Whilst reminiscing about my enjoyable time on Canvey Island I can recall one memorial occasion which, at the time, being young was then to me really nothing but looking back in hindsight must have been a terrifying thing for my father.
As I have mentioned in a previous posting we used to go down fishing and lay deadlines, bait them up when the tide was out then go back and collect the fish (if any) as the tide went out, there were usually up between 40 to 60 hooks on the lines and when it was cold it was not a pleasant job trying to push the worms onto the hooks.
The bait we used were rag worms which were large red multi legged worms with a pair of pincers in their head that could give you a nasty nip, these we used to dig up from around the base of the old pier supports.
This derelict pier was just over the sea wall opposite May Avenue and from there we used to walk out at an angle towards Chapman Lighthouse and when we were about a couple of hundred yards from the shore we would bait up our lines, these lines were left out on the mud all the time as nobody interfered with them and as we followed the tide out there was no chance for anyone to go out and steal the fish that were caught on the lines.
Getting back to this incident I recall. Early one morning my dad and I went down to collect any fish and bait up the lines ready for the next tide, it was very overcast with a slight mist coming in from the estuary but not enough to worry about.
Whilst we were concentrating on baiting up we were unaware that the mist had turned into a fog and we could only see 20 to 30 yards and when we went to go back to the shore we could not see it at all and had no idea which direction it laid.
What with all the tramping around the lines footprints everywhere we could not find our tracks we made coming out.
We started to walk one way for a while then tried another direction but we were hopelessly lost.
I had no idea of the danger we were in but I could sense that my dad was getting worried because if we walked towards the river there was what we called the 50 foot drop at the channel’s edge.
By this time there were tracks going in every direction so my dad started to shout out very loud “Can anybody hear me” time and time again but we could only hear the sound of the river which seemed to be coming from every direction and an echo of his voice.
After what seemed like an eternity of shouting there was a voice shouting back to us so my dad shouted back to him asking him to continue to shout so we could find our way back to shore, finally we emerged out of the fog and up onto the sea wall.
It was a bloke who was taking his dog for a walk and was the only one on the sea wall at that time.
The thing is neither my dad nor myself could swim so if that bloke was not there we could have been brown bread.
When you think back we were idiots for not taking safety precautions such as having a compass with us or laying out the deadlines in the shape of an arrow pointing to the shore.
As you get older you realize that fate decides whether you live or die, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fear is a very funny thing, for example when I was in the army and stationed in the Canal Zone our camp was on the edge of the Great Lakes and we had to do our share of guard duties and this entailed walking around the inside of the perimeter fence all on your Jack Jones with 10 rounds of live ammunition, every now and again the Arabs (just to annoy us) would fire the odd round into the camp which would alert all the camp, upset everyone’s sleep and cause havoc.
And walking around the perimeter you stood out like dog’s balls against the camp lights but nobody worried about this, you just took your turn of guard duty as a run of the mill thing.
Looking back now it makes me wonder why we were so blasé,