Name: Arthur ‘Art’ Pringle
Service: Merchant Navy (Pre-war), Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) (Wartime)
Rank: Seaman (RNR)
Home Port: Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England
Born: 1888
Born into a fishing family in the bustling port of Grimsby, Arthur “Art” Pringle had salt water in his veins from birth. He first went to sea as a boy, learning the harsh rhythms of the North Sea aboard a steam trawler. Before the war, his days were a relentless cycle of nets, ice, and the endless horizon, chasing cod and herring to feed the nation. When war was declared, the call for experienced seamen to join the Royal Naval Reserve was swift. Art, like countless other trawlermen, found his familiar vessel requisitioned and his fishing grounds transformed into a perilous battlefield. Assigned to minesweeping duties, he traded the hunt for fish for the deadly search for enemy mines, confronting an unseen foe that threatened to send him, and his ship, to the bottom of the icy North Sea.
The sea, she was always a fickle mistress, even in peacetime. One moment, she’d be calm as a millpond, the next, a raging beast trying to tear your little boat limb from limb. But we knew her moods, us trawlermen from Grimsby. We’d spent our lives reading the sky, feeling the shift in the currents, listening to the creak of the deck underfoot. My name’s Arthur Pringle, though most folks call me Art. Before the Great War swallowed us all up, I spent my days chasing cod and herring across the North Sea, the smell of fish and brine ingrained in my very soul.
Life on a steam trawler, even the Sea Serpent – a sturdy little vessel she was – was no picnic. We’d be out for days, sometimes a week or more, hauling in nets heavy with fish, guts and scales clinging to everything. The deck would be slick with ice and fish slime, the wind cutting through your oilskins like a knife. But there was a rhythm to it, a satisfaction in seeing the holds fill, knowing you were feeding the nation. And there was a camaraderie amongst the crew, a bond forged in shared hardship and the endless expanse of the sea. Old Tom, our skipper, he knew every sandbank, every tide rip, every good fishing ground like the back of his gnarled hand. He’d taught me everything I knew, from tying a proper knot to sniffing out a shoal.
When the war started in ’14, it felt a long way off. Just talk in the pub, mostly. We heard about the lads joining up for the trenches, but us, we were fishermen. We had our own fight, didn’t we? Against the elements, against the dwindling catches. But then the German U-boats started making themselves known. Stories began to filter back, hushed whispers of merchant ships disappearing, of fishing boats being stopped and sunk by unseen monsters. And then came the mines.
One morning, word came down from the Admiralty. They needed men. They needed boats. Our trawlers, they said, were perfect for sweeping mines. Had the right winches, the clear decks. Suddenly, the Sea Serpent wasn’t just a fishing boat anymore. She was being requisitioned. And we, her crew, were told we could sign up for the Royal Naval Reserve. Old Tom, he didn’t even hesitate. “Someone’s gotta do it, Art,” he said, his face grim. “Better us, who know these waters, than some lubber from the shore.” And so, like thousands of others from Grimsby, Hull, Lowestoft, and Fleetwood, we swapped our civilian clothes for Navy blue, though the salt and fish smell never quite left us.
The training was quick, rudimentary. We learned about naval signals, about how to rig the sweeping gear – a long wire stretched between two trawlers, weighted to run at a certain depth, meant to snag the mooring cables of the mines. We were told about the ‘horns’ on the mines, the contact primers that would set them off. And we were taught about the ‘cutter’ that would sever the cable once it was snagged, allowing the mine to float to the surface, where we’d blow it up with a rifle shot. It all sounded so neat and tidy on paper. The reality, as we soon found out, was anything but.
Our first proper sweep was out near the Dogger Bank, where we’d once pulled up herring by the ton. Now, the waters felt different, colder, heavier with an unseen threat. There were three of us in the sweep, the Sea Serpent and two other converted trawlers, steaming slowly, side by side. The tension on deck was thick enough to cut with a knife. Every splash, every ripple, every piece of floating debris made your heart jump. You strained your eyes, hoping to see something, anything, before it found you.
