The Reaper The Boats That Built Britain

Britain is an island surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.

For centuries it protected us from attack. But to prosper and thrive

we would need to do more than just hide behind her saltwater shield.

Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown.

And it needed good boats to take them there.

I've spent my life at sea.

Now I'm going to take passage on six boats that together tell the story of modern Britain.

Built for exploration, war, industry and our very survival,

these are the boats that built Britain and changed the way we live forever.

This time I'm setting sail on a boat that fed millions,

a fishing boat, a Scottish Fifie, the Reaper.

In the 19th century, Britain's population was growing fast.

The country needed a source of cheap, abundant food.

The seas around Scotland were full of it.

All the fishermen needed now was a boat fast, powerful and safe enough to bring that food to shore.

Fortunes have been won and lost at sea

and none more so than in vessels like this. The Reaper.

The archetypal big Scottish herring lugger.

The vessel that, in a very real sense, fed Britain.

So how did she come to be?

The Reaper is a Fifie-class herring boat.

She's the biggest sail-powered fishing vessels ever built in Britain.

70 feet on the water, with a total sail area of almost 3,500 square feet.

She's like nothing before or since.

You can see and feel the power of this sail as it's working.

This giant of a boat can reach speeds of over ten knots and weighs in at 60 tonnes.

In fact she's so big that her development was only possible

with the introduction of new steam technology, to hoist the huge sails

and pull in the drift nets, full to bursting with up to ten tonnes of herring.

It'd be a noble sight if it was coming over shining...

-With silver.

-..with silver herring.

At the end of the 19th century there were almost 1,000

big luggers fishing off the east coast of Scotland.

Now only the Reaper remains.

But despite her size and complexity, the Reaper was not a vessel

designed by a team of specialist boat designers.

She's a craft that evolved from hard experience,

designed and conceived by the very fishermen who sailed her.

But to understand how the Reaper came to be, you have to start not at sea, but inland.

1792 is known as the year of the sheep in the Scottish Highlands.

Wealthy landlords decided they could make more money from wool than from their tenant farmers.

So they forced them off the land, and down to the coast.

Unable to make ends meet on their new, smaller farms,

many were searching for a different way to feed their families.

I'm walking down to these shore-side crofts for the first time

this morning and I'm thinking, "what on earth must it have been like for the first guys to do this?"

As I look around I see land that holds little promise, and away in front of me is the North Sea.

Not a good prospect.

But what those farmers soon realized was that out there,

off the Dogger Bank, the waters were teeming with millions of herring.

With little land to farm on, they would have no option but to learn to sail, to get out on the deep.

But they were going to have to take their lives in their hands.

Because these are some of the most dangerous waters in Britain.

I've had nights out there, with the sea out of sight of land, shallower

than the height of my mast, and breakers all around me, and known I've been in the wrong place,

and been fortunate to survive, I shouldn't have been there. I should

have been off the Dogger and so should many a fisherman before me who didn't make it off the bank.

It can be a desperate place.

But it can feed you too, and it can feed your family,

and given the chance it can feed the whole of Britain.

Here in Helmsdale, on the north east coast of Scotland, fishing is now a way of life.

But 200 years ago, when the first farmers came down from the hills,

they didn't have the faintest clue about fishing or the sea.

To succeed, what they needed was a small boat that was easy to sail

and cheap to build.

Alex Jappy is Helmsdale's harbour master.

He is directly descended from those first fishermen.

His boat Blossom is the sort of craft they would have sailed in those early days.

Wow...

wonderful vessel.

It must be one of the most basic rigs you can get.

Yeah, and because its not all tied to the mast the air can flow

freely over the sail and it sails a lot better than people imagine.

-I'm dying to have a go.

-She's all yours.

-Thank you very much.

Blossom is a Stroma yawl, the boat that launched Scottish fishing on a remarkable evolutionary journey

that started with simple boats like this and ended with giants like the Reaper.

Back then she would have been an open boat,

vulnerable to every breaking wave.

She wouldn't have had an engine either.

Though in a narrow harbour like Helmsdale's, I'm sure they

would have killed for a few horsepower to help them through.

Well, we're under power,

that apart, this is what it must have been like on the day.

I'm looking astern and there's two orange marks behind me.

If I keep them in line we stay off the bricks, which is where we want to be.

The skipper will give me hell if we get off the line. Looking good.

I can see a red and a green buoy out here, and we'll leave

the red to starboard, and the green buoy will pass to port of us.

Bit more power...

Oh, that sounds good.

