Cautionary tales (trawlers/girls)

One day, a glossy poster landed in my letterbox when I ran the hostel. It arrived in a cardboard cylinder with a note asking me to display it in the female toilets.

Requests of this sort usually came from the Department of Health but this was from the Department of Transport. I wasn’t totally surprised. Government agencies are forever muscling in on one another’s territory. I unfurled the poster and stuck it on the toilet wall.

SCREAM! 

A banner headline yelled at me from above a picture of a terrified young woman, cowering on the deck of a boat.

NO ONE WILL COME TO YOUR AID ...

Other words spelt out the horror of her situation.

It was a warning about jobs on trawlers.

I had friends who once owned trawlers. I got to know them when they cashed in their commercial fishing licences and switched to dive boats. Their behaviour was always impeccable. Sadly, the same could not be said for everyone on a fishing boat. The Department of Transport knew there was a serious problem and acted responsibly.

Girls were being raped!

I encountered two incidents in which young women took jobs on trawlers (as cooks) and regretted it. One swam over to a dive boat (on which I was working) and sought refuge. Another returned to the hostel in a state of distress.

Guys are at rist too: Cautionary tales