Then, the bell rang. A sharp, urgent clang. Someone on the other trawler had spotted something. All eyes scanned the water. Slowly, agonizingly, a black, spherical shape bobbed to the surface, its ugly horns glinting in the pale sunlight. A German mine. My breath caught in my throat. It looked like some monstrous, alien beast, waiting to devour you.
Old Tom, now Lieutenant Thomas Miller, RNR, gave the order. A rifleman on the bow took aim. A shot rang out, sharp and clean. The mine, with a sickening CRUMP, disintegrated in a plume of water and black smoke. The sound echoed across the waves, a chilling reminder of what lay beneath. We cheered, a hollow, shaky cheer, but it was short-lived. We knew there were more. Always more.
The days blurred into a monotonous, nerve-wracking routine. Out for days, sometimes a week, dragging that wire, hoping to hear the tell-tale shudder that meant we’d snagged something. Each ‘contact’ was a moment of terror. Would it be a mooring cable, or would the mine snag on our own hull? Would it explode on contact? You’d be soaked in sweat, even on the coldest days, your eyes burning from constantly scanning the waves.
We lost men. Not to torpedoes, not often. But to the mines themselves. I remember the Starfish, a vessel from our own flotilla. One grey, miserable morning, we were sweeping alongside her, a few hundred yards apart. She got a contact. The bell rang. Then, before the rifleman could even raise his weapon, there was a flash, a deafening roar, and a column of water and splinters shot skyward where she had been. When the spray fell, there was nothing left but a widening ripple on the grey surface. Not a single man survived. Just gone. Swallowed by the sea they thought they knew.
After that, the jokes stopped for a while. The camaraderie remained, but it was tinged with a silent dread. Every time we went out, you said your goodbyes a little more carefully. You wondered if this was the day the sea would claim you. We saw other things too. Wreckage from merchant ships, the grim debris of naval engagements, occasionally the bloated body of a sailor, a stark reminder of the war’s reach. We were no longer just fishing. We were fighting an unseen enemy, a silent, deadly war of attrition.
The U-boats were another threat. Sometimes they’d surface, a dark, sleek monster emerging from the depths. They’d often signal you to abandon ship before sinking you with their deck gun. But sometimes, they wouldn’t bother. Or they’d simply torpedo a bigger merchantman nearby, and you’d be tasked with picking up survivors from the freezing water, their faces etched with shock and hypothermia. These were the moments that tested you, the ones that made you question everything.
I remember one particularly rough sweep. The seas were high, the wind howling like a banshee. We were already exhausted, two days without much sleep. The wire snagged. We started hauling in, the winch straining. Then, not one, but two mines popped up, almost side-by-side, bobbing dangerously close to our bow. Old Tom barked orders, his voice raw. The first rifle shot, aimed by a shaky young lad, missed. The second mine drifted even closer. I grabbed the rifle myself, my hands steadying despite the rolling deck, and took aim. Crack! The first mine blew, sending a wall of water over our bows. I reloaded, heart thumping, and put a round into the second. CRUMP!
We were soaked, shaken, but alive. The tension on deck finally broke, replaced by a mixture of adrenaline and nervous laughter. That night, Old Tom poured us a generous tot of rum. “Good work, Art,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’ve got an eye for it, lad. And a steady hand.” It was the closest he ever came to praise, and it felt like a medal.
The war dragged on. Months bled into years. The familiar fishing grounds became a minefield of memories and actual mines. We swept, and we swept, and new mines kept appearing, dropped by stealthy U-boats or laid by German surface raiders. Our faces grew gaunt, our eyes held a haunted look, but we kept going. It was our duty, our grim service to the nation. We weren’t the lads charging over the top in France, but we were fighting our own war, in our own element.
By the time the armistice was signed, the Sea Serpent was battered and scarred, but still afloat. And I, Art Pringle, was still breathing, though a good deal older than my years. The North Sea, once a source of livelihood, now held a million ghost memories of explosions and lost comrades. The cheerful sound of the fishing fleet returning to port was now always tinged with the echo of that dreadful CRUMP! of a mine exploding. I’d go back to fishing, yes. But the sea, she’d changed forever for me. And so had I.