With the harbour cleared, I'm really curious to find out just how this early design will handle

as she would have done, all those years ago,

under sail alone.

And on a small boat like this, she should go up without a hitch.

That's the great thing about this boat, she's just so simple.

So what we've got here is the simplest of all rigs.

We've got a simple four-cornered sail

that sail makers would be able to build without any difficulty.

It's controlled by a rope, called a sheet, on this corner.

The front bottom corner is simply hooked to the bow of the boat.

The top of the sail is spread by a spar, called a yard. And to hoist the sail

there's a rope goes through a sheath, at the top of the mast, which comes down,

is hooked onto the ring, and as you saw we pulled it up from here.

And there's a clever bit. This mast is effectively unstayed, there's nothing really holding it up

at all. But once the sail is up, it's held up by the very rope which pulls the sail aloft.

This rig has got to be the cheapest rig you can have, and yet actually it's one of the most efficient.

Because that sail, it just sits there and the breeze

blows round it and as it blows round it blows faster round the back of the sail than the front, and because

of the mysteries of science, the boat is lifted in that direction.

Couldn't be simpler.

Cheap, simple but effective, it's the perfect boat for a farmer who's

had to turn his hand to fishing and is finding his way out on the water.

What a fantastic little boat.

Really...simple.

Very beautiful, actually.

This is the sort of boat that a man could build on the beach.

They could even make their own sails, and they did.

And with boats like this subsistence fishing was a genuine possibility here.

But despite all her advantages, this boat has one serious drawback.

You see, she wasn't decked at that time.

She was very vulnerable to heavy weather.

Really, they were limited completely by their size.

If you want to fish more adventurously, make more money, you needed a bigger boat.

You've got to go further off shore.

And, of course, as soon as you do that danger is lurking under every storm cloud.

Taking Alex's little Stroma yawl out on a sunny day is one thing.

To do it willingly in a gale could be seriously dangerous.

The North Sea is infamous for its steep, breaking waves.

It only takes one big one to swamp an undecked boat and send her to the bottom.

But there were fishermen willing to risk everything to pull fish from these waters.

It shows how desperate these people were.

And the death toll was becoming horrendous.

In one single night of tempest in 1848, 100 fishermen lost their lives,

leaving 47 widows and 161 children behind.

There's an account here from the Aberdeen Journal from 1848.

"From the proceeding accounts it will be seen that it is impossible

"to give at present a correct estimate of the total loss of life

"within the districts visited by the gale.

"Upwards of 40 individuals have perished on the Aberdeen and Kincardineshire coast,

"while we already have certain intelligence of more than

"50 having been lost on those of Sutherland and Caithness."

It is shocking, isn't it?

The numbers of people...

fathers, sons, who just died out there in one night.

With each storm, more men drowned, and it was only so long

that politicians could ignore the grim statistics.

In 1849, they decided to act.

A comprehensive study of the state of Scottish fishing was made,

with the findings written up and presented to Parliament.

The Washington report concluded that two things were urgently needed.

Better harbours and, most important of all,

safer boats.

Again and again, the report stressed one area of boat design.

Decking. Decking is a boat's most vital safety feature

because it prevents waves from filling and sinking her.

The report also included the lines of other boats

to help illustrate how this idea might be incorporated.

The Scots fishermen set to work.

They accepted the safety features, but they also wanted a bigger, faster boat.

Now boat yards sprang up all over Scotland's east coast, eager to exploit an increase

in demand for boats that would meet the need for both safety and speed.

So, just how did you go about designing a brand new type of fishing boat back in 1850?

You think, new design of fishing boat. They'll go to some designer, won't they?

Some genius with a pen is going to draw a wonderful plan like you see in the books of a fishing boat.

Different from anything else. Well, that's not how it was.

Actually these are vernacular craft.

They were designed by working people for working people, and like

the whole of the British Isles over, they never got drawn on paper.

They were built from models.

Here's how it worked.

This is a half model,

and the way it worked was this.

The boat builder and the fisherman got together.

They might have done it in the church hall in Scotland,

in the south of England they probably went to the pub.

But they talked about the shape they wanted the boat to be.

And then the builder actually built a model of half of the hull, just like that, and he showed it

to the fisherman and he said, "What do you think of this?"

And the fisherman eyeballed it and he could see everything he wanted to see and he said,

"I think she's a bit fat aft. I think you need to do something about that."

So the builder went away, got his sandpaper and he filed the boat away or maybe glued

a bit more on, smoothed it up again, took it to the fisherman, "What do you think of her now?"

