The Essay: Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Traditional Boats

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats: The Coble

The Coble

A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats, The Coble

Poet Katrina Porteous on the coble, the beach-launched working boat of the northeast coast

Katrina Porteous, who has lived and worked for decades in a northeastern fishing village, goes to sea in a coble.

John Ruskin said the bow of a wooden boat is ‘the pinnacle of Man's achievement’. He appreciated that some of our most beautiful and effective creations are not designed as such but evolve to fulfil their task in their place, according to the history and affections of the people who use them. Some are scarcely noticed - because they are not buildings but boats, built to do jobs. In this series of The Essay five writers, each personally involved with their craft, circumnavigate the British Isles in five traditional boats – without leaving home.

The coble is the working boat of the northeast of England, with a high stem and knife-like forefoot for facing the breaking waves, but flat-bottomed aft, so it can be launched off the beach and sit upright on the sand at low tide, with not a straight line anywhere. Katrina Porteous lives on the coast of Northumberland and spent years with coble fishermen, learning their way and languages. Many of the poems in her first collection, The Lost Music focus on the Northumbrian fishing community, about which Katrina has also written in prose in The Bonny Fisher Lad. She weaves verse from her poem The Wund an’ the Wetter, into her unsentimental paean for the coble and the way of life it encapsulated. It's said it takes a village to raise a child; it certainly took a whole community to build a coble, to fish with and maintain one.

Presenter: Katrina Porteous
Producer: Julian May

The Essay: A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Five writers circumnavigate the British Isles in traditional boats - without leaving home.

Five writers, each personally involved with their craft, circumnavigate the British Isles in five traditional boats - without leaving home.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats

The Coble

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3