This is Pilgrim, heading out of the river Dart in south Devon, on a day of improbable near-flat calm in September 2014. The boat is a Brixham trawler built at Upham’s yard in 1895, now gloriously restored and refitted, working once more out of Brixham after a long and choppy career in Scandinavia. Fish are not currently involved, however (unless on the menu below deck), just people.
If paying passengers are beguiled by this heroic survivor, the skipper and crew show signs of being hopelessly devoted. One of them is a shipwright who used to work at Upham’s, another has strayed south from a family of Northumberland seafarers. Pilgrim is now owned by a charitable trust and is on the National Register of Historic Vessels.
Here’s the Brixham fleet in about 1889, waiting for a breeze: tough old working boats looking very like a flock of butterflies.