"Yeah, she'll do!"

For generations, that's how Scottish fishermen had built their small boats.

And now, the Washington Report had made clear that these boats were no longer up to the job.

Yet these same methods of design and construction

produced a thrilling new design, huge, fast and safe - the Fifie.

This is the basic model for the hull of a Fifie like the Reaper.

She looks very bluff and ordinary, doesn't she?

It's only when you look at her end on that you see

the beauty of her lines, look at these lovely curves here.

The sweetness of the way the water is going to flow off that.

And the staunch, aggressive chin sticking out there.

That's going to meet the sea.

There's a lot of boat in the water and that's going to make her safe.

But she's long and lean underneath, and that's going to make her fast.

But the real test of any boat is when she's launched and takes to the sea.

And finally I'm lucky enough to sail on the Reaper, the biggest Fifie ever built.

I've been invited on board by Robert Prescott, a maritime historian,

who's spearheaded the restoration of Reaper to her former glory.

She's absolutely huge, isn't she?

-She is, yes.

-I can't wait to get out there.

I've come a long way this.

Heading out to sea, the first thing that strikes me about this boat

is her sheer size.

As the 19th century progressed,

herring became such an important food for the whole of Britain

that the government offered a financial incentive

to any Scottish fishermen building a boat over 60ft.

The bigger your boat, the more money you got.

And few were larger than the Reaper.

Her statistics are impressive enough on paper, but out here

with the best part of 3,000 square feet of sail

about to go aloft, she's a boat that demands respect.

Right down on the deck is one of the biggest piles of canvas

you'll ever see on a fore and aft rigged vessel.

This is the biggest lugger, probably, in the world.

I'm hanging onto the main halyard that's going to pull up this great big sail in a minute.

There's another block aloft.

And this piece here is the hauling end of the rope.

This is what, in a smaller boat, a couple of guys would get hold of, heave away, and lift that sail.

But you can't do it on here. It is too much.

And that was always the limiting size on sailing luggers.

So how did they hoist the sails on a boat the size of the Reaper?

The answer was a new technology that revolutionized Scottish fishing

and allowed the boats to get even bigger.

Steam.

Hoisting the Reaper's mainsail would have been a backbreaking job for the whole crew.

An unthinkable task in a heavy sea.

But by harnessing the power of the steam capstan,

it became a simple operation carried out at the pull of a lever.

Our man here is hoisting the sail using the capstan, lot of load

on the halyard, the yard is slowly going up the mast.

There's a guy at the foot of the mast there who is controlling the front edge of the sail.

He controls it, otherwise it will go absolutely berserk.

As it is, it's gone up remarkably under control.

I'm most impressed by that.

I thought it would be much more chaotic, and it's not, and the tension is starting to come on now.

If we watch the front edge of the sail we'll see it sharpen up,

as the load comes on the capstan.

Here it comes.

The sail is filling, the boat is bearing away slowly from the wind,

and, well, we're off.

She's doing what she was born to do now, and this is what I've come all this way to do.

And in fact what I've been waiting 20 years to do.

This is a serious thrill.

Capable of over ten knots, boats like the Reaper could now travel

over 200 miles in a single day, opening up new fishing grounds all along the east coast of Britain.

Standing here, on the lee bow of the boat,

right in the sail, I can feel the wind being accelerated around the sail as it goes round.

And actually, I'm on the slow side of the sail. What's going on round

the back is probably five knots more than what I'm getting here.

You can see and feel the power of the sail as it's working. And as you look up,

it's gigantic.

Now men who had once fished alone worked as crews, all pulling together to tame these huge boats.

It's a brute to handle. I think you really need half a dozen

young fit Scottish fisherman who are motivated to get rich quick, to make this happen.

But these lads are amazing, I'm really impressed that these fellas can do this.

Not a man of them without a bus pass, and they're sailing a boat that was designed for 25-year-olds.

OK, guys.

All right, John?

Now, with the sails set, it's off to the fishing grounds.

The Fifie transformed fishing in Scotland and changed the lives of the fishermen forever.

Bigger, faster boats allowed them to fish further afield

and crews were now working from the Norway Deeps to the Dover Strait.

The local lasses followed the boats, travelling as far south as Suffolk,

gutting and salting the fish the men brought ashore.

All right then.

50 cran tonight, lads!

Herring are fished with drift nets that hang down from floats on the surface.

By the late 19th century, Scots fishermen were using new cotton nets

that were much lighter than their hemp predecessors.

In her heyday, the Reaper would have set over a mile of nets.

