker up the promenade. From the beach – the twisting and rolling of fairground rides can be heard. Arcades, Ice cream, sandcastles. The quintessential sea-side experience. Blackpool would bring smiles to millions.

A December night in 1894 – the sea, frothing and writhing. The Norwegian ship Abana had set off on a voyage from the port of Liverpool, it’s destination, waiting miles across the Atlantic, was a city named Savannah - the oldest in the state of Georgia. Now it found itself shipwrecked of the coast of little Bisham. It had mistaken Blackpool tower for a lighthouse.

It’s understandable how from a-far, the newly built tower, a structure of red-bricks, corrugated iron and steel stretching 500 feet upward, gleaming, could have been easily mistaken. It was not just the Abana that was drawn to its glow.

Upon opening three thousand people came to ascend it. A sixpence for admission, a sixpence for the lift, a sixpence to for the circus. Below, a golden mile of guest houses and bed and breakfasts; a place for a warm bed and a hot meal, to rub the sand off your soles. A place to return after watching the illuminations - thousands of coloured lights swimming up and down the promenade. Then the tower above it all.

[washedawayuk]

After The Flood - Part Two 

This was the birth of Jaywick’s many small abodes, loosely stringed along it’s cracked fairways, crumbling temporary structures which the residents of the town’s eastern quarter nonetheless call their own. They have become Infamous. Last year an image of the town caught the attention of a politician thousands of miles away – epitomizing decay, degradation - used condescendingly in a campaign advertisement. It’s message: if you vote for the other candidate, this could be you.

Now the town remains stagnant. The tide grows ever closer. Amongst the screeching of seagulls - a place of rampant drug use and poverty, where forty percent of its residents are afflicted by disability, and sixty are on free school meals. Sometimes there will be a television or film crew. A tactfully named documentary – provoking the viewers of Sunday night telly. ‘Benefits by the sea’.

Once their 45 minutes has ended, they would pack up and leave - whilst the town struggles on – waiting, anticipating the sea’s return.

[washedawayuk]

After The Flood  - Part One

It wasn’t a long battle. The war had been over for eight years - those who lived in the little hamlet, like the rest of the country, were still on a strict regime of rationing. Bread, Meat, Petrol. A little of each to the citizens. The hamlet kept chugging on. Unprepared for this next invasion.

Then it came rising up the sands, on the eve of February, committing a feat Hitler had failed to do in the years earlier. An enemy of great scale – untamed and formidable. It was the sea.

Thirty five died by the armada, a flood that had swept across the north sea, ravaging from the tip of Scotland to the undefended lowlands of Holland and Belgium. The local authorities, vigilant that it should not happen again, would sharpen their defenses if there was to be another attack. But the rising sea would counter these measures - and time after time it would strike.

The town’s roads are in a state of disrepair – cracking, broken, unadopted. Built on a salt marshland that shifts throughout the year. The vehicles that come to rescue the residents would be hindered by the streets. An evacuation difficult but necessary. Then they would be taken to nearby Clacton, to await the sea’s retreat.

When the Second World War had ended, there was a small flocking to Jaywick Sands. As London repaired its wounds and houses were hard to come by, the possibility of a place by the sea was an enticing prospect. Years before, Londoners would come by the coachload for the holidays – a weekend on the beach. Now they were encouraged to keep a piece of the land for their own.