I’ve always been a fan of boats to some extent but moving to North Shields recently has made me appreciate them more than ever. I love all the boats, the big ones, the little ones, the fishing ones, the lifeboats, the ferries, and of course let us not forget the medium-sized boats – they’re all great.
But we’re here today to talk about the big boats.
But we’re here today to talk about the big boats. I often sit up on one of the benches on Tyne Street and watch it all going on on the river below. I remember sitting there once when I was very new to North Shields and seeing a big boat come past that was bigger than I’d ever seen that close up before. It was bigger than buildings! It was like an enormous block of houses floating slowly past and it felt so surreal that everyone else was getting on with their daily business whilst something that was so big it seemed like it could contain half the town on it drifted past us. I sat there with eyes popping, and waved, because as you know, you should always wave to boats if you’ve got an arm available.
Since then I’ve been in pursuit of the big boats. Albeit a lazy pursuit, but my minimal efforts have brought me lots of joy and North Shields Fish Quay more often than not provides. I have an app on my phone called Marine Traffic, which allows you to look up the boats you are seeing and find out what they are called, where they are going and where they’ve come from, and how big they actually are in metres. As you can imagine this only adds to the big boat watching experience.
I know I’m not alone in loving the big boats. Once I saw a big boat heading down the Tyne and called some friends who I knew were out for a walk, to let them know the big boat was coming past soon. Within 5 minutes I saw them running down Tyne Street to get there in time to watch it float past us. Red faced and out of breath they joined me to wave and we felt the thrill of passengers on the boat waving back. My friends reminisced about a holiday they had had that autumn, when they took the same boat out to Norway along with their dog. Another time recently, I sat on the thick wall down by Clifford’s Fort in the sun and watched a tug boat and another couple of boats navigate pulling two huge yellow, white and red pipes into the harbour and up the Tyne. It was slow progress but I stuck around to see them pass by and marvel at the big boatiness of it all. By the time they passed I had wandered down to the Fish Quay and could see a few other big boat fans hanging around taking pictures. I ended up chatting to a lovely woman about the boats, the pipes, the sea. She had lived here for years and still talked about getting a buzz from watching the big boats pass through. She told me they had stopped for a while during lockdown, and that there was some excitement within the town when the big boats started coming through again.
I may be wrong, but I think it is the big boats that make the big fog horn noise too. I love that. I remember when I first moved into my flat, it was sometime in winter. I was sat on the floor making something, and I felt the floor shudder a little bit every now and again. After a while I got up to look around the flat and see if I could find the cause. There wasn’t anything obvious but in a new house you tend to not know what’s making what noise for a while. I wondered if there was something broken or malfunctioning in my flat somewhere and did what anyone would do in this scenario, and went out for a walk. It was cold and foggy out, and within minutes of leaving I heard the long call of the fog horn from down on the Tyne. I realised that despite living almost a mile from the river, and not hearing the sound of the horn inside the flat, each time it went off it was making my floor subtly shudder. It made me think about how connected all of North Shields is with the river, and the boats, even when you aren’t thinking about it. Obviously I think about big boats A LOT so that is not necessarily relevant to me.
I’m not sure if I can explain why I love the big boats. Maybe it’s because I’m used to living inland, and it feels like there’s something unearthly about the size of these ships sailing through a small town. Possibly because it’s good to see things that are so much bigger than us that are going to places beyond here, it reminds us that life can be big, the many small things that are prattling around our brains that day may in fact be relatively small, and that there is an expanse out beyond this town and the North Sea to be explored. Or perhaps it’s just that I love the simple exchange of fun in waving from the shore and someone on board waving back.
What about you? Do you love big boats too? Have you ever been on a big boat? What was the best big boat you ever saw? Any idea what those big pipes were for? Got any good pics of big boats? Send me your big boat pics and write in with your stories or thoughts on why you love big boats to [email protected] – we will share them in next month’s newspaper!
Instagram: @ilovebigboats @mimrobsonartist
