Newlyn Harbour, West Cornwall
Pencil drawings of Newlyn Harbour made sitting on the harbourside in July 1995. I've never known what to 'do' with these but always liked them.
I went down to the harbour one night in the depths of winter when the boats had been pulling in containers washed off a passing monster-ship. Some had split open and slicks of Lego, wheelbarrow wheels, and huge bales of tobacco had been washing up on Penwith's beaches to the delight of local residents. That night a boat had pulled in a great wallowing, waterlogged bull of a container. A crane and divers were on hand from MacSalvors of Pool. In the inky black night punctuated by the crane's lights the divers tied on the container. The massive truck took the strain. As the container began to broach the water the crane began to tip. The divers struggled to open the container doors. Up it came and as it did the doors broke fully open and hundreds of brown cardboard boxes spilled out across the harbour waters. The gathered crowd held its collective wrecker's breath. What treasure was this? What riches from the hostile seas and the cold shipping lanes of global capitalism? Well, it turned out the boxes were full of liquid crystal display units for videos - hundreds and thousands of the bloody things, drifting off across the dark oily water.
Newlyn is like that. Dreams of riches, making it big with overflowing pockets full of cash and the prosaic, hard, dangerous world of deep sea fishing. I loved it. You can read about it here.