Today we're going to try our luck with just 100 yards to see what we can catch.

-We've got the nets out, Robert.

-Absolutely, and it's looking good.

You can see the line of the head rope, the cork floats on it, there.

And at the end of each of the panels of net, the big white bow,

-it'll form a nice straight line in a wee while.

-Yeah.

This boat represents the absolute peak of herring drifter development,

and you couldn't run a boat this size, and fleets of nets this size,

-without the assistance of this beast here.

-No.

There it is, our little fleet, stretched out to windward of us.

And then all you could do was wait and hope the silver darlings,

as fishermen call the herring, were busy swimming into the nets.

It was much-needed respite, and unlike the earlier, open boats, Reaper offered a place

out of the wind and spray where the fishermen could put their feet up and fill their bellies.

Not only did the Reaper have a cabin to shelter from the elements,

she also offered a coal-fired stove to dry clothes and cook a hot meal.

An unimaginable comfort on an open boat.

-Cullen Skink today.

-Cullen Skink.

A very traditional dish, made with haddock.

On longer trips, the fishermen would cook for themselves as they do on modern trawlers.

But if the men were out on a shorter trip, food was left to the wives, who would prepare what I can only

describe as a 19th-century packed lunch. Is this an original one?

This is an original one. See inside here we have

all the provisions you'd need for a night at sea.

Butter and goats cheese, cheddar,

boiled eggs, oat cakes, fruit loaf.

-Might have a go on that one myself.

-Yeah, I think you should.

-That was top notch.

-Bit of fruit loaf.

-That'll stick to your ribs.

-And, of course, something to drink.

-A nice bottle of beer.

But look at the label,

it's got a picture of a minister holding a prayer book open.

-What's that all about?

-Well, the guys were going to sea,

-and it was quite comforting to have something to drink with them.

-Yes.

But the social impact of that on those small communities was often

not good, and as a consequence you got a strong temperance movement developing.

And I think this is a wonderful example of a brewer having a marketing solution to the problem.

"It may be beer, but it's the ministers beer!"

That's right, isn't it great. Send for the minister!

-Well, it's a shame it's all been drunk, Robert.

-Well, yes, it is.

Warmed and fed, the men were now much better prepared for the long haul that lay ahead.

A six-hour shift that on a good day could bring in over ten tonnes of herring.

Hauling this lot in by hand would be impossible.

But with the steam capstan pressed into service once again, a job that would have taken an army, could now

be tackled by one man maintaining a gentle pull on the end of a rope.

The capstan became known as the iron man of the seas.

Fifies like Reaper transformed what had once been subsistence fishing into an international trade.

By 1913, Scotland was exporting 2.5 million barrels of herring all over Europe each year.

Ultimately, the sea just couldn't keep up.

Under the onslaught of these bigger boats, and the steam drifters that followed them,

fish stocks started to dwindle. Today, numbers are a fraction of those once fished by the Reaper.

Nothing in the nets yet, Robert?

Nothing's parted either, which is good.

It'd be a noble sight if it was coming over...

-Shining with silver.

-..with silver herring.

I think the best we can hope for today is some mackerel.

A couple of mackerel for our breakfast tomorrow!

When the Reaper fished, the seas were full of herring.

And full to the gunnels, it was time to set both sails and crack on for home.

From humble beginnings, the Scots fishermen had built a boat that mastered the sea.

The sheer ease with which this great big boat is just flying

across the Firth of Forth, we're just scuttling along.

There wasn't a steam drifter, there wasn't a steam-powered coaster,

there was nothing under power that could get anywhere near this.

And this is what let her get out to the fishing grounds, do her job

and then get back again, before the herring spoiled.

And it's all so lo-tech, these sails are so simple,

and they're lifting the boat.

It's this feeling she's being lifted, there's a feeling of weightlessness about her.

It's rather ethereal, actually. Sailing on a big lugger.

You should try it.

Today, the herring might have all but gone,

but the memory of those hard, brave men who fished them, lives on.

If you're lucky you might still find a few old salts that remember the songs

the fishermen sang as the nets came in.

# Up jumped the herring The king of the shoal

# And he said You'd be far better off on the dole

# In this windy old weather Stormy old weather

# When the wind blows We'll all be...#

A remarkable bunch, your Scottish fishermen.

Forced from the land onto the cruellest of seas,

it took a lot of valiant men's lives to bring about the development of a boat this good.

And I can't think of a more fitting testimony to their memory

than the sight of the Reaper driving hard for home.

A genuinely amazing boat.

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