She slipped her moorings, proud and new, in nineteen fifty-eight’s first light,
With polished flank and burnished rail that caught the dockside’s eager gaze;
Her iron lungs with oil-fed breath beat steady through the northern night,
A triple pulse of piston-song to drive her through the cod-rich ways;
And men spoke low of Iceland’s grounds where silver shoals in plenty lay.
Through Arctic swells and iron winds she carved her path with steadfast will,
Her decks made white by freezing spray, her rigging groaned in salted strain;
Yet in her hold the harvest grew, and all the village’s hearths stood still
To bless the catch that fed the shore and eased the long year’s want and pain;
So Nell became both bread and bone to those who trusted in her keel.
But tempests changed from wind and wave to laws drawn cold in distant halls,
Where voices thin and knees unsure bent low before a stranger’s claim;
The cod wars raged beyond her prow, yet deeper still were quieter falls,
Of grounds laid bare by foreign nets that neither knew nor cared for name;
Till silver shoals grew thin as ghosts and once-rich banks fell mute and bare.
So years inscribed their ledger stern in rust and paint on weary plate,
Her shining youth now overlaid with scars of storm and ice-bound night;
Her old hull creaked with memory’s weight, her engines sighed against their fate,
While smaller catches mocked the toil that once returned in noble might;
And at her helm a grandson stood, grown old before his rightful time.
At last she turned for harbour’s mouth where Grimsby’s lights burned dim and low,
No triumph now within her hold, no shouting men, no market’s cry;
She came as all proud vessels must when tide and trade no longer flow,
A final trawl behind her wake, a fading track beneath the sky;
And there she lay, a nation’s tale of strength unkept and fortunes spent.
(By John Shenton)