Back from Yachting
Interviewer: That must have been quite hard for the families who had been left behind whilst the men went away for six months?
Noreen Honey: He used to come home and bring tobacco for the old men.
Ian Honey: Well on the foreign and Caribbean places like that, he would get tobacco leaves from the tobacco plantations and roll them tightly and soak them in rum and take them round the village when he came home on leave and I used to be on his shoulder going up Church Hill with different friends of his, the Provises and the Oatens and several names I’ve forgotten and he always used to take them a pig of tobacco. It’s called a pig of tobacco, this raw stuff of the actual leaf. And that was his perks for all of his friends.
Noreen Honey: They had nice clothes didn’t they?
Ian Honey: Yes proper yachting outfits. Jerseys and trousers and shirts, deck shoes. All very well kitted out for the crew. Because the owners were very wealthy at that time. This was the 1920s and 30s. Most of the crew were fishermen or seamen anyway.
Interviewer: And so a whole gang would go off from Port Isaac together?
Ian Honey: Oh yes, catch a train somewhere.