Research on the lives of my ancestors began as a quest to find a place of belonging in my adopted home of England.
In African culture one is taught to honour one’s ancestors. But as a young white South African I found it more comfortable to edit them out of my own narrative. So it was that in 2008 I began researching my ancestry with almost no knowledge about my forebears.
Going back and back and back through the generations was like being a child looking up at the clear night sky and wondering at unknown galaxies, the meaning of human life...
I started with the maternal line, which as far as I knew derived from Cornish mining stock. These were St Ives men who emigrated in the late nineteenth century to work on the new gold mines of the Witwatersrand. Family legend goes that my grandmother Mabel met my grandfather Samuel Roach on the boat and was promised to him in marriage, a marriage which took place in Johannesburg.
To my surprise I discovered that Samuel Roach, his father John, and their ancestors before them were not miners but were people of the sea—fishermen, sailors, fish curers and the like. Grandfather Samuel was the first to leave this coastal life and venture underground.
As maids, miners and mariners, my Roach ancestors left no diaries or letters, no written bio to illuminate their lives. All that remains of them are the sparse dates and details in institutional documentation such as parish records, census reports, marriages, births and deaths. The first John Roach in the Cornish Online Parish records was born in 1711 to a man also named John Roach. The tradition of naming the firstborn male child after his father, and the second born after his uncle, means hundreds of John and Samuel Roach records for St Ives, which tries my patience and my sleuthing ability. Even the search for Samuel’s birthdate is a challenge as successive census records insist he was born in both 1880 and 1882. I later discovered that my grandfather was named after his elder brother, who died age two years. Also a common naming practice in those days.
Downalong fisherman and his wife, early 20th century.
After years of intermittent research, I have now managed to summon the ghosts of my St Ives ancestors from the records. As far as we can know, the male children went to work early, in their second decade—as fishermen and sailors—and the girls left school at an even younger age to work as maids or on the shore, processing the catch their men brought in. They lived in Downalong, a fishing district of tiny cottages and cobbled streets close to the waterside.
Their houses accommodated their trade. The living space was up a set of stone steps, and the space underneath used to store nets, sails and other tools of the fishing trade. The fish was cured in pilchard cellars in the neighbourhood, owned by local businessmen.
English writer Wilkie Collins gave us an insight into the lives of St Ives fisherfolk in his 1851 description of a pilchard catch.
“There they stand, six or eight stalwart sunburnt fellows, ranged in a row in the “seine” boat, hauling with all their might at the “tuck” net, and roaring the regular nautical “Yo-heave-ho!” in chorus!... The water boils and eddies; the “tuck” net rises to the surface, and one teeming, convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales; one compact crowd of tens of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly endeavouring to escape, appears in an instant!|
“The noise before was as nothing compared with the noise now. Boats as large as barges are pulled up in hot haste all round the net; baskets are produced by dozens: the fish are dipped up in them, and shot out, like coals out of a sack, into the boats. Ere long, the men are up to their ankles in pilchards; they jump upon the rowing benches and work on, until the boats are filled with fish as full as they can hold, and the gunwales are within two or three inches of the water.”
After the landing, the fish were put into wicker baskets and hoisted ashore where they were gutted, salted, packed into barrels and pressed for oil.
The pilchard season lasted from July until the end of the year, and this meant hard work and long hours for my ancestors. The fisherfolk of St Ives worked until they dropped.
One of the few hints about the specificity of Roach lives in St Ives came from an 1836 West Briton newspaper article that described my fifth great grandfather (five greats) John Roach working on the foreshore: a “venerable fisherman, upwards of 90 years, has been tucking up fish out of season out of the sean [seine net]… and performs his work surprisingly well.”
He died in four years later—the oldest man in the town.
Sea view from a St Ives guest house. Photo: Lesley Lawson, 2012.
“Oozing cottage chic, The Fish Cellar has been beautifully created and styled to present the perfect holiday home-from-home. Located in the picture perfect Downalong area of St Ives, enjoy the luxury of the location as you explore the cobbled streets, white sand beaches and bustling harbour life all moments from your holiday door…. Climb the stairs to the lofty Master bedroom and take in the sea views, this spacious double- bedded room assures a quiet haven from holiday life below.” Online brochure for a holiday let, St Ives
By the time I visited Downalong in 2012 it was a prime holiday destination. Out-of-towners had bought the fishermen’s cottages, and B&Bs had replaced fish as a source of seasonal income. Residents spoke of Downalong being a ghost town in the winter, with few lights in the houses and restaurants and cafés closed.
Downalong, 2012. Photo: Lesley Lawson, 2012.
I track down Martin Roach, a distant cousin, the last “fishing” Roach left in St Ives. He was retired after a successful career as a boat builder, but all his forefathers were fishermen. We met in a fisherman’s lodge on the foreshore where the walls are papered with photographs of boats and men of bygone times. This used to be a place where fishermen relaxed after the catch. Now it is a refuge where old friends meet to remember the past. Martin tells me that the Roach family has scattered, and the fishing life is over. There are only about a dozen fishermen still working in St Ives. “Where there is tourism” he says, “There is ruination.”
Martin Roach in the fisherman’s’ lodge. Photo: Lesley Lawson, 2012.
References:
Wilkie Collins, Rambles beyond railways, 1851. Quoted in History of a Pilchard Palace.