Memories of the boats
These old films become more valuable when somebody can put a name to a boat and tell us what became of her. Adrian Bagnall recognised the green-sided trawler towards the end of the film as RX213 Misty Lights. He remembers an identical sister ship, believed to have been named Carol Ann, and says that both boats spent most of their working lives fishing from Rye. Misty Lights later went to Newhaven, where a stern gantry was fitted and she worked as a stern trawler. Adrian worked aboard her in the early 1980s and remembers a lovely old boat with a Gardner engine, turning at only about 1,100 rpm flat out—perhaps one reason those engines lasted so long.
David Pearce identified the varnished boat in the middle of the film as the Carrik Lass, owned by his uncles Ron and Bill Dott. They brought her over from Ireland in the 1960s and fished her from Rye before selling her to Mick Sharp. Ron and Bill later had another boat, Harvester, which they also worked from Rye. Both men have sadly passed away, but David’s memory restores their names—and the names of their boats—to this little piece of Rye’s fishing history.
